Many people say that I have pretty eyes. Like it’s a simple thing, like beauty is only what lives on the surface.

They tell me how they sparkle, how they shift in the light, changing shades like they’re playing a game- grey to brilliant blue, soft to storm- as if my eyes were made only for wonder.

But if they looked closer, not just at them, but into them, they might hesitate before calling them pretty.

Because these eyes have carried too much.

They have held onto moments that should have slipped away, scenes that replay in quiet hours when the world finally softens its noise.

There are things reflected here that no light can soften, memories that cling to the edges no matter how brightly I try to look forward.

If they knew what lived behind the color, behind the shine, the weight of it, the quiet ache of remembering, they might choose a different word.

Not pretty.

Maybe heavy. Maybe tired. Maybe something closer to the truth.

Because eyes don’t just sparkle; they witness. They absorb. They remember.

And mine… mine have seen things I would trade anything to forget.

Still, they look at me and smile, captivated by the way the light dances; never realizing that what they’re admiring isn’t just beauty... but survival.

It’s crazy, isn’t it? How much a pair of eyes can hold without ever speaking a word.

You can see the storms someone survived, the nights they didn’t sleep, the moments they wish would fade but never quite do.

Eyes don’t know how to lie very well, even if the rest of the body does. They flicker, hesitate, soften when something hurts, harden when something broke them. You can catch glimpses of laughter still hiding in the corners, or sadness that lingers no matter how wide the smile is.

It’s like looking through a window that was never meant to be opened, but somehow, for a second, you’re let inside.

And in that moment, you don’t just see a person; you see their story.

If you had looked into Laela’s eyes, you would have seen thousands of things. Firstly, the earth-brown shimmer of her irises, inherited from her mother, a long line of Persian princesses and minor royalty, if she believed the stories.

Then, if one sat with her for a while, there would be contentment. Happiness when the birds sang, or when someone sat beside her in companionable silence. A gentle joy upon the unwrapping of a chocolate bar from her lunchbox, as it melted on her tongue.

Then, comes the sirens. From outside the playground, an ambulance swerves by, sirens wailing out into the blue sky overhead. A plane passes, a helicopter whirs. Laela flinches, her eyes closing for a split second, and opening full of pain, the flash of firelight and falling houses.

I met Laela on a Tuesday.

She sat two rows ahead of me, back straight, hands folded like she was holding something invisible together. The teacher stumbled slightly over her name during register, and she corrected it softly—Lay-la, not Lee-la—her voice careful, like it had learned not to take up too much space.

I remember noticing her eyes before anything else.

Not because of their color, though they were a warm earth-brown, like they had borrowed something steady from the ground itself, but because of how they moved. Listening, like they were waiting for the world to shift.

At lunch, she sat alone.

I don’t know why I sat next to her.

Maybe it was the way she unwrapped her chocolate bar with such care, like it was something rare. Maybe it was the silence around her, the kind that feels less like emptiness and more like distance.

“Is it good?” I asked, nodding at the chocolate.

“Yes,” she said. “It tastes… like home.”

Home. It was such a small word, but it didn’t sit lightly.

He story told itself in fragments. In the way she flinched when sirens passed by outside. In the way she once asked me if the planes here ever flew too low, her voice so quiet I almost missed it. In the way she said the word home like it was something that had edges sharp enough to cut.

“Syria,” she told me one afternoon, tracing invisible lines on the desk with her fingertip. “I’m from Aleppo.”

Aleppo.

She said it like it was still whole. Like it hadn’t been broken into headlines and ruins and things commuters scroll past on the Tube.

“What was it like?” I asked, before I could stop myself.

For a moment, I thought I had asked too much.

Her eyes shifted, not away, but inward.

“It was beautiful,” she said.

Not was, like something gone.

But was, like something she was trying to keep alive.

She told me about streets that smelled like spices and fresh bread, about markets that stretched longer than you could walk without getting tired. About her mother’s stories: those Persian princesses and almost-royalty, told half like jokes, half like truths you weren’t supposed to question.

And for a second, I could see it.

Not the war, or fallen buildings, children covered in rubble or standing in long, winding queues trekking to safety.

There was a life before it. Thousands of them, and Laela was among them, eyes still agleam with childhood innocence.

“That was the best,” she said softly, almost to herself. “Aleppo was the best.”