Daughters of Smoke and Fire

by Ava Homa

I could not remember the last time my God, the loving moon of my childhood, had smiled upon me.

I was terrified that I was supposed to be living and I wasn’t, that I must have some prospect and I didn’t.

Because if I don’t tell our story, how can I understand why Chia is following in Baba’s footsteps with his increasing activism? How the prison guards who tortured Baba torment me too? What it means to belong to a stateless people so crushed under tyranny that self-sabotage has become routine? How can I ever be free if I don’t fight my faceless prison guards?

Until coming face-to-face with death, I had taken cruelty personally, overlooking how that kind of ruthlessness had roots deep in the history of humankind. It didn’t matter if my name was Leila or Njorge, if I spoke Hebrew or Navajo—it was most certainly not about me.

I now understood why she and perhaps other mothers sang lullabies: to prepare children for all the sorrow awaiting us along the way while putting us to sleep.

The future with all its blithe abundance belonged to us. The full moon of my childhood smiled.