Onward, Bessarabia

The heavy heads of brittle grain slipped under her palms and flowed through her

calloused fingertips, swaying gentle goodbyes as she roamed down the edge of the expansive field. At her bare dusty heels limped an ancient creature. His advanced age made movement a painful endurance; yet an instinctual wisdom held the crippled canine ever closer to the young girl. Atmospheric tension did not escape his nerves as many arrogant persons believed. His senses supplied him with immeasurable knowledge, not like that you could learn from books or words or articles, but more of an embedded understanding of sinister future intentions from those he could not see nor comprehend. Not a syllable need be uttered for him to know something was amiss; something in their homeland was turning sour. Breezes on the dry desert steppe were rare in June, but today the wheat and vineyards hummed with the sweet sound of ocean air. Shelter was sought under porches ( if you roamed the earth with four legs ), and in the small country houses of farmers and tradesmen if the breeze fell short of relief. The girl was now kneading dough on a sturdy wood table. Floral patterned curtains fluttered in the windowsill and softly played with the flyaway curls framing her face. Sunlight shimmered across the floor and objects that stood in its destined path. Her mother sat sewing one of her husband’s old shirts as she rocked an unborn baby to sleep. A mile away, as you traverse a meagerly graveled road cut into the earth by the footprints of thousands of migrants, a sleepy town jutted up from the steppe. Outside the sturdy townhouses were horse and cart loaded and strapped with belongings. Soviet soldiers conglomerated in small packs. These groups were the object of unhappy spectations. For no good reason were they abiding in this harmless town. Their presence brought on the forced annexation from their homes, land, and all they had ever known, and were the reason for rising spite and fear among the inhabitants. No sneer towards them was restrained, and their shoes were crudely polished with the saliva of resentful men. Traveling back up the lonely road we meet an exhausted young man, no older than forty. From his hat to his shoes, all apparel was fixed with patches of varying fabrics. This was his final day of employment. In the yard of property which he no longer held ownership was a cheap cart piled with his life work. Invisible pressure bound his chest. They left at dawn. Whatever refused to fit in the wagon was abandoned. But this meant the largest part of his soul, and that of his neighbors, family, friends, was being gutted from them by the enemy within. On his bedside table, in a narrow glass vial stopped with cork, was all he could salvage. This container with its precious contents was tenderly packed away with the plates and glasses of generations before. When morning slowly stretched across Bessarabia, this vial, still wrapped in cloth, was secretly tucked away in his pocket; an inanimate source of comfort. Hundreds of carts, carrying newly fashioned migrants, created a dust cloud visible in the low light of dawn. They would soon find their own place in the reluctant caravan taking them across their land to the home of their ancestors. By cart, boat and train they would proceed, enduring cramped and stagnant conditions until they were dropped where their story began hundreds of years before. It was like revisiting a chapter without finishing the book. Except, for many, the chapters they had abided amidst were burned, and they were forced to rewrite their story. Some continued westward to freedom, some found shelter in the land of heritage, and some made it to neither. Yet others carried with them the ashes of their old story, and all the knowledge and love it contained was scattered among the new pages to cultivate a fresh beginning. One bottle of Bessarabian soil turned acres of foreign land into home, and as the earth crumbled between his fingers he realized the end wasn't the last word in a chapter or how badly you begin the next, but when you breathed your last. Only then did your story truly end.