Chapter 1

Big men in black burst into our home. They knocked my children away. I could hear gunshots outside my door. One of them grabbed my arm and shoved me on the floor.

He screamed in my face. His breath stank of garlic and dry bread.

I looked into his tiny black eyes and glared.

The man took my arm and slammed it between the doors. It cracked. I screamed in agony. The man grinned, then twisted my bone beneath his beefy hands.

I kept screaming. My children cried.

One of them said, "Mama!"

The soldier slapped him across the face.

My body felt as if a thousand needles were plunging into it again and again.

The children were screaming. I was screaming. The world spun around and around. Then, I fell unconscious.

Chapter 2

When I awoke, the ground was cold and rough. I felt the steady rhythm of me moving. I felt the stabbing in my arm. I felt bodies squeezing me. I opened my eyes. They fell upon women with dirt streaked faces. I heard honking. We were on a train. I closed my eyes again.

I opened them. I heard the screeching of the car door opening. A man with a face of many scars threw in a hunk of bread. It was quickly devoured by three woman in the front.

"Wait!" I called as he started to close the door. My voice was scratchy from lack of water. "We need some mor-" But he was gone.

Soldiers came and threw us in huge ugly trucks. I felt weak. I felt hopeless. A young woman with cropped hair looked at me and managed a smile. She looked less than 20 years old. She offered me a course cloth to make a wrap for my arm. Her neck was leaking blood

"Don't give up hope... Salvation shall come," she said to me. She went limp. I forced myself to turn away. A tear trickled down my cheek.

We arrived at a stone building with barbed wire around it. They forced us to take off all our clothes and put an a raggedy uniform, evidently made from a potato sack.