On Foreign Land

I remember that ever so clearly; as if it had happened before. In fact, it’s been twenty three years ever since.

I was four years old when the men came for my capture. It was as if the skies had suddenly and abruptly turned brutally black and my sight had gone dark. I can remember my mother screaming for me, trying to fight them off with all her strength. These people had been so nice up to that very moment, silently watching and greeting from afar. These men were not like the rest.

“¡Corre!” she yelled to me at the top of her lungs, and my heels dug into the soft sands of the Samborombon Bay, refusing to move “¡Te lo ruego, corre! ¡Corre ya!”

I had no option but to obey her pleads. It was stronger than me and all I wished was to pry them off of my mother, but I was ever so young and vulnerable. I looked up to my older friend, who was just as terrified as I was. The tears began stinging my eyes and were soon running down my cheeks.

“Mama!” I yelled and she gave me one last look which I’ll never forget before I was dragged away by him.

When the men turned to look at us, I began running for my life. I had never felt such strong emotions of fear mixed with sadness and confusion. I wanted to understand just why they were doing this to us. We had never done anything wrong. I finished my meals and respected the elders. We were both just tender, innocent children.

They yelled after us in a language I could not understand, which only made me run faster than before. We took all kinds of twists and turns and yelled myself for help but no one who understood was around. We had no one but ourselves in this damned world.

We took a wrong turn and managed to get ourselves into an alley with no exit. I looked around, desperately. There was nothing but high, strong walls around me and I closed my eyes, squeezing my friend’s hand and keeping as quiet as I could as I prayed they wouldn’t find us.

My prayers, of course, had been denied.

The capturers laughed and spat unintelligible words in my face. The bigger one of the two lifted what looked through my blurry vision like a bat and from then everything just went black. I woke up with a splitting headache on the floor of an outdoor stage around noon.

A girl’s face looked down at me with curiosity and a peculiar smirk. She was very pretty and older than me by a couple of years and had fading bruises and scars on her body.

“Hola” she greeted me with such a sweet voice. I looked at her through almost shut eyes and turned my head around slowly, wincing from the pain.

“¿Dónde estamos?” I asked. She shrugged.

“Ya no importa” she answered “Veni, yo te ayudo”

I got up from the ground and looked around. There were rows over rows of empty seats in front of the small stage and pool. My eyes went wide as I looked around and she gave me a sad smile. I then realized my friend was nowhere to be found.

“¿Viste a mi amigo?” i asked. She shook her head.

“No todos sobreviven, desgraciadamente” she said with a solemn tone. There was a lot of pain in those words and my splitting headache wouldn’t let my brain process all that had happened in the last couple of hours. I was just... expressionless. Thoughtless. Empty.

As the days passed by I got to know this girl and the place I had been taken to. It was some kind of circus and we were the main entertainers. I hated it with every fibre of my body. It was torture.

Our performing stage on which we would spend the major part of the day was right under the scolding hot sun that never seemed to go away. Not once did I experience dehydration which caused me to faint, even in the middle of a performance. The stage was also two small for the two of us; we’d end up bumping into each other a lot as we struggled to perform.

I never got to see my friend again, but I gained a new one instead. She was nicknamed ‘The Girl from Bethlehem’ by the trainers and audience, while I remained a John Doe. She was amazing at everything she did and everyone loved her, even though she suffered like I did in that horrible place.

Years went by and I spent them all by her side, which eventually lead to us becoming romantically involved. I did have episodes in which I would bully her around, shove her, laugh at her. It came from the overwhelming frustration I had built up inside me. I never meant to hurt her and I apologized endlessly. Eventually I had managed to restrain my anger towards her and we became closer than ever.

Eventually, she ended up pregnant. The child, however, did not survive.

It was predictable. Throughout the pregnancy she had been neglected and made to perform regardless of how she felt, until the last month of the pregnancy because they didn’t want to ruin their own reputation. We were emotionally numb by then, all of our tears had been spilled and we were just out of strength. We had both grown expressionless and emotionless. We had nothing left to live for and had seen so much death and suffering that another death, no matter how personal, almost didn’t matter to us.

Two years later she died, carrying our second child.

Everything just turned greyscale around me after that. I was left alone with nothing but the pain and the memories of that sweet girl and her beautiful face. I was moved into an even smaller chamber which left me very limited space to move in. I’ve spent so many hours just aimlessly walking around the room in circles, almost zombie-like.

Throughout the years many other places around the world have tried to buy me from my current owners for one reason, but they have declined every single time. Sometimes I wish I would be taken away. More than not I wish I could just die. My whole body aches, my teeth have cracked from gnawing on hard surfaces while trying to soothe the hunger and I’ve become more and more aggressive with time. I’ve no reason to live and I just want out.