If Tomorrow Was Yesterday

The sun beaming through the barred window always wakes me up in the morning. Today was no different, the camp only provides us with one uniform made of dense cloth ill fit for the desert sun. It doesn’t matter, I don’t sleep well in this cage and neither does anyone else I share it with. I like to blame the heat, but I just say that to avoid talking about what’s really keeping me awake at night.

The bell sounds and the cell doors slide open automatically. Each of us files out of the room one by one and head into the main hall where we’ll be given our tasks for the day. Once each of us has entered the hall, we stand at attention to the head guard who repeats the same speech each morning to remind us of why we’re here… as if any of us had forgotten.

“Each of you here is accused of treason against the state, and it’s our job to keep you occupied until you receive your trial and sentencing. As always each of you will be assigned a group number, and each group number will be given a different task to complete for the day. If your group does not collectively complete their task, your trial will be suspended, and you’ll be immediately sentenced to public execution in the camp courtyard.” He barked.

It’s a clever strategy. They know the combination of hope and not wanting to let the others around us down will keep us working hard, day in and day out, until they send us off to our trial. Threating us with public execution seems a bit silly though, considering that’s the sentence each person who’s received their trial has gotten anyway.

The truth is the only thing any of us here are guilty of is having the wrong beliefs at the wrong time. No one ever believed that the internal struggles we faced as a nation would result in a second civil war, and yet they did. It’s come to my attention that the phrase “history repeats itself” is true, and the phrase “we learn from our mistakes” is not. I’ve been here for all of three weeks, and I can say with near certainty that hope is only a product of fear, which almost exclusively leads to disappointment in this place.

Multiple guards make their way around, randomly handing out badges with numbers assigned to them. One guard makes his way to me and hands me my badge.

“Jack, you’re going to be in group 8 today.” The guard said.

“Yes sir” I reply.

Today I was in the same group as one of my cell mates, her name is Hannah. She’s been here one week longer than I have. Over the course of my three weeks, I would say that we’ve become friends of sorts, both of us are around the same age, and I suppose nothing brings two people closer together than facing an unjust and certain death. The conditions of the camp didn’t do either one of us justice in the looks department, but I can still tell she’s a beautiful girl. She has long blonde hair, which is ratty since it hasn’t been washed or combed in some time. She has thick black eyebrows, that now nearly touch one another in the middle. From time to time, I’ve even caught a glimpse of her smile, which is fluorescent white, although for obvious reasons, it doesn’t happen often.

Our job today is to lay brick on a part of the camp wall that had been destroyed by “rebel” forces attempting to free us. It’s unfortunate that it comes of no surprise that their mission ended in complete failure, as well as the death of every man who fought for our liberation. My spirit has long been broken, so even brave and heroic attempts to liberate me and the others hasn’t moved me any closer to the hope others seem to have.

Laying the brick is a tough job. Everyone is malnourished and the women especially don’t have the energy necessary to complete a job like this in the time frame the guards want it done. They do their best to assist us by helping us smooth out the concrete once we’ve laid the brick. It’s not much, but it saves us time and were grateful for it. The guards watch over us nearly every second at the camp, so talking is both difficult and dangerous. While smoothing out the concrete of a brick I had just placed, and without turning from her work, Hannah managed to delicately utter a sentence.

“My trial is tomorrow.” She whispered.

It hung in the air for a while. I didn’t know what to say. Is sorry a good enough word to use when you know that person’s life is going to end the next day? I decided against saying anything at all, instead we just shared a pair of locked eyes. No words were spoken out loud, but a million words of sorrow were spoken in that moment. Before our gaze lasted to long and caught the attention of the guards, Hannah turned back to her work, but I kept my eyes on her for just one extra moment as her living mortality began to remind me of mine.

Once our work is done, we have dinner. They barely feed us here, why would they feed people who they deem evil and less than human? Some of the prisoners have argued with the guards that they need more food and water so they can have the energy to do the labor.

Idiots.

Of course, they all got their ass beat to within an inch of their life. All because they can’t figure out that the labor has no real meaning. It’s just busy work, something to keep us tired and exhausted so we don’t fight back. They couldn’t care less whether the work is done properly. The end goal is to keep us alive long enough to send us to trial, so they can continue to masquerade behind the thinly veiled lie that our justice system continues to operate fairly.

