What is war like for a five year-old?

War is not video games. War is not glorious. War is about dreadful fear, being hungry, losing innocence.

clipped from www.awwproject.org One Day’s Battle I remember the day my innocence came to an end, sixteen years ago, when I was five years old. A group of mujahedeen was attacking Farah, our city. We set out on foot, my mother, my father, my cousin who carried the baby, my three-year-old sister and me. We were poor and did not have a vehicle. It took us about one hour to get from our house to the desert, but it seemed much longer. I remember the rockets and bombs. I lost my shoes. My family started to run and run. I did not know that I was born into a world of war, or that I would grow up with the sounds of explosions and rockets being fired, or that I would still today hear of people who lose their lives in this fighting. But I have hope within me that one day we will live as other people in other countries, who have peace instead of war.