Remembering its tragedy after 4 years

We spent the night lying in the hot desert sands guarded by soldiers. Early in the morning they woke us. The sun started turning the whole place into a real fire. Every one started taking their tops off. It is like feeling the sun right on top of your head. They took us for a long tiresome foot-walk. The area we were walking on was blazing too much that we felt its intense heat eating our feet. It was not necessary to walk a long distance in the knee-trembling hot sun, but it was the start of our punishment! Every one started sweating and lagging behind. Some of us started throwing our loads off our backs so that to proceed. But nothing was helpful; the extreme heat overpowered us-it is like a big fight between the power of nature and the weakness of humanity!
       ”I think many of us will not make it back to the University” lashed out some one behind me. “After all we are brought here to die,” murmured the same guy. At long last we got to a river and a lot of us started dropping down on the banks of the river. Some of us fainted after throwing the loads from our backs.
        I saw one guy being carried away by two soldiers. He looked powerless and in a coma. God had mercy on us that many of us didn’t die due to the inexpressible heat stroke. If it weren’t for God’s protection, Wia would see dozens of dead bodies in its merciless womb!
       We spent the day tossing and turning like creatures in agony trapped between death and life. Some of us wished death to be relieved from the stings of the heat. A lot of sickness and stress fell on us as if it were a rapid curse sent by some evil; some were throwing up blood. The ghost of ‘suffering’ took a quick control over many of us. That night every one looked angry and stressed, scowled faces all over!
       Two days after our arrival, bad news started to spread all over the camp where we were held that some one had passed away but it wasn’t known who it was. But later we knew that it was Yirga Yosief. All of us got angry. I personally knew him on campus and I couldn’t believe my ears.”Oh! This is unbelievable,” my soul jerked on the inside in disbelief.
       Then some days later another dark rumor started to cloud us ”Another fellow has also passed away! I think the demons of ‘death’ are hovering over our souls,” yelled some body. We captured the name later as: Yemane Tekie. The hospital in Wia became packed with a number of seriously sick and mentally disturbed students; sickness and death were just a step away from us!
      The rest of the days, they would gather us up and lead us to some far away area during noontime when the sun hits right overhead. Every day, we would march to the place rounded by military people and then we would be made to pick stones from one place and gather them in another. Such a tedious thing to do. This was just to keep us busy and give us a hard lesson as a result of our protest. We were held under this routine for weeks and weeks.
      At last every one of us was forced to sign on each piece of paper with our names on it, after reading the content on the paper that pictures us as criminals. We were threatened if we didn’t admit that we were criminals, we would rot in the desert. We had to do that with our hands but our hearts were lamenting a chant of injustice.
We left Wia but with punctures of torment and deeply felt scars on the walls of our hearts!
    Even now the same ghosts that war against ‘free expression’ have gone out to possess souls and subjugate them behind the bars of passivity. To control minds and lock them in the nets of fear and submission. An angry attack to slay the life of civilization by destroying ‘free thought’ and  ‘creativity’- practices of anti-knowledge cynical brains. A misphilosophy to guide humanity onto the pits of total ignorance and stagnation. A blast of bomb that shutters inner peace, a dose of poison that slowly paralyses the hopes of life.
They are relentless until they see the dawn of ‘total ignorance’ and the death of’ ‘thought and expression’
   A dangerous enmity against freedom and wisdom. But these  gods of wickedness shall lose the battle, for it is a battle between ‘good’ and ‘evil’, a  struggle between ‘light’ and ‘darkness’.

Amanuel (Emma)Sabas_23@yahoo.com