MIGRANT HEARTS
Isabella Abad
Translated by John Obakpororo Obedience
“MIGRANT HEARTS”
Written By Isabella Abad
Copyright © 2017 Isabella Abad
All rights reserved
Distributed by Babelcube, Inc.
www.babelcube.com
Translated by John Obakpororo Obedience
“Babelcube Books” and “Babelcube” are trademarks of Babelcube Inc.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
MIGRANT HEARTS
ONE
Two
Three
Four
Five.
Six.
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven.
Twelve
Thirteen.
Fourteen.
Fifteen.
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen.
Nineteen
Twenty one
Twenty two.
Twenty three
Twenty four
Twenty five
Twenty six
Twenty seven.
Twenty Eight
Twenty nine
Thirty.
Thirty-one.
Final
THE END
MIGRANT HEARTS
Usem and Victoria
© All rights reserved.
Isabella Abad, 2016.
To my mother, who taught me the wonderful habit of reading. Because reading in a home guarantees its residents hours and hours of pleasure, knowledge and imaginary journeys.
ONE
Victoria walked the last meters under the scorching African sunset and collapsed almost without strength into the camper’s bed in the principal tent. She was exhausted, having worked almost 10 hours without interruption, so much she could hardly think of. Her battered body called for rest, but her mind was still bombarded by the images of horror.
The refugees did not stop coming to the camp set up by the humanitarian organization of which they were volunteers. Some alone, but most of them with their family on their backs, or at least the one they kept after the barbarous massacre they had been subjected to.
Exhausted, badly wounded, some barely alive, others with broken spirits. Shadows of what they had been until a week ago when they were attacked by fanaticism and were held hostage by hatreds and internal fights that ravaged the entire African countries.
It was not so different from what she had already experienced in other parts of the African Maghreb, but nevertheless it did not affect it less.
The worst were the children. Forgetful of such condition they had witnessed and were direct and silent victims of the magnitude of the disaster in which their land had become. Malnourished, orphans, physically and emotionally injured for life, something that will last. In these hard lands and constant struggle for whatever (power, money, resources, the god of turn) the hope of reaching adulthood was limited.
She sighed loudly and tried to get up to clean herself and eat something. She could barely move, she was very exhausted. Her stomach roared, she did not remember since when she did not ingest solids but several hours ago. She was dirty and sweaty, her hair stuck to her face and the cloths that covered her filled with blood. There were countless injuries she had attended to with her colleagues and many of whom had died. They were on the front line after the fire and the armed action had intensified in recent days, so their work had increased in direct proportion. The painful thing is that they received the victims of an internal war, but they were not soldiers that arrived. They were innocent in the middle of the fire, booty of war for any of the groups.
She got up after a while and groped in the darkness. Night had already fallen on the desert region. She reached the area where the food was stored and prepared a light refreshment forcing herself to eat it. She needed the energy to continue coping with the hard task. Then she sanitized herself with pleasure in the improvised lavatory.
How much I missed a good shower! She changed her clothes, which were no more than a set of fabrics wrapped wisely around her body. It had been a good time that she had chosen to dress similarly to her patients as the torrid temperature of the place gave no respite to the western dresses she had brought in arriving months ago.
It seemed, however, that years had passed. Such destruction and death in such a short time! When she decided to join humanitarian work a few years ago, she had a much more romantic view of the situation. She was not ignorant of international affairs, but the reality was incomparable to what international journals and networks showed. The latter was barely a patina of what the inhabitants of these places suffered every day.
She had always been an enthusiast to travel and to know different territories and cultures. Couple with her exceptional skill of several languages and her caring and humanitarian stance had pushed her to volunteer when she campaigned for brave men who wished to "save a part of the world." How deluded, salvation was far away! This was hell.
She joined the organization contributing her knowledge of nursing, a career she had studied in her native Spain. Medicine had always fascinated her , but the doctor's career was too long for her taste. She also believed that nursing implied a more direct daily treatment, social and human with the patient.
Her family had always supported her. A single child as she was, her parents had comfortably consented to her, but she had also been taught the limits that anyone should have. She considered herself a woman of great common sense, which in this troubled world is still a very valuable feature. They say, and so she has proven it on several occasions, that it is "the least common of the senses." And what is more evident thing than this world was not guided by him that the massacres without ton or that every day they increased her work?
In her thirties she felt very tired and was reaching the limit of what she could bear. She did not consider herself a dropout woman, but she was at a turning point in her life.
