My Move, Our Move

    It seemed like the end of my world when they first mentioned the necessity of leaving. I understand, it’s just that when you’ve spent your entire life in a place, with people you know, starting over is beginning a life I am not prepared for.

    My environment has dictated who I am, what I do, what my plans are; it makes decisions for me. I am not different from others that are forced to leave, what we lose may appear to be different, but our loss is the same. 

    The change has been obvious, at times, more overt than in the past, but nonetheless dominant in directing the course of not only my life, but all lives that yield to the pressure it exerts. 

    My grandmother’s stories of what it was like when she was a child, compared to what it is now, leaves little doubt we cannot survive in this place. The rains are no longer seasonal, they come randomly, or not at all. We are forced to utilize an antiquated system that no longer functions, leaving only frustration and the nagging feeling, it is a permanent addition to the uncertainty of subsistence on the land.   

    The sun, once celebrated as the provider of life, now a thief that comes with the daylight to steal the moisture from the ground, life from the leaves, and the will to live from those that tend a diminishing future. 

   The temperature climbs as the sun rises into the faded cataract sky, its bleak stare no comfort to those who toil beneath. The oppressing heat rising above the tolerable.  The ground constricting under its gaze, resembling the aged skin of the old men who no longer find solace in the card games in the church square.

    I watch as the parched grass curls, the leaves exhaling what little moisture is keeping them alive. The once brilliant green, now fading to the pastels of death. The fields once alive, the soil seething with promise, now a diffused mass of opaque resignation, its promise refusing to appear having given up the possibility inherent in future generations.

    The prayers of the old women in the church go unanswered. They no longer speak of the old days, and refuse to whisper about the prospect of a future. They have resigned themselves to a plight only envisioned in fairy tales, where the sins of the fathers are visited on their sons and daughters. The retribution needed to erase the debt, no longer sufficient to change the ending of their story.

    The parched earth one day gives way to the welcome clouds, that turn their hope to dismay, as their prayers are answered as the rain refuses to remain unanswered. The roads become rivers, turning a sense of relief to fear, God’s wrath consuming our homes, our sheds, our fields, leaving nothing but a scoured landscape of what was, and is no more.

    The lucky ones left with the storm spirits, the unlucky stay behind with the nothingness that remains, after hope has been washed away. What food there is, gone, the wells contaminated, the air so laden with despair, we cannot breathe.  A future, just over the hill, beyond the next mountain, across the endless desert void of help, waiting to be discovered.

    We took what we could, abandoned the rest as it no longer serves a purpose. We shiver through the mountain nights, and watch the unflinching sand turn to glass in the desert heat. We no longer have a home, or the ability to imagine one. Our only option Is to continue to move, leave what we have known for centuries, for the unlikely chance that opportunity exists in our future.

    They left, one, then another, in search of peace, with those that have gone before. Their bones becoming part of a new environment, one more forgiving than I did expect; it accepting their offering graciously as neither it, not they, have a choice but to coexist, belong to each others past, each others future.

    I continue to walk, crawl, run, cry, and beg the spirits to take me with them. They refuse to grant my wish, I have no option but to continue, a step at a time; the sandal prints in the sand the only evidence I have passed, I exist. 

    I forge the river, thinking it will be easier to allow the cool water to wash my soul to another place, another time, but my promise to those now gone, forbids my wish to escape, permitting me to abandon the hopes of our move to a more forgiving place.

    The fence looms large on the barren land just ahead. The gates of heaven guarded, fortified, rejecting hope, dismissing the opportunity to survive, to escape the hellish environment that has driven me here. The spirits that have followed in my footsteps, waiting like jackals for the weak to desert the quest, chose to be left behind in their effort to support those who have the ability to sustain the dream, distract the demons, if only for now, allowing them to feast on the sacrificial offerings, while the caravans march continues.

    My prayers for a future incapable of penetrating the iron wall, the razor wire that threatens punishment to those who refuse to submit to the fear and loathing of those who have erected it, in their attempt to remain pure. 

    I no longer have the strength to carry my past, our past into an uncertain future littered with mistrust, stereotypes, and hate of those whose ancestors once packed their meager possessions, and moved beyond the famine and wars that follow, in the hope those they track will abandon their dreams, leave the safety of humanity, and become victims of the next generation of the provocateurs of fear.

   I no longer have the strength to endure. The hopelessness renders my soul incapable of believing a tomorrow will come. I continue to walk this trail of tears that navigates the globe, in search of an answer promised by the religions of the world; it is all I can contribute to our cause. My hope is that someone will see my circumstance, our plight, and remember that, “there but for fortune.”    

    I can only hope those that follow will find inspiration in our vanishing tracks in the sand. My, our, contribution to the fledgling voyagers who stand on earths precipice looking into the vastness of space, and wondering if the sacrifice is worth the reward. 

    I can only hope for their sake, as well as the memory of those that came before, and those that will come after, that it is, for without possibility, the wall will never be breached. The impressions in the sand will fade to obscurity, and nothing will have been gained for all that has been lost, in my, our, attempt to move.