Excerpt:
Nowadays, few truly understand the natural phenomenon of migration, blinded as many are by ideological distortions. Yet we must not forget that people migrate because it has always been so, ever since we left Africa millions of years ago—and we have not stopped since. This, of course, is not driven by simple pleasure, adventure, or whim, but by a complex interplay of economic pressures such as unemployment or the search for better wages, and social or political forces such as persecution, war, or family reunification. It reads easily, but each of these reasons carries within it a profound weight of pain and personal tragedy.
What Remains for Us?
In the solitude of my desk, I brood with a magnifying glass in hand, projecting it toward an endless mirror; there, in a three-dimensional ex libris, I watch my memories unfold—painfully vivid—as though trapped in an infinite reel of celluloid that leaves me no choice but to abhor everything I have believed in until now.
What remains for us? I ask myself. As the reel runs, enigmatic symbols drift by, forming a sun with vermilion eyes that spits forth the silhouette of a floating incubus—embodiment of the unbearable tropical heat. It hides among clouds of dust while it lashes the battered streets, tormenting the passersby, circling the length of its shores lined with corpses bearing blackened jaws, with ruined houses stripped of their doors, all screaming in misery and submission to political powers and shadowed factions. Beneath a wildly overgrown canopy sits a version of me, drenched in sweat, driving toward the airport. As in the real world, nothing seems to function as it should.
Beside me is my old man, sharp-eyed and wise, who has turned our lives—so far as possible—into a haven of reason and cheer. Ah, my dear old father, what can I possibly do for you, my sainted lord? He sits comfortably in the passenger seat, reading a Russian novel from his youth, The Fate of a Man by Mikhail Sholokhov—a harrowing work about injustice and the cruelty of war, and the possibility of redemption through love, patience, and sacrifice.
My wife is with us too, a gentle, fair-haired woman. She sits in the back with the children, weeping, hands clasped at her chest, sensing that this day will be the last we see each other. Within a few hours, she will board a plane to Europe, where she will settle. Likely for life. Her weeping is a hymn to forgetting: we shall never again see one another nor be a family in the same way. She now blames herself for the decision we spent months shaping—categorical and ruthless. Catching her eyes in the rearview mirror, I remind her that, as thinking beings, we were obliged to take it, just as she once insisted there was no other way but to choose it and risk everything, always pressed by the fevered unrest of tropical nights.
My hands grip the wheel. I glance at the children again and see their ignorance of the monumental events unfolding. But my thoughts stay fixed on their mother’s suffering, on the future looming ahead—one offering no brightness; my father’s silent face agrees—and on the shattering of the conjugal temple as it yields to the absence of one of its pillars. She clings desperately to the little ones, who squirm, annoyed, struggling to break free.
In those nocturnal deliberations, if our plans played out as anticipated, a new life—full and abundant—would open before us, especially for the children. I was engulfed in a political war that was peeling me alive, and I refused to risk what I loved most. It was a tremendous existential wager. I had to—rather, we had to—play it with full awareness. But I suspect I was the only one aware that we were weighing the future not with the caution of maturity, but with the impulsiveness of youth—and of someone on the verge of death. We insisted that it was better to regret an error than to carry the stain of cowardice. We did not want our children to judge us as weaklings who hide when serious trouble appears.
“Look at you, dear parents; thank your cowardice for dooming us to become ignorant, narrow-minded fools. Your fear and stupidity denied us a better playing field.”
Their imagined rebuke shamed us—me, especially. I believed it only fair that both of us, as a couple, bear the consequences of living in a country cursed by the ancestral stupidity bred from our ignorance, our ego, our prejudice. I would express it sardonically through that old, well-known refrain: “Nations have the rulers they deserve.” A cliché, of course, but still far too true. And though I rebelled against the system, I knew it would take my entire life. Yet within the depths of my deliberations, the question rose: What fault of this is my children’s? None. They needed to escape this state of affairs as soon as possible and be placed in another, more developed one—the First World—lest they become even greater fools than we are, as has happened until now. My wife would open the path. On this matter, I differed somewhat from the migrant idealism that romanticizes becoming wealthy in a few years under the shelter of a new land. Primarily because riches have never mattered to me (Divitiae bonum non sunt, as Seneca would say), but rather security, an atmosphere conducive to investment, transparent politics, and a narrower gulf between rich and poor. And second, because I do not wish to be selfish. I cherished (once cherished) the notion that my children—and all the children of the diaspora—once educated abroad, would return as an army of nobles determined to mend everything broken.
This reasoning, of course, was irrational—one of my greatest errors—and the very cause that led me to discover who I am.
We get out of the car and walk into the terminal. I urge my wife to hurry and check in before the airline fines her. The moment approaches, and there will be no turning back. She clings to me, still crying. The children, oblivious until now, cling to her skirt and burst into wails. My father stands calm and steady, as do I.
“We must be strong, my dear,” I tell her—one of those phrases fit for farewells—while holding her close.
I am shaken, confused, unable to speak with grace.
“It is for the good of the family,” I add.
She pauses and looks at me:
“I know, I know,” she answers, tapping her forehead and blowing her nose; her congestion makes speech difficult. “I simply never thought it would be like this. I never imagined it would hurt this much. My heart cannot take it. I cannot bear it. Oh, my children, my poor little ones. Who will care for them better than their wretched mother?”
And again she dissolves into tears. She kisses one child, then the other, desperate and unrestrained. I pull her aside, grip her shoulders, and chide her with the sternness of a man:
“Sonia, we cannot turn back. Stick to the plan. I am certain they will soon be with you.”
She sinks into deeper lamentation. She cannot control herself. The children follow her lead. “And you? What will become of you?” her silence seems to ask.
My father, with his eighty-three years of wisdom, steps out from the shadow of a towering advertisement in the airport hall to comfort us:
“Do not be sad. You’ll all be together again in a year. I promise.”
It is the most painful moment of our lives. “What remains for us, my love?” my wife asks, drowning in her tears. “What remains for us?” I cannot answer. My face stretches into the expression of a fool. I do not know, I tell myself. Perhaps a brilliant future abroad for the children, perhaps a broken family, perhaps the echo of depression haunting the rooms of our home; perhaps I will fall into the arms of another woman to console myself; or perhaps I will learn to think clearly about my politics and see with my own eyes—not my ears—whether my allies deceive me with ideological mirages of the past instead of a modern economy. What do I know, damn it? I am only a man.
I cannot repeat it, nor can I offer her a proper goodbye. I am afraid. I seize the children by their hands and tear them away from her, abruptly; then, head bowed with shame and anguish, I walk away without a word. I leave her in the terminal. My father, at least, manages to say…
-…"
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