Extra Garlic Sauce, Hold the War

Based on Revelation 7:9-17, “They will hunger no more, and thirst no more… and God will wipe every tear.”

Disclaimer: This story is a work of creative nonfiction. While the characters and specific events are fictionalised, they are drawn from a collection of real experiences and encounters from the author’s own life. The story seeks to honour the truth of those moments while protecting the privacy of the individuals involved.

Amira had lived all her seventeen years in the coastal town of Tyre, a place where the sea kissed the land gently, even while the world beyond raged with noise. Her family had always kept a low profile. Her father repaired mobile phones, and her mother taught the younger kids in the neighbourhood to read. Life had a quiet rhythm—school, chores, the scent of cardamom coffee drifting through the windows—until the shelling started.

The first explosion hit a nearby building just after dawn. The windows in Amira’s home blew inward like falling stars, and her baby brother, Sami, started to scream. That day, they packed what they could—some blankets, water bottles, documents—and joined the growing line of people moving north. For days, they walked, sometimes hitched rides, sometimes slept in olive groves. Fear clung to them like smoke.

They ended up in a school turned refugee camp in the mountains. The classrooms were now bedrooms, kitchens, and washrooms, crowded with families pressed together by grief and survival. The wilderness, Amira would later call it. Not because it was a desert, but because it stripped away everything that once felt normal. No privacy. No promises. Just queues for bread and news of more strikes. The sound of drones humming above. The sound of silence when aid didn’t come.

At night, she would lie beside her mother on the cold tile floor, staring at the water-stained ceiling. The girl who once wrote poems and daydreamed about teaching now counted the ways she might escape—not from the place, but from the growing numbness.

Then, slowly, things began to change—not with big miracles, but in fragments.

Groups from different social and religious organisations started visiting, not just with food, but with things that felt out of place: paint, soccer balls, and string for making bracelets. One of the organisations gathered the children for little activities in the courtyard: drawing pictures, skipping rope, and teaching songs. At first, it felt absurd. How could anyone play while everything else had collapsed?

But Sami joined, and then some others. Then, one afternoon, Amira saw her mother smiling, just briefly, watching Sami chase a deflated ball like nothing else mattered.

One of the volunteers, Tash, a woman in her late thirties with a soft Australian accent, listened more than she spoke. When Amira admitted how hopeless she felt, Tash simply said, “You don’t have to fix everything. Just keep breathing.”

Tash saw something in Amira—resilience stitched together by hardship and tenderness. Through the organisation she worked with, she contacted a network of Australian churches and support organisations. One of the churches had already begun sponsoring displaced families. When Amira and her family were accepted for resettlement, it felt unreal.

They arrived in Australia with one suitcase. But at the airport, a minister—smiling in an oversized cardigan—held a sign that read “Welcome Amira.” The church had organised housing, groceries, and school supplies. They brought jumpers and meals.

A woman named Margaret took Amira shopping for a new mobile phone and a few other essentials. They visited a large shopping mall—something Amira had never experienced before. The scale of it, the bright lights, the shelves full of things she never imagined she’d see again—it was overwhelming, but also strangely comforting.

They spent most of the day wandering through stores, comparing prices, laughing over things they didn’t understand. They paused for lunch in the food court, where Amira’s eyes lit up at the sight of familiar dishes. She was surprised—and quietly delighted—to find shawarma and falafel on one of the menus. The flavours weren’t quite the same as back home, but the taste brought back memories she thought she had left behind.

It was more than shopping—it was a moment of restoration, a glimpse of ordinary life made sacred by kindness and patience.

At first, Amira didn’t know what to make of it. She had spent so long being invisible, being a burden. Yet here were people—not perfect, not saints—who showed up with casseroles and awkward Arabic greetings, who cared without needing to understand everything. It wasn’t charity. It was Fellowship.

She began volunteering with the church’s Sunday School, making paper flowers and telling stories in two languages. She started writing again—poems this time about sea winds, drone shadows, and belonging. Her favourite line, scrawled in her journal, was: “God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”

That line stuck with her, not because it erased the grief, not because it was magic, but because it said someone saw the tears and did not look away.

Years later, there are still moments when Amira hears a loud bang and flinches—when a memory rises uninvited, sharp and heavy. But she also remembers the olive trees, the string bracelets, the game of soccer, the first hot shower in Australia, and Sami’s laughter, now learning to surf.

She knows what wilderness feels like and what it means to be led through it by hands that carry compassion instead of weapons.

She never stopped walking through the pain. But she no longer walks alone.

Extra Garlic Sauce, Hold the War
(shorter version)

Based on Revelation 7:9-17, “They will hunger no more, and thirst no more… and God will wipe every tear.”

Disclaimer: This story is a work of creative nonfiction. While the characters and specific events are fictionalised, they are drawn from a collection of real experiences and encounters from the author’s own life. The story seeks to honour the truth of those moments while protecting the privacy of the individuals involved.

Amira had lived all her seventeen years in the coastal town of Tyre, a place where the sea kissed the land gently, even while the world beyond raged with noise. Her family had always kept a low profile. Her father repaired mobile phones, and her mother taught the younger kids in the neighbourhood to read. Life had a quiet rhythm—school, chores, the scent of cardamom coffee drifting through the windows—until the shelling started.

The first explosion hit a nearby building just after dawn. The windows in Amira’s home blew inward like falling stars, and her baby brother, Sami, started to scream. That day, they packed what they could—some blankets, water bottles, documents—and joined the growing line of people moving north. For days, they walked, sometimes hitched rides, sometimes slept in olive groves. Fear clung to them like smoke.

They ended up in a school turned refugee camp in the mountains. The classrooms were now bedrooms, kitchens, and washrooms, crowded with families pressed together by grief and survival. The wilderness, Amira would later call it. Not because it was a desert, but because it stripped away everything that once felt normal. No privacy. No promises. Just queues for bread and news of more strikes. The sound of drones humming above. The sound of silence when aid didn’t come.

At night, she would lie beside her mother on the cold tile floor, staring at the water-stained ceiling. The girl who once wrote poems and daydreamed about teaching now counted the ways she might escape—not from the place, but from the growing numbness.

Then, slowly, things began to change—not with big miracles, but in fragments.

Continue reading the full story here.