Learning to read had been a curse as well as a blessing. It had given me a view of my wretched condition, without the remedy. I saw the pathway from slavery to freedom, yet that pathway was guarded by countless obstacles. The more I read, the more I was led to abhor my enslavers.
I often found myself regretting my own existence, wishing myself dead. While in this state of mind, I was eager to hear anyone speak of slavery. Every chance to learn more about its injustice gave me pain - yet I could not turn away. Knowledge was painful, but ignorance would have been worse.
Freedom now appeared, to disappear no more forever. It was heard in every sound, seen in every thing. I saw nothing without seeing it, I heard nothing without hearing it. It looked from every star, whispered in every wind, and moved in the storm.
It's difficult in times like these: ideals, dreams, and cherished hopes rise within us, only to be crushed by grim reality. It's a wonder I haven't abandoned all my ideals, they seem so absurd and impractical. Yet I cling to them because I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart.
I simply can't build my hopes on a foundation of confusion, misery, and death. I see the world being slowly transformed into a wilderness, I hear the approaching thunder that, one day, will destroy us too. I feel the suffering of millions. And yet, when I look up at the sky, I somehow feel that everything will change for the better.
In the meantime, I must hold on to my ideals. Perhaps the day will come when I'll be able to realize them!
I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things.
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
Marcus Chen had 47 million followers. His face was on billboards, his name was a hashtag, his opinion moved markets. He was twenty-three years old and worth more than most people would earn in ten lifetimes.
Then the video surfaced. Words he'd said at seventeen, stupid and cruel. Within seventy-two hours, sponsors vanished. Followers evaporated - 47 million became 12 million, then 3 million. The hashtag became a different kind of weapon.
Six months later, Marcus walked through the mall where his poster had once hung. A teenager pointed at him, trying to remember where she'd seen his face. She shrugged and went back to her phone, scrolling through the feed of whoever was famous now.
He thought about all those interviews where he'd called himself "a legend." Now he was a footnote, a cautionary tale. The mall played cheerful music as he walked past the empty space where his image used to be.
Shelley's irony:
Modern story's irony:
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles.
"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
Amara pressed her face to the bus window as they passed the skyline. Somewhere in those buildings, she would find a new beginning. Behind her were three years in a refugee camp, a journey across an ocean, interviews and paperwork and waiting.
"Is this home now?" her little brother Yusuf asked.
She didn't know how to answer. Home was supposed to be where you belonged, where people knew your name and your grandmother's name. Home was supposed to be familiar.
But home was also wherever you could sleep without fear. Wherever you could imagine a future.
The bus stopped at their exit. Amara gathered their bags - everything they owned fit in two suitcases. As they stepped onto the sidewalk, a woman smiled at Yusuf and said something in a language Amara was still learning.
It wasn't home yet. But it could become one. That was enough.