Midnight Encounter: Dreaming is for kids

You walked up to us, you were haut comme trois pommes, your height not even reaching my however low waist. You looked up towards me, clutching tightly your bouquet of plastic pink roses against your chest. You asked the Revolutionary if he wanted to buy me flowers, and something weird happened. I don’t know why it only happened with you, of all the street kids I have seen, it had to be you, you that I suddenly felt the urge to hug fiercely. It might have been your eyes, or your smile, or it might have been that magic spark that make people get attached to each other, that make people adopt kids they didn’t know one second before. I don’t know what it was, it simply made me want to take you home to be safe. I asked how old you were, you said eight, and something within me fell to my feet with a thud. It might have been my heart.
You said you came from Syria, alone with your brother while your parents remained there. I asked you how you came, two kids like that, you replied with a mature shrug and a condescending tone, as if I were stupid: we came by bus, how else do you want us to come? I asked where you were sleeping, you simply told me “mashi”, to let me know you managed and also perhaps, to let me know to mind my own business, which, let s face it, you were rightly entitled to do. I don’t know what came over me, it s not like i roam the streets of Beirut asking people where they sleep a night. Might have been that urge again. I ended up giving you what I had, and told you I didn’t want the roses. In that case, let me
Be the one who opens the door for you at your car, you said.
Never a woman had such a beautiful prince open a door for her with such a beautiful grin.
You pressed two roses on me.
Never had artificial flowers been prettier, or smelt so good.
On the way back I cried. Never had tears been so bitter and angry.
And then I realized my tears were of no use to no one really. What I really had to do was fight, and keep on fighting, so that the stupid governments, the corrupt, fat, greedy puppets that pretend to govern us are no more, and are replaced by a system that won’t permit that eight year old princes are out on the streets at midnight, while what they should really be doing, is sleep, and most of all, dream.