Deportation story
By
Alessandro Ghebreigziabiher
A nightmare.
This is a nightmare, but I am awake.
It would be wonderful if I was still asleep; I would give anything to find myself in one of those stories, where I can open my eyes and everything comes back as before.
I still see the scene again as if it were now, again, and again.
I am at home, quiet, confident that the door and the walls will protect me.
Because there is danger out there, this is what they taught me, and that's what I share every day with my peers.
Evil lurks in the folds of what I ignore and that is different from me, this is the only news to be spread in every corner of the brain as in every plot of the heart.
Suddenly I hear screams beyond the door, they call my name without mentioning it, but I know it's me, I know it's me who their talking about, who they are looking for.
Not the third, nor even the second, but the door yields to the first blow, showing me instantly how foolish I was to fell safe.
In a few fractions of a second they are around me.
The guardians of the sacred, impassable border, stare at me grimly, when in a single chorus they exclaim the most severe sentence: "You are expelled."
"How could it be possible?" I say. "There must be a mistake..."
Then I go on like this, as if talking to myself, declaiming the faithful manual aloud, in a vain attempt to remember the order of things, mine.
I am a citizen with all the right papers.
I was born in this country from parents born in this country.
Whose ancestors have their roots firmly planted on this land.
I speak their language.
I follow their traditions.
Their belief is mine.
My culture is pure and uncontaminated.
It is identical to what was entrusted to me at my birth.
I am a patriot.
My life demonstrates that.
Every day I stand as a tireless bulwark to defend the local product and the value handed down.
"You are expelled," my unexpected jailers repeat.
"But this is a misunderstanding," I reply with renewed vigor.
And then I go on again heartfelt, relying on the script which I used to build the imaginary character called national identity.
My skin color is the right one.
My eyes are recognizable.
My features are popular.
As well as those of the people I have chosen as friends.
Those I have reserved my predilection for.
I have never betrayed my race.
My blood.
My hopes.
My needs.
My time.
My conscience.
All this, and also the rest that composes what I am, I have never mixed it with them, the others.
In spite of that, as if my words were insignificant dust particles lost in the wind, the faceless agents from the unmistakable uniform take me by the arms and lead me to the edge of the world.
I am still there, beyond the invisible barriers that I first raised, to reflect on the reasons for my exile, which as an endless echo have condemned me.
You are expelled because to defend what you say you are.
You are no longer part of the so-called human genre...