The Safe House

It is in the year 1982 a five year old little girl lives does not care too much for the people who visit their home. Every day their relatives often visits their house usually her and some slept their over night. She always see them talking about serious stuff and important things in a small dinning table.

One night when she wakes up she wanders around the house and she hear the voice of the new visitor who came by to their house this morning. When she lean her ears to the wall she heard the words sundalo, kasama, talahib, and lastly the word katawan.

On the next day their house are now crowded with visitors she dose not know but she feels something different because all the grownups are all quite like something is about to explode. So she went down under the center table as she hid her self and focus on the TV where she sees the president saying some announcement.

In the year 1983 the relatives come more often to their house as they begin to treat it as their own. They always hold meetings under the guise of children’s parties in every week someone’s son or daughter has a birthday. The little girl and her brother often play with the balloons on the floor. She always wonders why her mother always serves the visitors dusty beer bottles.

She was surprised to see the grown ups playing some make-believe in the balcony. They pretend to open a bottle of beer and begin a laughing game that whoever laugh the loudest win. She thinks that her mother play the game badly because instead of joining in, her mother is always crying in the kitchen floor.

Then one day her mother leaves the house soon after and she will never return. Another day after she always sees the small apartment even smaller because of the piles of paper on the table. The visitors often reading from a small red book, which they hides under their clothes once she approaches.

In one afternoon of August 1984 her father got arrested by the soldier outside their house, with the neighbors watching.