"First of all," said Seajus looking at the guards, "I'd like to know where you're from."
"I was born in Jerrycocoa," said the older guard.
"I come from Messypotatoma. My parents moved here when I was a kid," said the younger guard, chewing idly on the end of the piano leg. Seajus smiled thoughtfully.
"So shouldn't you be in that camp too?" he asked. The guard blinked several times. He glanced at his older partner and scratched his head.
"What do you mean?"
"Well, you're not from this country and neither are they, so you should be in there with them."
"But... but my parents moved here legally!" stuttered the guard.
"Oh? Why did they do that?" asked Seajus with a disarming smile.
"Well, the education system wasn't as good as the one here and my dad didn't like his job so..."
"What does this have to do with the terrorists in there?" cut in the older guard, frowning furiously with bushy, red eyebrows. Seajus merely raised a hand to him to be silent.
"That makes your parents refugees doesn't it?" The guard stared back in more confusion. His head was starting to hurt from all these questions and Seajus constant smiling was making him a bit nervous.
"Wha.. what do you mean?"
"Well they left Messypotatoma because the conditions there weren't to their liking and 'fled', so to speak, to another country. That makes them refugees, doesn't it?"
"I errr.. I suppose so," said the younger guard, scratching his head. It was an odd way to think about it but it sounded right. The older guard, still frowning up a storm, barged in again.
"HIS parents came here through the Proper channels! Not like these terrorists!" he said fiercingly, gesturing to the pathetic looking crowd behind the fence.
"Really? And why did they do that?" Seajus asked politely, still smiling.
"Because thats the way its done!" said the guard with finality. He stamped his foot to emphasise the point and killed three small cockroaches who were on their way to Jerrysalem to present the Emperor with a plan to turn the entire desert into an amusement park and thus raise enough funds to conquer the rest of the world in the name of Cod.
"And what if the proper channels weren't there?" The guard opened his mouth to answer and stopped short.
"What do you mean, 'not there'? Of course they were there!"
"Let me put it this way," said Seajus, taking a seat before them and gesturing for them both to sit. "Lets say you decided that you wanted to leave the country you lived in because you thought you could get a better job somewhere else, or the education and health systems were better elsewhere, or you just didn't like the weather. What do you do?"
"You go and get yourself a passport and Visa and a ticket out and you leave, of course! What a silly question." The older guard folded his arms and snorted. Seajus tilted his head and looked him in the eye.
"But what if you couldn't? What if when you went down to the Visa office they wouldn't give it to you. What if the camel train wouldn't sell you a ticket, or it just wasn't there at all? What if the passport officer didn't like you and told you to shove off?" The older guard shifted uncomfortably in his seat.
"Well... I suppose I'd be stuck there. I sure wouldn't try and break into another country like this mob!"
"Alright then, so you stay. But you wake up the next morning to discover that your house had been vandalised in the night. You call the police and they tell you to shove off. You walk to work and get harassed by people on the street, or by the police themselves. You arrive at work to find your business has been burned down or bombed. What then?" The younger guard looked horrified.
"I'd leave! As soon as I could!" The older guard nodded in agreement, imagining this terrible change happening in his own home town.
"But you can't leave, remember? You can't get a passport, or a ticket out, and no other country will give you a Visa. Do you still stay?"
"Well..." the younger guard furrowed his brow and thought this over. "I suppose not.. though I don't see any way of leaving."
"Ahh well then this is your lucky day! A man walks up to you on the street and tells you that if you sell all your posessions, the few you have left anyway, and give him the money, he'll get you out of your country and into another one where you can walk around without being harassed and nobody will bomb your business or wreck your house, a country in which the police help you out and don't attack you for looking at them."
"I'd do it!!" said the younger guard enthusiastically. "I mean, anything would be better than living in that place." The older guard again nodded his agreement (his neck had moved more in the last half hour than in the previous 20 years).
"Naturally," said Seajus. "So you give all your money to this man and he tells you to be at the docks the next morning at 3am. You arrive to find dozens of other people there, all people like you, from all walks of life, hoping for a better life in this new country. You all board a ratty old boat, stuffed in like sardines in a tin can, and off you sail. For weeks. And weeks. There's very little food and fresh water. People get sea sick from the churning ocean and others get ill from the lack of food and basic care." The guards grimaced at his unpleasant image but remained silent.
"Then... finally... after weeks and weeks at sea... you arrive. The doors to the main deck open and you all clamber out of the hold, tired and sick, hungry and nauseated, but glad that you've finally arrived in this new land, a land of freedom and hope, a land where you know you'll be treated better than before..."
Recent comments