The
sun rose, gently peeping over the horizon as it sent wisps of reddish light across
the dawn sky; delicately beautiful, yet awakening fear in the hearts of Bovina
and the others she was caged with.
It signified
the start of a new day and time for some of them to die.
They knew that in a
few minutes, their captors would come into the hold to select no less that 50
of them for the slaughter, leading them out never to be seen again.
Then afternoon would come
and the killings would be temporarily forgotten. They would continue trying to
stay sane in that cramped, littered confine, grateful not to have been amongst the
unlucky ones for the day. Evenings too were peaceful, characterized by sleep
and frequent, almost soundless mating under the cloak of darkness. It’s the
mornings that were bad; it’s the mornings that held death.
The hold was a large, open
outdoor cage, constructed from wood and it held over 200 of them – male,
female, children and even babies. As large as it was, it was not big enough to
contain all of them at the best of times, and certainly not now that there was
unrest in the air as anticipation of the brutality that was about to take place
grew.
Suddenly, unceremoniously,
a dozen men burst into the hold. Strapping, muscular men with glistening, bare
upper bodies, wielding knives and hatchets savagely.
Moans and cries rent
the air as many tried to back away from the killers as they walked around the
hold, ready to select those who would die today.
“Don't be afraid,
Bovina.” Yaro spoke up beside her, trying to calm her down. “Insha Allah, they shall not pick us
today.”
Yaro and Bovina had
grown up together in the plains of Daura and were now sweethearts in captivity.
Daura… how she missed her home land – the peaceful fields, the warm afternoon
breeze, the simplicity and calm that life was…
It had all been roughly
snatched away from her; whole families taken violently and brought to this
place where they were put in captivity and harvested daily for meat.
“Are we ever going to
be free?” Bovina responded to Yaro. “Are we ever going to leave this place
alive?”
Any response he wanted
to give was cut off when four of the killers came to them and roughly began
examining their bodies, prodding at their flesh and slapping their buttocks. Then
one of the men threw a rope around one of Yaro’s legs and began to pull him out
with it, while another supported by pushing Yaro from the back.
Yaro was big and quite
strong so he gave the men a tough time, digging his heels into the ground and
refusing to move. But the men managed to overpower him with the rope they
employed and the heavy sticks they hit him with, slowly but surely dragging him
out of the hold.
“Nooooo, nooooo,” Bovina
bawled. “Not Yaro, nooooo!"
But she might as well
have saved the energy for her own resistance. The remaining pair of men, same
way as had been done with Yaro, threw a rope around her legs and began dragging
her out of the cage. Her time was up too.
Bovina found her heart
thumping wildly in her chest, extreme fear surging in her veins, knowing fully
well the cruel death that awaited her.
Outside, she saw that
Yaro was still giving the men a run for their money. The moment he spotted one
of the other prisoners being forced, legs tied, onto a dirty concrete slab
that still sported bloodstains and waste matter from the previous morning’s
killings, with a long, curved knife held to his neck, a strength ten times his
usual came upon him. He struggled wildly against the rope that held him and
another one was quickly thrown around his head with more blows falling upon him
from the sticks the men held. Still, he continued to struggle, and it seemed
like he was going to gouge the eyes out of one of the men at any moment.
The men called out for
back up, and the next thing Bovina saw was another man come rushing down with a
bucket of steaming water which he threw all over Yaro.
Yaro let out a bellow
as the hot water seeped fierily into his flesh. He stood stock still and his
muscles began jerking in pain. As he stood there, almost paralyzed by the
intense pain, the men were able to easily drag him the rest of the way to the slaughter
slab. They forced him down and tied up all his limbs so that he was completely immobile.
Horrified, Bovina
watched, close enough to see every little detail, as one of the men picked up
the slaughter knife and expertly drove it through Yaro’s jugular vein. She watched
as her lover's blood and life force burst out in spurts, the life draining out
of his muscles and eyes.
For the first time in her
life, she wished she was able to cry. But all she could do was howl in pain and
deep loss.
Then it was her turn.
She could not even
fight them anymore, resigned now to her impending doom, and let them lead her
like a sheep to the slaughter.
Beside her, another
captive was being forced to the slab too, and was roughly dragged across the
concrete by at least 4 men, his excreta, forced out of his system by fear, trailing
behind him. She also saw another being hacked open and cut into bits and parts
that were quickly stacked into waiting basins.
She wanted to close
her eyes, but could not, so she continued to stare with wide, rolling eyes as
the butcher's knife came down on her throat and dug into it with an intense
sting.
“It's fine that humans
eat us. It's fine that we are just beef to them. But why do they do it with so
much cruelty and torture? We have feelings too; we hurt too,” were her last
thoughts as her life drained away onto the dirty concrete slab of the abattoir.
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