Short Story

A short story written a while back that depicts immigrants’ suffering. A heartfelt gratitude, appreciation and admiration to selfless souls in Spain and elsewhere in Europe who countered migration policies with humanitarian sensibility. Claudia Moya, you are meant here in particular.

The Roman Citadel held on but had to fall, and she had nowhere to hide at all. Over the cracked Greek stairs she was forced to crawl, until she reached the Phoenician quay on all four. She anchored her hopes to the boat and to the handler to whom she was in thrall, carrying within the child she wishes would never be born. Marooned in the deep blue sea she prayed for a god to save her soul, but her screams were much too stout for her weakened jowl. Watching the faces fade under the water while the waves roared, she clenched her nails into the rubber boat that was all torn. The sun at last shone and warmed her soaked bones, and fate did smile when she reached the old land of the Moors. With beauty and peace her heart did soar, and did not understand why they were calling her back to the shore. “In a village of La Mancha, the name of which I do not wish to recall, our fate would have been different my dear boy” she sobbed as her child snored.

A boy touches his crying father during a Nov. 19 protest by angry migrants from Pakistan and Morocco who blocked a section of the Greece-Macedonia border after Macedonia began granting entry only to refugees from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. (CNS photo/Georgi Licovski, EPA)