Freedom

Our life under the old regime had been hard and filled with fear. Many years of war had left our economy ravaged and shortages were the norm. The police force was large and constantly vigilant for threats to the regime. If you were denounced, regardless of the absurdity of the charges, the police would take you in. Sometimes, the mistake would be cleared up and the person returned home, other times, well they just disappeared. If this happened, it was not prudent to make to many inquiries otherwise the inquirer could be the next to disappear. Despite all this, life did have its routine cadence and small pleasures. Crime was not prevalent, and people could go about their lives unmolested except by officialdom. We did not have a lot, but it was yours. Even the monster was one of us, however repressive he had become in his quest to maintain power. He even did things to benefit the common man as long as he felt he would get some type of gain from it. We survived and if not prosperous at least secure in an insecure life. Freedom was not as big a concern as if the water would flow and the lights would come on. We were not callous to higher aspirations, but it is difficult to aspire beyond a hungry belly. The flesh is always a priority over the mind. Those who doubt this have never really been cold or hungry without prospect for rapid improvement. We endured with the future being the concerns of the evening or the following morning, beyond that was irrelevant. To say we were happy would not be accurate but life did bring its numerous small private joys and we were not despondent. Patience may or may not be virtue, but it does make life a lot easier to bear. This was our life and then you came.

For weeks the radios blared grave pronouncements couched in martial music of the mother of all battles that was coming. We had heard so much of war before that the pronouncements were viewed as dogmatic our urgency dulled by repetition. Distant muffled explosions and palls of smoke signaled your approach. Planes appeared overhead and our harried armed forces surged backward, away from your threat. Then the bombs began to fall. As if some pagan opera, the noise rose and ebbed, a harmony of death and crescendo of destruction. Fires raged as our town and life rose up and away with the smoke. The bombs stopped and the area of small arms fire began and then you appeared, the smoke swirling about you, a surreal image of liberation. Our new life was at hand, born amidst the ashes of the old. Your sights surveilled me as the question unasked, was I friend or foe? I bore you no harm as evidenced by my empty hands and dulled expression amidst the rubble. I had never wrought violence against any living creature in my life and was not prepared to change that now even if I had had the means, which of course I didn’t. Friendship was also something I could not offer, not standing as I was amongst the dead and dying of so much that I had known. No, all that I could muster was a dull acceptance of the reality that you were here and I had no say in that. You rejoiced in my liberation, your gift to me. Waving your arm in a gesture for me to move along, I retreated from your lowered rifles along the smoldering streets to my home.