JOSEF

                        BERLIN, GERMANY – 1938

CRACK! BANG!

Josef Landau shot straight up in bed, his heart racing.

That sound—it was like someone had kicked the front

door in.  Or had he dreamed it?

Josef listened, straining his ears in the dark.  He wasn’t

used to the sounds of this new flat, the smaller one he

and his family had been forced to move into.  They

couldn’t afford their old place, not since the Nazis told

Josef’s father he wasn’t allowed to practice law anymore

because he was Jewish.

Across the room, Josef’s little sister, Ruth, was still

asleep.  Josef tried to relax.  Maybe he’d just been having a

nightmare.

Something in the darkness outside his room moved

with a grunt and a scuffle.

Someone was in the house!

Josef scrambled backward on his bed, his eyes wide.

There was a shattering sound in the next room—crisssh!

Ruth woke up and screamed.  Screamed in sheer blind

terror.  She was only six years old.

“Mama!” Josef cried. “Papa!”

………….read more to see what happens.

 

ISABEL

          JUST OUTSIDE HAVANA, CUBA – 1994

IT TOOK ONLY TWO TRIES TO GET THE SCRAWNY

calico kitten to come out from under the pink cinder-

block house and eat from Isabel Fernandez’s hand. The

cat was hungry, just like everyone else in Cuba, and its

belly quickly won out over its fear.

The cat was so tiny it could only nibble at the beans.

Its tummy purred like an outboard motor, and it butted

its head against Isabel’s hand in between bites.

“You’re not much to look at, are you, kitty?”  Isabel

said.  Its fur was scraggly and dull, and Isabel could feel

the cat’s bones through its skin.  The kitten wasn’t too

different from her, Isabel realized:  thin, hungry, and

in need of a bath.  Isabel was eleven years old, and all lanky

arms and legs.  Her brown face was splotchy with freckles,

and her thick black hair was cut short for summer and

pulled back behind her ears.  She was barefoot like always,

and wore a tank top and shorts.

The kitten gobbled up the last of the beans and mewed

pitifully.  Isabel wished she had something else to give it,

but this food was already more than she could spare.  Her

lunch hadn’t been much bigger than the cat’s—just a few

beans and a small pile of white rice.  There had been

rationing and food coupon books back when Isabel was

little.  But a few years abo, in 1989, the Soviet Union had

fallen, and Cuba had hit rock bottom.  Cuba was a com-

munist country, like Russia had been, and for decades

the Soviets had been buying Cuba’s sugar for eleven

times the price and sending the little island food and gas-

oline and medicine for free.

……….read more to see what happened next.

 

MAHMOUD

                         ALEPPO, SYRIA – 2015

MAHMOUD BISHARA WAS INVISIBLE.  AND

that’s exactly how he wanted it.  Being invisible was

how he survived.

He wasn’t literally invisible.  If you really looked at

Mahmoud, got a glimpse under the hoodie he kept pulled

down over his face, you would see a twelve-year-old boy

with a long, strong nose, thick black eyebrows, and short-

cropped black hair.  He was stocky, his shoulders wide

and muscular despite the food shortages.  But Mahmoud

did everything he could to hide his size and his face, to

stay under the radar.  Random death from a fighter jet’s

missile or a soldier’s rocket launcher might come at any

moment, when you least expected it.  To walk around get-

ting noticed by the Syrian army or the rebels fighting

them was just inviting trouble.

Mahmoud sat in the middle row of desks in his class-

room, where the teacher wouldn’t call on him.  The desks

were wide enough for three students at each, and Mahmoud

sat between two other boys named Ahmed and Nedhal.

Ahmed and Nedhal weren’t his friends.  Mahmoud

didn’t have any friends.

…………read more to find out why.