And that’s what we did. We died. By the thousands and hundreds of thousands. We’d never seen such unjustifiable violence. Bloody bodies lying prostrate across the earth as if pleading for forgiveness. Those who survived did not mourn. There was no time. The loss was too great. We still have not mourned. We still have no time. We remember, but we have not mourned.

Death came quickly. It came unannounced. It came cloaked in our own multicolored garb. It came white as clouds, smiling as if it loved us. It came in the darkness of night while we were laughing and talking with ancestors. It came in legions with guns and ammunition too powerful for us to battle. It came like the monsoon winds. It came like a flood. It came with earthshaking force we could not control. It came under the authority of nations we did not know. It came with men whose absent wives benefited from their husbands’ despicable behavior. It came with men whose children would one day inherit their fathers’ legacy of violence and wealth ill gained. It came to strip the land of its glory. It came to thousands and hundreds of thousands without sympathy for our loss. It came with impaled brutality. It came to scatter children’s blood-soaked bodies about the earth, thus fertilizing dry, yearning soil. It came to teach us we were brothers.

This was The Coming.

* * *

Some were taken by surprise. Some were killed on the spot. Some were taken in their sleep. Some were ambushed in the forest. Some were tricked into believing they were going for a walk. Some, consumed with hatred, were caught off guard. Some were inebriated. Some were too lazy to fight. Some were busy settling communal affairs. Some were nursing wounds inflicted by spouses. Some were telling children bedtime stories of talking spiders. Some were beating drums to warn others. Most were not listening. When the drums fell silent, it was too late. Our destruction was complete. An entire village razed in one solitary cycle of the sun and moon.

They destroyed our homes and forced our leaving. They bound us with chains of heavy iron. Elders were rendered mute and lifeless. Babies deprived of life’s knowing. All we could do was wonder. We did not speak. There was nothing to say. In those moments we heard our elders’ warnings. And we understood. We knew they loved us now, far more than we had understood before. But they could not hear our cries, our pleas of lament. Not with the ears of the living. So, one by one, they took us away.

They seized our farmers first. Those who knew the land, the earth, the ingredients of the soil. Those who heard its rumble, felt its movement, understood its seasons. Those who knew seeds and germination, plant spacing and harvesting. Those who walked barefoot upon the soil in homage to its life-sustaining power. They took them first. It was no accident. They would farm again in a new world, feeding a nation committed to their degradation.