"He was one person out of thousands, but he was the man I was going to marry"

"'I will marry you one day.'
I remember his big green eyes and his beautiful, black hair that were so unusual for Iraqis...He was a year older than me but, by chance, we were sat next to each other during our fifth and sixth grade final exams. I was extremely nervous sitting next to a boy like that; my heart was beating so fast and my palms started sweating and as my mind rambled with self criticisms, he opened his mouth and told me that I was beautiful and that one day, he was going to marry me. For that one minute, I was engulfed with joy and had a smile plastered on my face; I totally forgot about the exam. We afterwards ended up spending a lot of time together. This was a year before the war began
Little did I know that the time we casually smiled at each other and said "see you tomorrow" would be the last time that I would ever see him.
I had gone to Syria during the war. My dad promised me that we would go back as soon as things settled down and became "less dangerous", and eventually we did six months later. When we went back, everything had changed...The people, the streets, the houses, even the air smelt different.
I had some exams left to do which is why I never could go look for him since at this time there were neither cellphones nor land lines. Then one day, my mum was telling me just "another tragic story" about this young man in our neighborhood who was shot in the pack of his parent's car. He was sitting in the back and all of a sudden his parents noticed he was very quiet...They turned their heads and saw their son bleeding all over the car seat. If they had noticed earlier he may have survived... When I asked who it was, she described him as a boy with black curly hair and big green eyes, then I broke down.
That was the first time I lost someone in war and it was definitely one of the biggest and most devastating shocks I have had, and this is coming from an Iraqi who lived in Baghdad during its worst times. There hasn't been a day that I don't regret looking for him.
I want people to pause and think about those innocent lives that were randomly taken because they were at the wrong place at the wrong time. They never get mentioned in the news. They die everyday and no body even knows about them. These people had lives, futures, ahead of them. They never even had a chance. They are just considered collateral damage of this pointless war.
He was one person out of thousands, but he was the man I was going to marry." -Female, 22