Eternal Journey

by Ben Dosso

  “Writing is for smart and genius people. You better choose another job than staying always in your tears. Writing is not a job,” said Ms. Nickname.

  “Yes, I know, but, in my culture, one of the legends says that if we dream someday to scintillate like a star in a society of our siblings or others, we must take our chances and shoot awkwardly into the moonlight, in hopes that we may achieve what we dream of. In case we unluckily miss the moonlight, we could stay glued on the sky and scintillate sooner or later as a star because nothing ventured nothing gained. And if we had already chosen to dream about a lot bigger than a simple dream, then it is necessary to stay focused on this dream line hung in a void,” said Samba Diallo.

  “Courage! When we don’t quit, we win,” said Ms. Nickname.

  “Thank you, I’m going to put my mind to it even if I am weakened now but it is not my fear. My fear is my world that’s melting around me. I am alive but deeply hurting and my passion for writing is the only way I can heal this pain housed on my broken heart. But I don’t know how to begin for the lack of writing skills. I have some ideas but I am afraid of being rejected by the publishers. And if there is no one to encourage me and I do not take the first step, my dream would never come true; like a shy girl who secretly loves someone but does not dare tell him, afraid of how the society would react,” said Samba Diallo.

  However, the little secret that Ms. Nickname didn’t know, writing for Samba Diallo was to run away from the demons that were gnawing him inside. Writing was to flee away from the real world and live in an inventive world where nobody could see him fighting against his mental depression. Writing was to flee his mental disaster by avoiding suicide. Writing was to shout in a desert where nobody could hear him and forget his self-fulfillment in order to hear the voices of others and unearth these voices buried in the silence that were left behind. It also was a great remedy to his immense loneliness, stress, and sadness, and that also kept the nightmares at bay. And to sleep with eyes open without seeing tomorrow. Samba Diallo had fallen in love with literature. Even if everything was to melt around him, he felt like living in this inexistent landscape believing that the literary wing could blow him away from the real world and his deepest pain.

  At the same time, Samba Diallo was getting some messages from the drug dealers. They needed him still. He had the art to persuade customers. The circle of gays used to compliment him also all day long that he was handsome. They wanted just what interested them. They didn’t care about his miserable life. They used to flatter him with some big blue bill of Dirham, Moroccan money. Some renamed cougars would propose him some money to taste the honey of their old age. And some religious dignitaries wanted to see him taking a greyhound class with them for a short privacy moment against a ransom. The Hashish resin smell used to pollute the air. But Samba Diallo believed in himself and his pen. He used to prefer to be a slave to his literary thoughts than to be under any domination for a single day’s happiness of all these human sharks who were taking part in his destruction. Any experimented lifeguard couldn’t prevent him from drowning in his literary alcoholism. For his safety, Samba Diallo wondered to his international umbrella to take him away from the mouth of these inhuman predators. He wanted to break this deadly silence that was traumatizing him mentally. The answer to his request was an embellished phrase when he heard “We don’t have the national police at our disposal to ensure the safety of everyone” from his international umbrella. Yet, everyone makes a little error in his life. But Samba Diallo’s error was in telling the truth about the people who were using him to distribute drugs. Every time, his international umbrella used to question him about drug legislation. While the question was easier to respond, Samba Diallo was confused between legal and illegal. Both words were finished by “al.” He could not choose one. After the partial analysis of his controversial past, his international umbrella decided to confine him in one of the housing of protection for minor’s safety. But that safe house was a hell for Samba Diallo when he was starved under that safe roof of his international umbrella. Moreover, all his steps were in Farad’s hands, a drunkard neighbor who had phobia of a “mon ami” and he was an iconic figure who used to hate Azi (negro). When this drunkard was intoxicated, he allowed himself to insult all neighbors and attacked all passersby before he felt comfortable in his flesh. And he would use Samba Diallo’s door as a xylophone with the alcohol bottle and the window was breaking by bottle pressures. To hang out, Samba Diallo would oftentimes bribe Farad and would finally have some freedom.

