My Home, My Home! |
|
 My Home, My Home! New York Cesar Chelala My home, I want to come back to my home I don’t care how broken it stands; I just want a single wall and I will rebuild it, says the old man, a grandfather of three sons, five grandchildren “I want to restart my family,” he pleads --he doesn’t know, he cannot know— that both his house and his family no longer exist. He sits by the roadside, on a rock beneath a silent sky, and weeps. Exhausted, he curls into sleep, a small bag --all his belongings-- clutched to his chest. Yet he is a man of resolve. He will go back and start all over again, but he will have to do it alone, the last survivor of a vanished home. So many dreams crushed, so many lives that are no more. Cesar
Chelala, a New York writer, is a co-winner of an Overseas Press Club of
America award, and two national journalism awards from Argentina. Illustration by Paola Bilancieri |
|