Waiting

Acacia Tree, Omo region, Ethiopia

Ok it is almost 3am and I jus finished watching a movie my mom picked up earlier today; live and become. If you’re not familiar with the storyline; it takes place in my place of birth, Ethiopia, where the 84 famine was going on. Hundreds of Ethiopian Jews were “rescued” from the camps n brought to Israel to their “fathers land”. One Christian mother finds out about this operation and forces her son to pose as a Jew so he may leave the country, pain in her eyes, bodies clenched; he leaves her, to come back once again many years later. I’ll never forget his mother, half her face covered with a witted old clothe, revealing her beautiful and deep pain stricken eyes, so full of sorrow and agony. At the end of the movie when he returns as a Doctor, his eyes meet hers. They haven’t changed, still striking and profound, and I am not a big emotional girl, in fact my friends call me a Man in regards to that. But at that moment I swear my hearth skipped a beat. She has been waiting there for years, sitting in dusty camps, waiting for her son to come home.

I came here with my beautiful mom, but I feel for this boy and although I cannot even try to understand his tragedies, I can sympathize with his disconnect. My Country is waiting, sitting in camps, with her deep brown eyes filled with desperation. She is my Mother, and I unlike the boy, I have forgotten her. I do not talk to her, I do not write her letters, I do not pray for her and I don’t think about her. I have forgotten her, my mother, my cradle, I have forsaken you. Mmm don’t have much more to say I guess than: have i lived n become? When will I see you again, when will I smell the red clay under my feet, when will I taste the rain and when will I kiss the sun. Have i forgotten you mother?

No need to complicate,

Naya