What Those Eyes Had Seen

As I walked past Mr B’s desk I gave him a big cheesy grin and stopped in front of him. I had one of those momentary flashes of inspiration (or madness) where I imagined that Mr B was, in fact, the brother of the revolutionary that we had been discussing in today’s class.

He was probably around the right age. He had the skin of a foreigner and none of us really knew where he was from. Somewhere out east. And here he was, standing in a classroom with a bunch of teenagers. This man had escaped from a country that would have killed him because of his family. He had seen the start of a fire begin to rage across a whole nation. What else had his eyes seen? Those electric eyes that brought life to our lessons, but seemed dead outside of class. I was staring, still grinning.

“Alright Mr B?” I said.