RUTHFULLY YOURS

• Many political meetings are held to take the “necessary measures.” The attack turned lives upside down. All they can do is “analyze the current situation”?

You can write a ton of articles about terrorism attacks but you can never feel it. You will not be able walk with your friend during lunch break without turning around to see if someone is following you. You will not feel comfortable around a bearded man. You want to wake up in the morning without being worried that someone will attack you. You are not witnessing the destruction of your country.

You stare mechanically at the flat television screen . Many political meetings are held to take the “necessary measures.” The attack turned lives upside down. All they can do is “analyze the current situation”?

You cry alone in your house. Your parents are late and you do not know if they are okay or not. You do not to know if you will come back from the beach with all your family safe.

Anything can be erased except for memories. The terrorists just took those. We played together without worrying that someone would kill or shoot us . Good always beat evil one way or another. There were butterflies and birds.

After the Sousse attack, many tourists came to the beach to drop flowers there. There were a lot of photographs. There was a young boy who lost his brother and his grandfather. He was holding a flower bouquet and crying in the sand. I could not look at that.

“Allah,” I say, “I am sure that you are watching all that is happening; I know you can help us so come on, do it.” I want to be able to play outside without being worried that there might be a bomb there. I want to hold my mother in my arms and to feel that magical moment.

All I want is to revive those memories. And I want to create more wonderful ones .

Tharwa Elboulifi, age 14 and fluent in Arabic French and English, attends an international school in Tunisia. She is also interested in music, and sings and plays the guitar.