The nights are worse than the days. The pain of imagining the last moments of your life, all the things you never got to do or say, the longing to hold someone you love just one more time, are all infinitely worse than the physical exhaustion we endure during the daytime. There’s ten of us who share the cell, the mattresses lye on the ground with no sheets or pillows for us to use. It’s dark in here tonight, the moon doesn’t have much to offer the room in terms of light. I can hear the tossing and turning of each person as they fight with the same horrific thoughts that I do. Tonight, Hannah was on the mattress next to mine, only separated by a few feet.

I couldn’t see her do it, but I could feel her staring directly at me. I turned my head and could barely make out a pair of open eyes. My arm was lying to the side of my mattress, so she reached out with hers and softly squeezed my hand, as if so say “are you awake?” I gently squeezed her hand back as if to say “yes.” She let go of my hand and reached towards the mattress, wrestling with what seemed like a tear in its side. Before I could figure out what she was doing, she re-entangled her fingers with mine. This time there was something in my hand, I slowly pulled my hand away from hers and clasped the object. She leaned her upper body forward to get as close to my ear as she could. Her voice cracked with regret as she ever so quietly began to talk:

“My mother gave me this” She whispered, but then paused to gather her words. You could tell they were the hardest words she had ever spoken.

As she continued to talk, I opened my palm and saw a gold heart shaped necklace, it was a locket. I pried open the edges and opened the heart to see that both sides were engraved. I could barely make it out, so I had to put it right up to my face to see. On the left half were the words “If tomorrow was yesterday” and on the right half the words “I wouldn’t change a thing”.

Hannah continued - “She wanted me to give this to my daughter when I had one. I’m

not going to have the chance, so I figured it would be best to give it to someone who might.” She spoke softly, with tears in her eyes.

It was all she could muster, so she laid her head on my chest as a pillow, which couldn’t have been comfortable, but I’m sure the warmth of another human was worth it.

Obviously, I wasn’t going to say it. Why say what we both already know? Instead, I just gazed up towards the ceiling and let Hannah have her last night alive in peace.

Trial day is every other day in the camp. On those days the people being sent to trial are taken early in the morning and separated from the rest of us as we go about the day. I managed to find a tear on the inner lining of my uniform that could act as a makeshift pocket. That’s where I kept the locket.

The day of your trial they allow you to shower and choose the outfit you’ll inevitably be executed in. It’s tough to tell whether they humanize us out of pity for the soon to be deceased, or out of pure evil for the rest of us who are forced to watch them die. Today I unpackaged barbed wire that the camp is going to put around the walls for extra protection. My stomach turned the entire day, knowing that the only remaining person I had any sort of connection with, was a few fleeting moments away from being shot point blank in the temple as I’m forced to look on.

They wrap up a little earlier on trial days. They herd us all into the courtyard and make us wait for the arrival of the busses. The head guard stands at a podium in front of us to read the verdicts, all of which will be guilty. As the busses approached, I looked on anxiously as I saw Hannah walk out. She was wearing a pale blue dress that flowed, and perfectly white sneakers, her hair was groomed, and she wore it in a high bun, her eyebrows were trimmed in a way that accented her coffee brown eyes. She was every bit as beautiful as I imagined she would be.

Once her eyes met mine, they never separated. She stared back at me the entire time as the head guard read the guilty verdicts. Once all the verdicts were read, I felt the need to show her I had the locket, so I tapped on uniform where I had hidden it as if to say, “don’t worry, it’s right here.” She nodded and mustered a smile right as the first shot went off, then another, then another, right up until the guard was standing in front of her. I couldn’t watch, I closed my eyes and tensed up before the bang of the gun went off. I hyperventilated as tears rolled down my face.

“I should have tried to save her.” I thought reflectively.

When I opened my eyes and saw her lying dead in a pool of her own blood, I reached to touch the outline of the locket. And for the first time, I felt two emotions that had eluded me the entire time I’ve been here.

Anger and Determination.

I need to escape. Her memory can’t die in vain.