Najois

“Mom, why do I feel so numb inside?”
.
Dear child, we all struggled to get you a better life. So you would have all the riches in the world.

For a better life.

The war had left us in shatters, you know. For many generations to come.
Our men were sent out to die on the fields. We sold them the promise of the brave protectors of the nation and their fragile egos just ate it. For the nation.
Before dying, our brothers smelled their friends become fried meat. First exploding and very fast rotting before their very eyes. Checking out on life. Who you were talking to a minute ago could very well become a puddle of flesh in the next minute. So they stopped emotionally connecting to their peers. To protect the trauma of loss to come back and haunt them over and over again.
Those brave brothers of ours thought no better than protecting their women. Ensuring their children would live on.

For a better life.

And that’s what they thought.
When the war was over none of them came back. Their bodies sometimes would return either walking, crawling or in body bags.
Their souls had left the face of this Earth, their bodies often mutilated. Women became their nurses or mothers, no more wives and lovers. Feeling unloveable and emotionally disconnected, they tried to emulated what once had been. No talks about the horrors they had faced. Just being a ‘man’.
The children had grown up without a father and would keep on growing up without the Man. He has left his true soul in the fields. Yet, there was no time to heal. Celebration was short-lived. What was the celebration really about?
Eventually, everything needed to be built again. And so the few man left were sent out. Perpetuating our traditions of men being disposable.

For a better life.

Women had become men in their own right by that time. Taking care of all what needed to be done in order to survive. So they kept going on.
Many of them had been raped or had to sell their body for a loaf of bread and a passage at the gates. That is what the once so revered female body was worth. But there was nobody to talk to. We all had suffered. So we rolled up in mutism and numbness.

So my child, you carry the numbness, the horror and the pain of your ancestors. In this land we do not talk about our pain. We all have suffered. And we’ll continue to do so. In silence.

For a better world.

For a better life.