Broken Hearts: A Two Act Trauma

Barely one year ago, a father, a young mother and her small daughter stepped out of the airport terminal in a war torn city and walked to the steps of the last plane loading passengers fleeing to America in front of the atrocities our world labels as ethnic cleansing.

With heart pounding drama, this small family was stopped at the steps of the plane by armed men - who knows if they were soldiers, independent militia, or roving bands of thugs taking advantage of a deteriorating political situation.They were stopped. Their passports, visas, and papers were demanded, reviewed, and confiscated.

An eight year old, a mother, a father that close to escape and freedom, imagine the terror.

In the plane loaded with other escapees, among a crew which did not anticipate this armed intervention, imagine the terror.

There were words. There were heroic attempts to intervene. There was a gunshot and before her eyes a young girl watched her beloved father die.

Hasty arms hurried the young child and her mother into the aircraft.

Hastily, a crew sealed the door, and taxied away before more blood could be shed. And paperless, without proof of identity a widowed family escaped to America.

But the trauma was not over. When the plane arrive here in Chicago, with the fresh blood of her husband, the fresh blood of her father, in their minds, paperless, alone, without advocates, a hopeful mother and daughter, deplaned in the freedom and stability of America and headed for customs.

And then here in America the trauma returned.

Immediately the mother and eight year old child were questioned, arrested, and, as is assumed to be criminals, because they had no papers, hauled away by more men in another uniform. Never mind the story. Never mind the witnesses. Never mind the freshness of grief, of trauma. They were hauled away - the mother to prison, the daughter to a home for criminal American teens.