Wind

The wind in the desert is pervading. With nothing to stand in its way...it comes in hot and fast...hugging the terrain. Sometimes it carries with it portents, sometimes it carries things away.

There really was no rest for the weary. After having spent the whole long night responding to one emergency call after another we had a new job at dawn. We had to walk the site of the previous night's fight to look for survivors.

In a long, staggered line we walked...feeling like interlopers on sacred ground. We prowled amidst the wreckage. It looked like the pictures of Pompeii...the unlucky ones frozen in the last moments of life. Their arms reaching out, fists gnarled, skin ash gray. And everywhere plumes of smoke rose like ghosts.

I took a break...sat on my helmet. I watched the wind whipping around the smoke that hung overhead....taking it away. It carried away the darkness and the stench. It let in the sun. It shifted the sands to begin covering what we'd left in our wake. At that moment, in a rare flight of imagination for me, I wished it would take me away too. I was just so tired. I'd had enough. I just wanted to go home. I wanted to be gone out of there...