The Sand and Tree Monkeys
Slippery Tree Forest.
The Neo-Nazis & Ultra-Nationalists
C/o Trump Acolytes
Ok, there’s nothing funny about drowning, unless it’s a cartoon character trying to prevent that last bloop of air in the mouth from escaping (the soul attached to it like it were a weather balloon.) But then drowning is faster than starving, or getting raped by some Militias. It’s worse if you survive the rape, conceive and then have the deranged child-soldiers, reeking slaughter, draw sticks to determine who among them is the father. #BringBackOurGirls.
My preference remains a single shot to the head from a sniper nestled in the ghost apartments of Idlib. A car bomb in Mogadishu is too messy, I mean, if my face is unidentifiable, no one knows about a certain tattoo of the Hindenburg I just got inked in somewhere.
I’ll take my chances with the dictator. I’ve pretty much perfected curling into a ball when the riot police start raining their batons. If they put me in a 2x6ft cell I’ll have long freedom walks in my head, on the white beaches of imagined democracy, the “convenience” bucket in the corner sending me wave after wave of the pure breezes of self-determination –strong and saline. Hey, that biogas stuff is green energy right?
Hell, if ISIS catch me in Mosul and slit my throat on camera at least I’ll check out trending on YouTube.
Yeah, I’m staying put in The Central African Republic; I’ll take my chances between the rock of the Séléka and the hard Anti-balaka militias. I won’t trek 2,681Km through the Sahara, risking encounters with Sworded tribesmen in Chad, into Libya, a country with two governments, belligerent gangs and slave traders, to get to Misrata. I’m not paying the $2000 smugglers’ fee for a “cruise” across the Mediterranean on a deflatable dingy. A visit to the deep aqua-graves of my brothers and nieces isn’t on my itinerary.
The US Supreme Court just upheld the Trump ban on asylum seekers. Great, this is just the incentive I needed to stay put in Syria, adapt to the brutality in Raqqa, change my war-torn country from within. Yemen is heaven, pay no attention to UNICEF’s propagandist claim that 1.5million kids here are malnourished, 370,000 of them severely. That’s just the usual aid-agency ploy to play on your famed philanthropy for some dollars, which they squander on their expatriate salaries anyway.
You can relax, I understand; I’m not going to threaten to camp my stink at your doorstep just so I can blackmail you to open up and offer me your WC. I hear you, your roll of toilet paper is almost out and you’re planning to take-out Indian, who knows what could happen with all those spices. Worse, your guest room has a water bed; it requires finesse to sleep on those things. What would happen if I fell off of it and down the attic? I don’t have health insurance, and you wouldn’t know what herbs to fetch me! The markets are hedging, the Quantitative Easing didn’t work, the Euro is in a bad place, Brexit is happening…times are hard!
Unfortunately many of my sisters and nephews are not nearly as understanding. They think this human rights, asylum, refugee status, UNHCR business is not just rhetoric. I know the truth; you’ve got the right to defend your territory, build a wall, and I just have to make do with the misery in my own country. History doesn’t matter. Even if your ancestors pillaged my lands and planted seeds of tribal and religious hatred why should you pay for it? You went to war, in Iraq, as a humanitarian intervention, to liberate us from the yoke of a pariah; you can’t be blamed if we choose to exercise our freedom by exploding suicide vests in market places. We’re the masters of our own destiny.
To each their own, right? Life is about the guy with the green lawn and the guy peeking over the fence. I can only blame my own laziness and lack of creative ability, and the white gods, for not being the guy with the cute pet Chihuahua in a country where obesity is the crisis.
But hey, at least you’re better than those lynching xenophobic gangs down south in Johannesburg.
Sympathetically,
Would be Alien.
***
This year alone, 1,895 migrants have died attempting the perilous Mediterranean crossing into Europe, to flee war, poverty and persecution. The number was 2,911 for the same period last year, according to official IOM data. In one case, as reported by The Independent, “pirates” stole a boat’s motor at sea, essentially leaving it to the mercy of the waves. It would soon capsize, as was inevitable, leaving only four survivors.
At least 707 migrant deaths have recently been recorded in the Americas; many succumbed to the harsh treks through Texas’ Rio Grande Valley and the Arizona Desert.
The Guardia Costeria, the people of Mediterranean landing cities, the Sanctuary Cities in the US and many others make laudable efforts to keep the candle of human dignity flickering.