  Cut off from the outside world, and sitting in that housing, Samba Diallo would keep going in triangles, from his bedroom to the kitchen to the toilet; being confined in the house, it was his only routine. Covered by his pain, he felt frustrated from being held captive under a roof. However, the date of the New Year meeting was coming up. All teens were hoping to go back again to school. Mido used to tell him everything that was happening outside. She had fled the violence in Goma, capital city of the North Kivu province in the Eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. She also wanted to go back to school like billions of children across the world. But the residence cards and tons of documents of the international rights that had been distributed to these teens were just decoration to embellish them. The last meeting was a big hope for them. But it was not enough to merely exploit their weaknesses, they went ahead and coaxed them to come to the meetings by offering them a meal at the end of the day; this the children readily accepted as they were always hungry. All of them would respond to the message in a second for the meeting. In the meeting, almost the whole world was present—the representative of the Swiss ambassador and his daughter, the minister of the foreign affairs, some local authorities, the different non-governmental organizations, and the children’s rights defenders. It was a golden opportunity for Samba Diallo to explain the large-scale illiteracy rate of the children that he had seen during his long journey. Furthermore, the meeting was based on the future of the refugee children on the soil of their host countries. Samba Diallo, considered as the rude child, wanted to talk about what he had lived through and saw, the scourge of illiteracy which too many children were suffering from. But men in suits did not want to listen to his crazy thoughts, to what they did not see sitting in their air-conditioned offices. They wanted Samba Diallo to praise them, like a griot does. Teens were suffering and continuing to suffer in the silence from physical and mental violence, girls were suffering from sexual harassment on the street. But, when Samba Diallo asked a question about the young refugees’ education, the question could not wait a second to get its answer. There was no good sense of humor about “equality” that His Majesty the King Mohamed VI was advocating in the voice of spokesman of the authorities of integration and education. He said, “When Moroccan workers went to Europe, they started working on the construction sites.” He did not know yet that Samba Diallo was one of the potential teen laborers, the cheaper demolishers who were sleeping on construction sites in the cold. In addition, he added, “You should now start working like Moroccans who worked in the 20th century, to be integrated into the European society.” It was a big cold shower for these teens who were waiting to find a solution to their illiteracy problems. Also, Luna, the representative for children’s rights was upset by the long series of ambiguous comparison from the spokesman but she had to respect his point of view because freedom of speech was allowed for all. Even Samba Diallo could have liked to work at a less cost in the construction sites like Moroccan workers in Europe to repay that debt of inhuman forced laborers inflicted on thousands of Moroccan workers. That would not stop any of these teens to think about their futures. The only thing burning their hearts was this national education policy that was slowing down his dream to go back to a public school because of a piece of paper. Well, as in Samba Diallo’s culture, a kid could not retort to his elder. But Samba Diallo broke this myth of his tradition because it was about his future, the future of all these kids who were facing many obstacles to event
ually go die on the sea. Then, he held his speech with incorrect spellings in his right hand, a crumpled paper between his fingers. At the beginning, he was a little bit scared. All eyes were on the little Azi that he was. Men in suits, ties, and black shiny shoes. Some women were dressed in long dresses that covered their whole bodies and the sails that were covering their long black hair. Samba Diallo could see their eyes, noses, and their mouths that were occasionally visible through the fabric. On the other hand, women coming from the other side of Mediterranean Sea were dressed in pants like men. They talked about school for “all children” and children’s rights. Samba Diallo braved his fear of authorities and his shyness, and let them know all children did not have the same rights. But he forgot to mention that all children left behind by the society had just needed a smile, a look, a gesture before seeing this peace hidden behind their sad faces.

  "We are the damned ones of this society the poor fruits of the beginning of the drought of our time that did not have the time to ripen well in this end of the world. We are children condemned of this century, those that the world doesn’t want to see. A lost generation, for whom death doesn’t matter in the quest of liberty. Any life has a price, the price of endless journeys, of forgetfulness, and of massive eradications at the mercy for those sexually obsessed. We are muffled shouts in the sea, yet the strongest teens for facing the claws of the night; we are the human sacrifices in the history of humanity offered to the sharks of the Mediterranean Sea. We are the brave ones confronting the razor wires, running away from the daily violence. We are millions of kids left behind by this ill society, heirs of the mental traumas which we are not the genitors of. In the history of antiquity, there are some laws that protect people. But we are the ones who do not matter in these laws. While there are several possibilities to welcome us, to act, and to open hands to us instead of cutting off our hands and twisting them in the salty water of the Mediterranean Sea. Some closed hearts that kill us silently. These hearts that preferred to let us die by drowning in the sea, forgetting that there were many kids of all ages, as theirs, among us. We are thousands of armed bodies of courage, a thousand kids with broken hearts who need forever mothers who can protect us, and live our childhood lives like all children of this world. Waiting for the whole world to listen to our stressed voices, we would be those who would daily be struggling for better tomorrow between the claws of the smugglers who abuse us physically and mentally by prostituting us.

  “On my TV screen, I heard about the Child Rights. I wanted to meet them, but the opportunity to meet them was never granted to me. I would like to beg them to revise the Geneva Convention about children’s rights adopted by United Nations, November 20th, 1989. The protection of the children against harm is only a well-developed thesis with beautiful rhythms included in the wonderful paragraphs, covered with beautiful folders. But, the reality is dissimulated behind the guns. Long before, I joined my voices to the voices of the children of the whole world, a voice which everyone was only pretending to listen to behind their façade of humanitarian help, and inclining before the memories of all those unfortunate thousands of dead children drowned in the sea. I will go see the Supreme Pontiff and beg him to pray to the Almighty when he’d have free time for thousands of kids, for the genocide on the Mediterranean Sea in front of the door of the Chapel of Rome. We will never finish counting the numbers of nameless faces extinguished in this Mediterranean salt water,” said Samba Diallo.

  "How many kids are dying from hunger and thirst in anonymity? How many children still live in despair? How many are still under the influence of these fearsome assassins? How many children are begging on the crossroads to survive? How many hearts are broken by the claws of these smugglers? How many traumatized children are getting lost in nothingness? How many are afraid of retaliation and say nothing? How many are holding the weapons on their shoulders? How many will carry a gun?

  "To sum up, when forests burn and animals line up and come to us for help, there would always be volunteers and vets to treat them with tolerance, civility, acceptance, dignity, and all needs, but when houses are burning and people in need are coming to us for help, the great defenders of Human Rights dehumanize their fellow men with all mean words, as if they are not humans like them.

  “When will the international justice talk about these burned children, mothers, and fathers in battlefields and protect victims who flee violence?”