2/2 ”When we arrived at the safe territory, we lived in a school for a while. Later we moved here to Tinja. In the beginning, we lived with four other families. I started going to school for the first time. I remember seeing other children with their fathers and wondering if my father would ever come back. At school, I never said that I didn’t have a father anymore. I always kept hope, and I would tell the kids in school that he would come back one day. I remember children in school telling me that I was a liar and that my father was dead. It upset me so much that one day I went to school and told everyone my father had returned. I was so convincing that even the teacher believed me, and had to call my mom to check. We never had the chance to take a family portrait. My mother was still pregnant when she had to say goodbye to my father, so my sister never got to meet him. Originally this was a photo of my mother, my sister, and me. We added our father with photoshop so that we would have one family photo with the four of us. In 2010, we got confirmation that they had found his body. Every year, I go to his grave to say a prayer. I know it’s not rational, but to this day, I feel guilty. Sometimes I think he should have tried to escape through the woods. It was as if he wanted to spend his last moments with us.”