Translated by Dr. Abasher Ehaj
Outside the story: This account is factual. It is about a Sudanese guy (Dr. Ishag Jafaar Badawi) affiliated to an NGO agency. In the last third of the last Ramadan, he was appointed to head a convoy destinating to Sudanese-Ethiopian borders to relief Ethiopian refugees. When he was back to Khartoum on 7th of May 2021 he was inspired, by a dream, to recount the following anecdote.
Theme: Beauty VS the Beast
“Wake Amend” is a locution, I cannot account for, coined by Tana and me in a dream. We were together when witnessed, in an obnoxious moment- a cops hitting a leg of a refugee-child with a soupy cane. I rushed towards the lad before the cops ends his immodesty and shit discourse against the child.
I fingered the bruise of the cane and observed it with attention as mingled with piety as its bottom. Although the lad shrouded on an eroded land holding his bruised leg, he smiled in silence squeezed in pain. I perked up as if I were setting off a celestial supplication against that policeman who never cares about his iniquitous deed.
Suddenly, I noticed a girl. She was so special to a degree that I uttered, unconsciously, the phrase “Wake Amend” for her purity and cleanness. She offered me an angelic smile; she hasted towards me and the child, we could not communicate due to language barriers except in terms of humanistic universal.
I felt the pain in the child’s face, he noticed my sympathy and piety with him from my gloomy face. She said in a broken language, “We are on act to homage to you, Sir”. I asked here in a tongue that I do not speak, may be Syriac, yet she apprehended what I enunciated: what’s your good name? She answered, “Tana, Sir”. I responded and felt that I vanquished and billowed in a plunged ether: “You’re the Ice Fountains”.
We both stared the boy with moment of human convergence extremely squeaked in an unprobed sphere. Could we take you to see the doctor, dear me? Tana translated my question into Tigrinya, but the boy smilingly answered: “No, I’m alright”. He started to cripple pressing his pain until he vanished into one of the white UN camps.
I looked back in Tana, so then granules of sparking pearls are drizzling from her eyes. It’s that feminine and delicate face which makes one scent the aroma of inconstant spring. I’m content with her words, “We are refugees, Sir” She held her tongue and swiftly faded away among the tents. While the convoy was about to leave, I spurted quickly as a child who lost his mother in a parade, looking for “the Ice Fountains”, leaving no stone unturned. Neither have I glanced her nor her fascinating eyes which bountify their lids with everlasting tranquility. Drawing out by-passers, hang-outers, and sightseeing, nothing figured out, but only her perspicuous spectrum and her words riddled with agony: “We are refugees, Sir”. I was disappointed, mentally collapsed, and debilitated. The convoy left!
I dreamt of the same crippled boy addressing me, “Get a pleasant surprise for you, Sir”. Then he disappeared to appear a girl with white glasses, I could almost melt in the air with joy. She was Tana! I shouted hysterically, Tana, Tana! You! You’re the “Ice Fountains”. I swear that her glasses made her take after Mistress of the skies as if her aroused luster filled space as mansions built out of snow. I swept all my grief when recalling her anguish words, “We are refugees, Sir”.
She stepped close to me in absolute agility, she shed my tears and said with her lovely voice, “I’m going to leave.” But not before “Wake Amend” Unfortunately, a guy awaked me for dawn meal before she interprets the meaning of this bizarre word which seems Syriac.
The car started to skim the swells of the Poor Savanna, I still abide nothing except her bitter phrase. I intruded thesaurus and dream interpreters to decode it for me. But vain man said they!
