Manuela Baena 11°A
“Would you like more ginger-vanilla cookies, or maybe some pie, darling?”
“Come on grandma, tell us the story, and… yes, more cookies please”, said little Tommy with a shining light in his eyes, that childish excitement that the world little by little takes away from us when we age. “Okay then, grab your cookies and get comfortable, this might be a long one, kids”.
˂˂ It was March 12, 1953. It was a busy day; I had to finish all the preparations for my wedding. His name was Nikola, the sweetest most wonderful man I have ever met; gold blond, dark eyes like tourmalines, and he was a little man with a big smile and fire in his heart, and let me tell you kids, in my time people got married as an arrangement; too much money not much love. But we were different, we were in love, the money was little but our love was infinite. It felt good to be out of the ordinary.
Everything was pink wind and yellow dahlias, until the news hit me harder than a wild horse; Ilca had declared war on Padum, my dear country, and Nikola, the love of my life, had to assist our nation in the battlefield. My heart fell apart to crumbles, and my cheeks were red waterfalls of salty water. How did the almighty universe could do this to me? When did God look at my life and decided it was an ugly paper draft that could be thrown into a garbage can? I couldn’t believe my eyes when I read his improvised letter; he told me he would come back, and that we would have a family together. I took strength from that little drop of hope…but little did I know, that day would never come. >>
<<Every day of my 6 year condemn was hard, kids. Not knowing anything about the love of my life created an unexplainable hole in my chest, an uneasy feeling I could not take away. I spent all mornings and afternoons in bed, daydreaming about that moment when I would see him again, then crying myself to sleep and not resting at night. But then, one day, my mother slapped me out of my misery. “Don’t you want to make him proud, sweetheart? She said. “You must go on; this is the time to show all your strength”. So I did, I made it my all-time purpose to make him proud, to take on the world while remembering his shiny smile and warmth heart.>>
<< I started to work as a nurse in a military camp, I was glad to help, but I couldn’t brush off the feeling of hate and disgust towards Ilca and its people that were killing and hurting; ‘irrational beasts’ I thought, and not only me, but all Padum thought of Ilca as disgusting monsters, disgusting monsters who took my Nikola to war. He was in the battlefield, and not between my arms.
One day I was getting out of my shift, after seeing thousands of wounded soldiers crying, thinking about their family and friends. I was walking back to town, when I saw a group of men shouting. To my ears it was gibberish, until I got close enough to understand. There was a guy all beaten up, and he was Ilcan. The men who were beating him up were saying that he had stolen part of their crops. “Come on, grow your devil horns and beast hoofs” they said, “All Ilcans are dirty despicable monsters”. I was standing there out of my senses just watching how, kick after kick, they took the Ilcan man’s life away, how little by little death took over his body. “I only need food for my wife, she’s pregnant, and we have two little daughters to feed, please, I don’t even have a dime to my name” the Ilcan man pleaded, but no sympathy touched the men who were making a woman a widow and three kids orphans. I saw how the Ilcan man died, crying and imploring. I was paralyzed, what I had seen was breathtaking and not in a good way. It was when I realized that to them, we are the monsters, and our men are killing theirs; we are the beasts with horns and hoofs, and the ones who eat their babies. I had come to my senses and finally saw that those people were also human. There might have been many other Ilcan ladies who said Paladum took their love into battle, and away from their warm chest. >>
<<There was a new feeling in my heart, a feeling of love and compassion, so after that day I started to go to the border between both of our nations. Everyone looked at me like I was a weird bug. >>
<< The first day, I took a big basket of bread I had made, and carefully placed it in the floor close enough to an Ilcan lady who was at the other side of the border; she was crying with hurting eyes, she seemed tired and her bones seemed quite prominent from under her skin. She was rubbing her inflated belly due to the little fetus in it, she looked at me then the basket and then back at me. I gestured to her with my eyebrows to look into the basket; she softly wiped the tears off her eyes and cautiously bent her knees into the rough ground to take a look. I saw a light on her eyes, and in a delicate matter she took a piece of bread, split it in half, gave it a quick sniff and slowly put it on her mouth. Then, she quickly started to stuff her mouth with bread, she was eating desperately. She paused and looked up at me with her mouth full of bread and crumbles on her cheeks and dress; there were tears in her eyes. She searched in her pockets, but I gestured that she did not have to give me something in return, and afterwards she turned her head to her left and picked a bright yellow Narcissus, a really common flower on her nation and slowly handed it to me. I took the flower and thanked her, then slowly got close to her and helped her up off her knees, took the basket of bread and gave it to her. We both made a thanks gesture and then I watched her walk away into the city. Her name was Ginevra and years later she would become my best friend.
So every day I took the time to go to the border and gave her, or anyone around some food. My mother did not like what I was doing, neither my father, but I found the way to convince my mother to come with me to the border. That day, she saw what I saw and her eyes opened. She started to knit some clothes for Ginevra’s baby who would soon be born, and for her two daughters as well. Ginevra would take some delicious pie (her specialty), soup and some pastry. Little by little more people started to join and in the border we would exchange goods depending on each other’s necessities, many of us became friends and it became a tradition to spend special dates together. We still had to be careful as there were other people who did not understand that the only difference between us was being born in different nations. >>
<< There, in the “movement of the united frontier” (that was how people called it), I met my other two friends, Sienna and Chiara, you children already know them; Sienna was from Ilca and I met her one day I visited the frontier, it was Christmas, and she made the best ginger vanilla cookies. She liked my cheese bread, so we exchanged recipes. Then, a year later, I met Chiara as she started to work as a nurse in the same military camp I worked. Her husband was also fighting in the war, and we found comfort on each other’s company. She was the best with flower decorations, so when I introduced her to the “movement of the united frontier” she gave everyone a bouquet of flowers, and she wouldn’t stop expressing how happy she was of finding love in the middle of these ‘hate’ times. As you know, my grandchildren, years after the war ended, Ginevra, Sienna, Chiara and I got our talents together and created a café, yes, the one we are sitting on right now, was born from those moments. >>
<<When the war ended, I went to the train station with Chiara. I was hoping to see Nikola, god how much I had missed him. I waited and waited, it felt like decades standing in that grey dirty train station, where you could feel hope, despair and tension in the air. Trains stopped arriving. People were leaving. But I couldn’t, at any moment a train would come and I would see him, with his golden hair and tourmaline eyes walking out of a train, and I would run to him and he would run to me. Then we would stop, look at each other, and embrace in a warm hug that would end with a sweet desperate kiss. Chiara had already left with her husband Philip, he was exhausted and it was late at night, but I wouldn’t leave. I couldn’t.
I was still waiting. It was midnight, and I was still waiting. It was dawn, and I was still waiting. Until… I came to that cold, sharp realization that I would still be waiting until the day of my death arrived. We won’t meet in a train station, we will meet in Heaven, Nirvana, Moksha or wherever. Just not on earth, at least not the one we know.
I never won any medals or got any recognition for the “movement of the united frontier”, but there is no need for that. I brought love to people from opposite sides of the war, I made some people see that we are all humans and none of us want a war. Soldiers don’t desire to kill each other, they are just instructed to…so, my little grandchildren, always be clear and know that little differences should not make us enemies, because we are all part of a bigger thing, that is being human. >>