Monsoon season should have begun by now.
Armies of clouds gather their forces on chariots of distant thunder, darkening the
summer sky, growing more engorged each day. But still, not a single drop of water falls
to the earth.
Do the clouds hear the prayers of the farmers, toiling beneath them in the dust?
Perhaps thunder is their laughter, a call to celebration. Maybe they wait for the
moment when their audience is most attentive, most frantic with anxiety, before they
decide to pour blessed relief onto the choking crops far below them.
Or perhaps the elements mock our faithlessness in their ability to remember the
season.
I watch the clouds blend together in a happy dance of reunion and I wonder, as I
have wondered countless times before: Did the sky cry for us all those years ago? Was it
the earth’s tears that tried to wash away the rivers of our blood? Was it her grief that
covered our world in mud, disguising the bodies of countless dead and smothering the
cries of the dying?
I turn from the sky to look down at my wrinkled hands, and I am suddenly and for
the first time filled with a certain and inescapable realization. Those of us who witnessed
the flames of hate rise into a raging inferno—we are vanishing.
And those who acted as embers hidden beneath the ashes, waiting to ignite horror
within men’s hearts—they are each and every one dead and gone.
Very soon to be forgotten.
Excerpt from Exiled to Freedom by S.G. D Singh
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