A Bridge Between Two Lands

Thirty, thirty-one, thirty-two. I can’t help but count the steps like I did as a child. I learnt to count on these steps. These steps between our building and the next building over — where my older sister moved to when she married. My grandmother would hold my hand and as we stepped down the steps to go to the market or up them on our way back, we would count each one we took. Even as a teenager, bounding up and down them two at a time, I would count the steps in my head. I couldn’t walk these steps without counting. Except for the last time.

The last time, I counted my family members. I counted the men with guns. I counted the possessions I could carry. That number grew smaller, first because I couldn’t carry everything, then because I couldn’t gather everything up again, whilst scrambling to my feet after I was hit with the butt of a rifle and fell. Then I either bartered some things for food and safety, or they stole my possessions from me. I counted the days since, then the weeks since, the months since, the years since.

Four dangerous country borders, one big and fast river, two hostile seas, six NGOs, endless words in many languages I don’t speak, countless pairs of eyes glaring, judging, imploring, dead, hopeful, tired.

At home I was known by my name, maybe sometimes by my family name. As soon as I had to leave my home, I became known by new names with ‘Internally Displaced Person’, with ‘Asylum Seeker’, with ‘Refugee’. At first, they welcomed me to my new home, my new life. But because of the rules which state that people like me cannot work, the people of my new home grew impatient with me, and blamed me, and others like me, for many of the problems they were having. I understand how people can be worried about their economy, their way of life, but surely they can empathise with a people who lost all of that and their place of being, in one fell swoop. When people used to shout at me for coming to their land to live for free, I would try to explain that I did not want to live for free. I simply wanted to live freely. My home, which they forced me to leave, was much nicer than where I had to live as a refugee. The food, the games of football on the street and the lazy summer days on the riverbank — these were things I considered far superior to anything this new home was offering me. I did not leave it because I wanted to. I am grateful to have been given a home in a new land, where I am safe from the horrors of my home. But this new land comes with its own horrors.

_________

Now I stand at the top of the steps I learnt to count on. Looking at my home, the home they forced me to leave and had dreamt of coming back to for so long. But it is no longer mine. I am a bridge between two lands now, not belonging fully to either.

by Teresa Heffernan

Today I saw a car with a Ukrainian registration

The chariot that bears the human soul

Stopped me in my tracks

In the car park of a once empty hotel

The big shiny black car mourning with a prosperous look Other Ukrainian cars, all black. Their whole life, or what they had room for After packing the people.

My first car, Miami blue Yellow stripes, two doors

My first feeling of adulthood

I could live in this

Three decades on I hurtle along You can cover more distance in a car

What can you ever really see when whizzing by? Choose what to focus on to prevent a mind crash or

Slow down.

Treat it like a deadly weapon

When I learned to drive

Must stay between the lines

Safety in the rules my father told me

Which side am I on?

Collaboration by inaction?

Hand battles to control wheel

Car battles to burn petrol

Child battles in back to be heard

Horn beeps to give a battle cry

Car is my home, my castle

Car is my tank

Could I have fled in my blue and yellow car

What would I have packed

What people

What things

What (March 2022)

by Maeve McCormack

Today I saw a car with a Ukrainian registration

It stopped my cousin in his tracks

A refugee from Rhodesia in the 1970s

I can’t get them out of my head

Three decades on he carries his Ukraine I was on the wrong side then.

Gannon