"I need to get away from this whole mess," she told herself as she lay back down. "It is affecting me in an unspeakable way and I can not see what difference I make. For every one that we save two die or they are thrown to the despair of exile "
The only moments of peace were when the armies moved away and the families returned to what was left of their villages to rebuild it as they could. In most cases, however, migration prevailed. Neither the government armies nor the rebels gave a truce. The desert was cut by the huge caravans of miserable people who went through it again and again, in one direction or another, for help.
She had not been frightened in general, since her assistance work was highly valued. She had seen disapproving looks perhaps in elders or men very attached to the Muslim tradition given her status as a woman in tasks they did not approve. But the need outweighed religious conviction. She and her companions were never attacked and there were also International Forces of Peace guarding their task and the displaced who came constantly.
But lately the situation of war tended to be aggravated and extended by the then unused areas. Jihad fanatics grew up and anti-Westernism as well. There were talk of attacks in other more remote camps by terrorist cells that sought to expel all "Western pigs that contaminated Muslim lands with their unfaithful presence."
In the face of this threat, the uneasiness among the volunteers increased, but they tried to give each other strength.
"They intend to frighten us and leave thousands of villagers hopeless and at their mercy," they were encouraged. They will not make it.
She never mentioned this when she chatted with her parents because she knew she was changing them unnecessarily. Already they ha
d been touched quite enough by her decision to leave, although they did not express it openly. They always supported her choices even if they did not share them; her mother was often in charge of transmitting some soft reprimand or call of attention. But respect had always prevailed.
With all this in mind she was sinking into the beneficent darkness of sleep. When awoke, It seemed to her that it had only been minutes, but several hours had elapsed. It was already dawn and the comrades who had covered the night watch were returning. It was time to get up.
"Get up, my dear," said his friend Morena. It's been a busy night. I'm grounded.
"Have more villagers arrived?"
"They're arriving." It seems that the threat is going around the east and people start to flee in panic.
She sighed and took time to look at the improvised mirror by the side of her bunk.
"I'm a complete mess," she murmured.
Her light brown hair matted and her greenish eyes still blurred by sleep and hardened by dark circles made her look lamentable.
"Come on, my friend," Morena laughed. You are not for a dance, but who is better here?
The reality is that although the aspect did not favor her at the moment, it could be said that she was a very interesting woman. She was not pretty in the traditional sense. Her face was wide enough for her taste and she did not like her big mouth. But what woman is one hundred percent content with her appearance?
Her eyes were very expressive and her well-formed body had always attracted men. It was not for want of pretenders that she had left her country. She had plenty of them, though none interested her enough to stand and form a family. She had had her adventures and was not an innocent sentimentalist, but no one had seriously impacted her life until then.
Her mother attributed her lack of commitment to her spirit of adventure and almost a gypsy. Each talk of both ends with the repeated song of "haven’t you known anyone yet?"
This bothered her somewhat, her mother seemed to believe she was in a contest of suitors. But she preferred that she think about that and not worry her.
It is not that there are no rooms for loving relationships. There were a lot of volunteers already into it. In some cases even as mutual comfort in the face of the horror they saw every day. But until now she had not even considered the hints of two or three colleagues who repeatedly besieged her.
Although in the last weeks there were no spaces for anything other than attending, eating and sleeping.
Two
As soon as she emerged from the tent the warm air enveloped her. She looked around and saw the movement that became more visible. People coming in, another leaving. The hopelessness engraved on each other's faces.
On getting to the main area, they assigned her the task of medical material assistance to all the stores in which the nurses discharged their duties. This involved coming and going in a tiring hustle. It also allowed her to appreciate the movement of the camp from another perspective. She was particularly struck by several men in blue robes whom she saw in front of the main tent of the head of the peace militias.
At dusk her task ended and she decided to walk a little around the camp and its surroundings. As she did so she ran into the men in blue, who now rode away on dromedaries. Despite having her face covered she could not help but feel the penetrating gaze of the one who seemed to be at the head of the entourage. Intense black eyes on a dark face. She felt very exposed having her hair and face uncovered.
Returning to the rest area, she inquired who the visitors were and she was told that they were Tuareg’s delegation. But no one knew exactly what they wanted.
"It is strange to see them here, they are nomadic by nature, and although there are some settled on the outskirts of cities, they have not abandoned their traditions," one of the doctors said.
"They are being surrounded so much by the nationalist movements that seek to integrate them to their hosts as the governments seek their support.
"How can nomads help governments?", she asked.
“By having no limit in their coming and going, borders are nothing to them. They go from one country to another without problems. They know the political movements of villages and activists. They know the desert like nobody else and therefore areas of possible hiding places of the terrorist cells”.
