Dartmouth, Class of 2015 War Sweet War By Ziad Al-Shamsie I was born in a world called war. This world took away the humans who gave me life and granted me a new identity. I am an orphan who has breathed life’s contagious apathy for 2920 days and 2919 nights – or 8 years, a stranger told me. I was never given a name, but the people I slept with called me Zebu; I later discovered, Zebu meant an ox. I was usually accompanied by a person who called me his friend. He was a rather short fellow, and was just a few thousand days and nights older than me. With a great passion for a green plant he called “mint,” he went by the name Sage. Sage taught me that each human being had a name because they have a need to feel special. They each choose a group of letters, arrange them differently, and use the product to identify themselves. The term “human beings” had been hackneyed and lost its meaning, he said. He preferred to call them “lemmings.” “Every day is a school day,” he would go on. I didn’t understand what he meant by “school.” When I asked him, he momentarily stood in silence and gently sat down on the sidewalk. Sage looked me in the eyes and said, “It was a place where lemmings communicated and unraveled the meaning of all life.’ I noticed he spoke in the past, but I dared not to ask – his eyes, sore with tears. Tears fascinate me. I don’t remember ever producing tears of my own, except after seeing someone else cry. I can feel the warm, salty water accumulating and flowing down my cheeks. “Empathy,” Sage explained. I understood empathy as feeling and understanding how others felt. Sage explained that lemmings were weak – the slightest occurrence or word could stir their emotions and swell their eyes. I didn’t think I could empathize – their emotions change too often. I asked Sage to take me to this place, to this “school.” He agreed. It was a mystical, dreary edifice. The walls were built to transcend the sight of any standing lemming, even on the highest existing stool. I was surprised that Sage and I were permitted to enter this colossal “school”. The entrance gate had an indiscernible sign with a sequence of symbols; Sage breathed the words and numbers into my ears: Class 101. My sight began to blur and a droplet of salty liquid gushed down and around my cheeks. The walls were ashy gray. The hallways each formed the letter “L,” with little cubicles made of skinny, black columns, so close together – they would be impossible to get through. The lemmings wore a pure crimson uniform, homogenizing their motley identities. I was given a solitary cubicle, where I will learn to Conform, Loathe, Kill, Manipulate, and Die for my world.