this used to be our home
Fairy Tales Competition 2019
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Honourable Mention in Fairy Tales Competition 2019
Short Story and Illustrations by Yann Junod and Bojana Papic
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I have
been having this dream lately of falling in a swollen river after a heavy
rainfall. I am carried away by the strong current of the murky waters. I try to
swim towards the banks or grab onto something. But the force is too great and I
am unable to resist it. I am struggling to keep my head above the surface long
enough to catch a breath before being pulled down again into the depths of the
inevitable.
+ + +
The film crew came again. After what
happened, many came - ministers and presidents during election times, NGOs,
international peace agencies and movie stars. At first we were happy to see
them, to tell them about our predicaments, about the citrus groves we lost and
the loved ones we have not seen in years. They showed their interest and sympathy
with rehearsed expressions and shoe-box packages of imported candy, colouring
pencils and blocks of scented soap for the children. But with their arrivals
and departures nothing ever happened. The hope they brought quickly faded as
the change they promised never took place. We grew weary of talking and their
visits became fewer and further apart. Who are we to them after all - a
campaign promise, a dinner conversation topic, a title in a highbrow movie
festival, distant people in a land far from home.
I never imagined my life to be this way. But
I guess it is so with most people, it never really turns out the way you expect
it to. Sometimes I wonder about leaving, about going to the ocean. I long to
embark onto its vast openness. Nothing but horizon in the distance where the
limitless sea is spilling over into the sky. But where would I go and who would
I become? What life would I hope to make for myself after I start over? I am
not sure I would know how to be happy anywhere else. What scares me the most
about leaving is not the unknown, but that I might never be able to come back
to what I have now. After all, this old house and my mother’s pita in the rusty
wood oven is all I ever knew and all I ever loved.
I thought I saw Keti today. I followed her
silhouette around the street corner. I called her name, but she never answered.
Hers was the first house in the village to be absorbed.
In summer when we were kids the villagers
would dig out a basin in the river bed and we would all go swimming. We spent
the afternoons on the rocks soaking up the sun and fading in and out of sleep.
As the sun started setting behind the mountains, we would walk back to the
village in a tranquil slumber from the heat and the cold water. Keti and I were
always falling behind the other children, dreaming up a future that would never
come true.
It seemed like it happened overnight, but in
reality it was creeping up for months. Centimetre by centimetre. We all thought
we were going crazy. The day my father’s grave was absorbed we
thought he moved it himself. Some thought it was an omen and others started tying their citrus
trees and chicken hoops to the ground. But the day the fence reached Keti’s
front door, we realised it came from the other side. We were sane enough to
know houses do not have legs. That was the last summer we went to the river.
Since then, olive groves, orangeries and
whole mountains have been swallowed by the fences. Every year one more family
is either separated or reunited beyond that metal line. It feels like we are
losing the ground under our feet. The houses we lived in our whole lives are
becoming foreign and our neighbours are turning into strangers. At first we
thought it was just our village, but the stories are reaching us from all over
the country. We are told of other absorbed fields, forests and towns, and
divided cities. In the beginning we were relieved to know that this is not an
isolated event and that there are others like us. But as the stories keep
multiplying we are growing less comforted and more resigned. This invasive
power is too great to be opposed.
I ponder sometimes on what will happen when
the fences from east, west, north and south all meet each other. Will the
village still exist? Or will it only remain as a memory, an outdated myth? Will
our children speak the language of our mothers? Will they know of a different
time? Perhaps they will write about us as savages who were reeducated and
civilised. Or maybe one day, many years from now, we will get our land back. We
might live again as we always have, content with what the land gave us and
wishing for nothing else.
Of course Keti did not turn back when I
called after her. It is better that way for both of us. The less we all know
the better. But I do wonder if she still has dreams, and if hers are, unlike
mine, more than just escapism.