"I think it's more of a problem than a solution." They must be difficult to control, convince or to interest. After all, they live as they want, what do they gain by getting involved in government and rebel affairs?, Victoria said
They seemed to be affected also, to a lesser degree. The spaces for their herds and for barter are reduced more and more. Wander through spaces that are coveted for their natural resources, and look no further in Niger at the uranium issue - added Morena, information that she loved to internalize in geopolitical matters.
"Okay, okay, you convinced me." She laughed. Tuaregs are important, but we do not know what they were doing here.
After this, the talk led issues that used to bring them together every day. Morena announced that the head of operations at the camp had summoned all the section managers to a meeting and that changes were apparently coming. What would occur was not known but it seemed serious.
The doubt was revealed a few hours later when it was reported that an emergency evacuation operation of distant villages began several kilometers towards the south. The threat from the east had been innocuous at least for the time being, but there were accurate data establishing the south as vulnerable to fundamentalist troops.
In order to assist with the withdrawal, several brigades would be organized with medical and military personnel. They assigned her to one that would run through two villages fifty kilometers from the camp base.
The task began immediately at dawn the next day. They should alert the populations and help them in organizing the exit.
They had no problem with the first population, with less than a hundred inhabitants. It broke her heart to see how she would leave everything that constituted her life and leave, but she also saw an abandoned resignation. Life before everything.
When the brigade started on the way to the second village, the afternoon was late. They advanced morosely with the vehicles through an area of high rocks and suddenly everything turned pandemonium.
Creepy screams were the first sign. She jumped up from the vehicle seat like a bolt of lightening to freeze in panic. At the front and toward them were jeeps hurrying along with men dressed all in black. She could barely see more because immediately a shower of bullets rained over the convoy of help.
As in a slow-motion nightmare she saw her friends and colleagues fall bloodied one by one. She felt two very sharp pains in her chest and leg, and immediately a kind of mist fell upon her.
She could see only the bundles of armed men who surrounded the vehicles, and in a macabre circle they continued to fire until they were sure that no one was alive. One of them descended finally and crossed the terrible scene, looking for wounded that he did not find. He stamped one of the trucks on a flag as a sign and then they left as quickly as they had arrived.
She had fallen to the side of one of the aid jeeps and her friend Morena. This one had been riddled by the impious bullets but her body protected her of a sure end.
When she woke up after a considerable time, she did not understand the situation at first. Her body burned and pain blinded her. But like a lightning the memory of the massacre soon struck her and she wanted to sit up.
Seeing her friend and the rest of the bleak picture, her first reaction was intense weeping and she vomited until her stomach could not take it anymore. Panting, she tried to sit up and push. Her instinct moved her to help whoever she could. Slowly she scanned the bodies of her friends, just to see how lively they were.
She tried to calm her heart, driven by pain, fury, and fear. She was the only survivor, but what if they came back? She needed to contact the base camp, report what happened, ask for assistance.
Painfully she sat
up and dragged her injured leg and headed for the leading vehicle in search of a radio. Her grief was great to see that the bullets had spoiled it, rendering it absolutely useless. Desperation enveloped her again, and weakness began to grow more evident.
It was getting dark in the desert and the temperature was beginning to fall. She knew that the combination of her wounds, which lost abundant blood, but the cold and the vermin of the desert would account for it in a short time.
She sought refuge in the highest vehicle and going to medical supplies, she tried to stop the bleeding but the effort was too much and she lost consciousness again.
Three
This was the way the Tuareg caravan found it, which crossed at dawn the next day. The nomads of the desert had departed before the sun had fully set out, seeking to move away from the territory which had just come into conflict.
They had tried to warn the "foreigners healers" of what was coming, but the scene before their eyes showed them that it was late.
The first to approach were the young people who constituted the advance of the caravan and immediately alerted chief Merin. This one was advancing surrounded by his more direct relatives, who took care of his fragile health. Upon learning of the situation, he ordered his son Usem to check the area to anticipate any unpleasant surprises.
Usem was thirty-two, mostly lived out of the desert, in Europe with his mother. This woman was a Spanish adventurer who had arrived in the Maghreb area in the 1960s as an international observer and had fallen in love with Merin. He belonged to the tuareg warrior aristocracy, the emajeghan.
His romance lasted as lightning, soon the enormous cultural differences and the hard life of the desert defeated the woman. On completing his three years, Usem’s mother ripped him out of Tuareg life, initiating a duel that lived for years until at last the relationship with his father became a distance again.
Settled in Madrid, because there the maternal house was, every year the child, then teenager and finally man, returned to the desert and spent some time with his paternal family. Those were wonderful times for him.
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