Not Our Days

These were not our days. We did not have time left to us. Our time was over. We watched the dawn coming up over the sea, knowing the morning would bring with it the ship that would take us away from this; the only land we have known.

We had to flee before the soldiers came. Behind us, over the hills that sheltered the bay from the rest of the land we could hear the dull thunder of the guns drawing closer.

We should have gone long before, but we are only human and we do not expect catastrophe, we – much like everyone else – had expected it all to carry on much as normal, much as it always had done.

When the General came to power we did not expect things to change that much. Of course, he had spoken about how the politicians betrayed the country. How everything had gone wrong, how our country had fallen apart. Used to the talk of politicians and knowing that – whatever they say – they are powerless to change things, we did not pay that much attention to the General, even after he seized power.

Then came the rumours of the arrests and the deportations, the camps and the executions – still we did not run, we did not flee. Such talk, we thought, belonged on the pages of the history books, stories from times long ago. We – we knew – could not be living through such times: not after all this time, not after all that humankind had learnt from the horrors of the past.

But we – like the rest of humankind – had not learnt the one true lesson of the past: that humans never learn from the past. So we had to live through it all again, if we were lucky enough to survive.