The day war came there were flowers on the window sill and my father sang my baby brother back to sleep. My mother made my breakfast, kissed my nose and walked with me to school.

That morning I learned about volcanoes, I sang a song about how tadpoles turn at last to frogs. I made a picture of myself with wings. Then, just after lunch, while I watched a cloud shaped like a dolphin, war came. At first, just like a spattering of hail a voice of thunder… then all smoke and fire and noise, that I didn’t understand.

It came across the playground. It came into my teacher’s face. It brought the roof down. and turned my town to rubble.

I can’t say the words that tell you about the blackened hole that had been my home.

~Excerpt from 'The Day the War Came ' by Nicola Davis

I was traveling to India when I met this girl on the plane .. elfin faced , pretty and lively - she was returning to meet her family in Syria . From DC till Dubai - she spoke and I listened trying to understand and digest the immense senselessness of war.