Curse named human

Curse named human - Part 24 / 40

† Curse named human †

[(ke:s neimd 'hju:men)]

Part 24

The last life on earth

The Aoi and Ryutaro Chapter

North Africa, 1805

I was a young boy... too young for an experience like that if you ask me. But even if I could turn back time, I still wouldn't. When I'm closing my eyes now, I can still feel the hot sand underneath my feet, the sun burning merciless onto my black hair, my brown skin. And when I opened my eyes then, I looked over land which I had never left once in my entire life... dunes over dunes, sand everywhere, the hot wind played with my half long hair and the dark blue tunic on my body . In this life I was born a boy right in the middle of the Sahara in a City called Agadez. I was born there because my father stopped by in this city and then left again for months, even years.

He was a Tuareg. A man living in the desert, with the desert.

They traveled in groups, riding on their camels. Refugees in their own land. Nobody wanted to have business with them so they lived with the desert where no one else would dare to set foot in... except for bandits. They were known to be cruel and merciless. Stealing for their own selfish selfsinstead of working for it like the rest of us poor people.
My mother always had a hard life. But she never complained, not even once... she wanted to keep me from feeling upset and guilty, tried to make life possible for her only son, for me. The two of us lived alone in this old shabby little hut. Her parents died when I was still a little child and I helped and worked with her all my 20 years long. We sold the little vegetable we had on the market plus the baskets which my mother made with her old worked up hands.
I often wondered if she missed my father. I'm sure she did but she never said a word about him. He was a Tuareg, that was all I knew. It was unusual for women to have no man so we were outsiders from the very beginning of this story. But this kept us together. I loved and respected her very much and I knew she did too. I often wondered whether I reminded her of my father. Maybe my eyes or the voice... but she never mentioned it so I didn't ask either. We struggled to survive every day and yet we were happy in this little old hut. We were free.
Very often I sat on this little dune behind our little house, when the sun already set and we were done with the day's work. I came to this place to look into the distance, at the Sahara which seemed endless and dangerous to me. And yet it harbored a strange fascination... I wondered how the world looked like behind all this sand, what kind of people, languages can be found behind my beloved land.

The Tuareg surely knew. All the people from the village couldn't satisfy my curiosity... and I knew that the Tuareg were in town these days, people were talking about it. Yet no one dared to get into contact with them because they were strangers to us although we all lived in the same land. A sad fact of course but essential for survival. They were dangerous. Soon I walked back and went to bed because I was tired from working on the fields. I dusted my clothes off from sand, undressed and blew out the little oil lamp in my room. Mother went to bed before me and soon I was deeply asleep too.

I will never forget this night because what was about to come no one could have ever imagined.

I woke up startled from loud noises I couldn't allocate. I jumped off the bed and looked out the window. The whole houses around us were set on fire and enlightened the dark night. People were running around screaming, men tried to fight the intruders off, men on black and brown horses but they stroke down everyone who dared to cross their path with their long silver swords. I stood there on my window and looked at the scenario in utter shock, I couldn't move. Then I heard my mother screaming when our wooden door was kicked in and an animal of a man stormed in our house. Bandits.