The Mitzri and I

I will myself to focus, not to tear my eyes away from the face before me. The man, haunting agony in his eyes. Wounds on his face, staining his beard, his robes. The broken desperation in his posture, his expression… his voice.

“They took my child,” he says, then he lifts his voice to a primal shriek, a Heaven-splitting cry. “My son! My baby! They took him because I could not fill the quota of bricks that those barbaric taskmasters have set on us. They have taken our straw, made us gather it for ourselves in the heat, in the burning sun, and yet they expect us to produce the same number of bricks that we have done up until now.”

There is no mercy, no reprieve; not from the sun baking down on us in the desert sands; not from the voice of the man or the wailing of — now I see them — tens of other slaves in ripped clothing, bruised and beaten; not from the deeper, rougher shouts of the taskmasters, brandishing leather whips….

I can’t bear it. My head is spinning; I feel thirsty, faint. Dying.