North to Paradise

by Ousman Umar

we wore several pants at once to cover each pair’s holes—and seeing the white people’s movies made us long for things we couldn’t afford but didn’t need. If you don’t know something exists, you can’t want it.

I can see these lofty ideas about white people and Europe seem absurd because of course talent, intelligence, and strength have no color. But these attitudes didn’t take shape overnight: they are the product of centuries of enslavement, exploitation, colonialism, and what ultimately amounts to a white-supremacist marketing campaign to convince Black people to undervalue their own worth.

But human beings find ways to live in the least likely places, under the most adverse conditions.

“Forward ever, backward never.” I took refuge in that sentence. Just keep moving forward, without indulging negative thoughts.

One of the saddest things I learned on my journey is that in this life, no one gives you anything for free. They always want something in exchange: it’s human nature. Or at least, it’s the nature of the system that humans live in.

On my journey north, I saw so many people behaving worse than animals, motivated by such greed that they had no humanity. But then a person who was more vulnerable and exploited than I was reached out and shared what little she had. These are the moments that I try to remember, moments of our shared humanity.

You could get anything in that connection house. The only thing you couldn’t find was God.

Algeria receives economic support from France to stop migration, so in each prison, they gave us a different name. That way, they could claim they were detaining many more immigrants than they really were, and get more money.

In the whole world, there’s just you and the two options before you: reach Paradise alive, or die.

That is why I will continue to tell my story: so that one day, there are no more stories like mine to tell.