The Journey to Hope from Destruction
Inequality, discrimination, hunger, poverty, wars, and pandemics. These are some of the scourges that torture our world. All of them are linked and interconnected in such a way that one needs to solve all of them to get rid of them. Nonetheless, they can be deemed or temporally controlled, but eventually, they may rise again. With all that in mind, I will let my thoughts flow and I will tell a story of the journey to hope from the destruction of the reality of people from one of the countries on Earth. This kind of story does not have clear protagonists or antagonists as there are many entanglements and complexity.
It started with a man who succeeded in making forty million people adore his personality. While some may call his work reign, others prefer to refer to it as a dictatorship, but the reality is that it was just one more performance of clientelism, corruption, intimidation, and dominance that Humans use to gain power. The man got eventually older and weaker, his charisma lost its former glance and his enemies became manifold. He used to have allies, he used to have friends from the so-called peaceful region, but as there were no more interests, no more gains, he was forsaken and left by his own.
While the tension was building up in that region, the neighbors were already on fire. Injustice, hatred, hate speeches, violence, murders, massacre, all of that leading to one of the most dreadful events of history. 100 days, exactly 3 months and 10 days, humans killing humans, sons killing mothers, fathers killing daughters. While a whole nation was agonizing, no one lifted a finger, not for 2 months and a half.
Under pressure, but probably with arms stretched wide, our man welcomed both the victims and the perpetrators who also became victims and then perpetrators. Indeed, the vicious cycle of violence and vendetta had started.
The enemies of our man used the aftermath of those events to justify aggression masked by liberation. The old leopard got chased and a new man rose. Though seen as not serious by the heroic guerilla fighter, he turned out to be an efficient war chief, he did not hesitate to use the least handy method to conquer a lost land. He had more allies, some enemies, and many zealots.
Individual interests or national interests, freedom or subordination, the dilemma was tough, but the love for the motherland won. Now everything collapsed, betrayed allies turned guns against their partner, and subalterns rebelled against their chief. A new fire was on because in this realm, either you collaborate or you collapse, either their profits or your passing. In vain the Wise man tried to bring peace, but our new man got killed by someone who got killed afterward, disappearing with the truth, leaving chaos in the land of the river that swallows other rivers.
Two decades passed, wars succeeded one another, rebellions begot insurrections, and injustice engulfed wretchedness. But the land got rebuilt, a new system, for the people, was installed and agreements were made. Although there is still impunity in the air and some parts are still blurry, victims, their children, and their grandchildren are asked to move on, to forget a past that has benefitted some at their expense.
I forced myself to see a light through all this darkness, but the degree of my blindness could not be overcome. Even after undoing some preconceived ideas, everything is still dark. But I know for sure a day will come, when all my pains will disappear, all my tears will be wiped off and all my shame will be replaced by joy and peace. That peace will be everlasting because the vicious cycle will be no more and we shall not be human any longer. O how I long to see that day.
