Personal Narrative: Together We Run

Together We Run

The clang of the iron gate resounds through the surroundings. As one, we are herded through to a room. A room full of desks and chairs, a whiteboard up the front, one door and one window. As we crowd inside, we hear the sound of a lock. Studying everything in the room, we catch the glinting silver on the window. They’re for your safety they tell us. There’s an air of confusion. How could someone fall out a ground floor window? They tell us to sit down, they ignore the weeping child at the back who cries for his mother. Where is his mother? They hand out clothes, they are all uniform. The girls with pleated skirts and the boys with ties. Looking around we all notice, they wore pants and skirts and dresses, none of them wore

We are told that we will attend lessons to learn the right way to do things. We are told our parents couldn’t take care of us, so now they will. The boy in the back cries, again. This time he’s not ignored, two of them take him outside the room. The lock sounds again. He could not be heard anymore.

***

I try to remember the face of my brother. I can’t. It’s been too long. Dad’s face is fading too. If I didn’t see it in the mirror every day, I don’t think I would remember it at all. I try speaking like I use to, but the words escape me.

We can’t remember much about before the iron gate closed. Before the gate closed, We didn’t know very much of the universal language. Now it’s all we know. Before the gate closed, we wore different colours. Now we wear black and white.

We have learnt to not only speak the universal language, but write it too. We had never written before. They tell us it’s so we can keep the information of the generations before us, and for generations after us. We remember the stories our Elders used to tell; how the world came to be, how mountains were made, how we came to be. They tell us that what we used to know were fairy tales. That they are enlightened. That they know what’s right and