Memories of Green: San Francisco #9

Catch up on Mog: San Francisco with a chilling entry from an unregistered immigrant in a dangerous world.

 

[Final post of recently pacified Unregistered Immigrant]

 

 

This will be my final post. By the time you read this, I will surely be dead.

 

Remember as you read this, that I was just like you, no different, I was just as hopeful, just as human as you are. My hands quiver typing this, as I know this will be the last document of my existence, my final digital footprint.

 

I better make it count.

 

The only difference between you and I is that I was not born in America, I was born in Ravenna, Italy. I was a painter there until just two years ago, I had a family who supported and loved me, a job that I enjoyed, a nice place. I had a life. That was, until war loomed at our borders. America’s war finally reached my country. We knew we had little chance of holding The Administration back, I knew my family would have little chance of even surviving America’s invasion. It was only a matter of time until they swept across the rest of Europe.

 

My wife and I made the decision to move to America to flee The War, Europe was no longer safe, and at the time it seemed like a better idea to try and hide in the belly of the beast than to flee from the beast itself. We thought that the Americans must have it a lot better than us, such an economic superpower would surely treat their own citizens well. We thought we could blend in with society, become American citizens and enjoy their rights, luxuries and privileges, rather than being slain by American soldiers.

 

In hindsight, I wish i’d stayed and fought, rather than watching my country burn on CNN.

 

When we heard France had fallen, we pushed our immigration papers through the system as fast as we could. I must have gone to the US embassy at least three times a week before it shut its doors. Swearing to the officer that we wanted to contribute toward Patriotism, to help build America from within. I must have lied to that guy about a hundred times over the space of a month to get a visa. We were finally able to get tickets for a flight to New York just as American forces rolled over the border into Oulx. I feel like such a coward looking back. On the flight over the Atlantic me and my wife talked about how this was the best course of action, the only way to keep our children safe. Surely the Americans would look after us if we were willing to contribute, to work? My children would grow up well educated, not scarred by war. We sided with the enemy for the sake of our children, at the time, we thought it was the only solution.

 

When we arrived in America, we were so full of hope, we thought we had escaped the horrors we would have faced in Italy. We were so wrong. Our status as immigrants was noted as soon as we got through passport control, and we were taken, with about twenty other immigrants to be “Registered”. An Administration officer briefed us that, as immigrants, we were only allowed into certain parts of Manhattan, straying into “Patriot-only” zones would result in imprisonment or “Pacification”. We were assigned jobs assembling munitions for The War in the Industrial Zone on Liberty Island, the officer said it was unlikely that further employment would be available at this time, and that many employers did not look favourably on employing our people due to the war. My wife and I looked at each other, I was glad the children didn’t understand that their parents would be assembling the weapons that would be used to murder their people. Its something i’ve carried with me since my first day at work.

 

Even being presented with manual labour, and few prospects of higher employment, I still held on to the idea that life over here would be better than it would have been facing the war in Italy. Even after the Administration shaved our heads to make us easily identifiable, even after they emptied our bank accounts as a “Donation to patriotism”, even after they shipped us off to our tiny, dirty apartment in the “Naturalisation zone”, I still took solace in the fact that my wife would be safe, that my children would be safe. That let me sleep soundly for the first few nights.

 

The sense of security diminished every day. Every day my wife and I would go to work not knowing whether we would return. You would hear daily reports around the factory that workers had been blown apart by unsafe explosives. Some of the people I showered with on a daily basis would disappear, and we’d know that they had been killed on the last shift. We always had to be vigilant for hazards, potentially dangerous catwalks or equipment around the factory. When you’re working fourteen hours a day, six days a week, its hard to maintain that constant state of awareness. We had to get through each shift for the sake of providing for our children, I wish I could say the pay was worth it, but the Administration took 50% of our salaries as “Naturalisation tax”. It gave us a paltry amount to live on, and my children grew thinner and paler by the month.

 

Life at home wasn’t much better. My wife and I regularly had our apartment inspected by Administration officials, to make sure we weren’t hiding any “Subversive material”, they tore our home apart on a monthly basis. Nobody apologised to us when they found nothing. We were required to “Re-register” every month or we would be taken away, watch some propaganda videos and get our heads shaved, fill out a few forms, it was a degrading inconvenience. The Administration turned off the power, heating and water in our apartment at ten every night, we all huddled together in one bed when the nights grew cold.

 

American children would sometimes visit the Naturalisation Zone. To try and cheer our children up, my wife and I brought our kids to the window one day, we pointed at the children on the street and said they could go down and play if they wanted to. The children on the street saw my son peeping through the window and started throwing stones our apartment. We took the kids away from the window and told them they could never go outside without us.

 

Day by day we lost hope that things would ever get better. Between watching Italy burn on CNN, and fearing death ourselves at work, we began to feel that we had made an error in judgement. No one in our apartment complex spoke Italian, or even English, we were isolated in a foreign country. I couldn’t even call back home, because everyone I knew was probably dead. Most nights, once the children had fallen asleep, I spent my time weeping and apologising to my wife. She could say nothing that would make me feel that we had done the right thing. One night my wife ran her hands over her shaved head and said she missed being able to brush her hair. We both cried into each other that evening.

 

There was a poster in the factory one day that advertised a Patriot Academy nearby. It was a boarding school which promised solid education, good food and accommodation for children between four and fourteen. My children had become as thin as antennas by the time I read the poster. We were running out of money to buy more food, and the Administration were taking more and more of my salary as “Naturalisation tax” every month. My wife and I feared that if we couldn’t get a pay rise soon, then our children would starve. Naturally we came to the conclusion that sending our children to a Patriot Academy would at least keep them safe, they would be warm and well fed every day. We could still see them every two months, and they would get a good American education. If that was one thing we could give them as parents after the hell we’d put them through, it would be enough. We sat down one evening and signed the enrolment forms. The week after we put our children on an Administration bus and kissed them goodbye. My daughter waved at me until the bus rounded the corner and my wife and I slept happy that night, knowing our children were safe.

 

Its been a year now and I still haven’t seen my children again. My coworkers in the factory wouldn’t speak to me for a week after i’d told them where my kids had gone. They couldn’t even look me in the eye.

 

My wife and I sat in silence and watched CNN the day Rome fell. We knew there was nothing left of our country now. We didn’t know why the Administration invaded. As far as the papers back home had told us, it was something to do with money, seizing our economic assets. I’m sure theres a much better explanation than that, but I never busied myself with politics, I wish I had now. I’m even in tears writing this.

 

They accused me of stealing from the factory canteen a few months after we sent the children away. Civil Protection burst into our apartment while my wife and I were watching TV and dragged me off the sofa. They pushed me against a wall and hammered into me with their batons, and then they rounded on my wife and beat her to the ground too. One of them pressed their boot against my face and asked my wife whether I had been stealing. She said nothing in response, she was afraid of saying the wrong thing. They kicked my teeth out in response to her silence, and left us both sobbing on the floor until the lights went out.

 

I came home from work the day after and my wife had hung herself.

 

I ran from that apartment that day. I haven’t stopped to think about it until now, and its only now in my last hours that I can grieve for my wife, my children, my country. Some of the guys in the factory told me about a library basement in the middle of New York. The Administration were pretty pervasive in their search for Unregistered Immigrants but they never looked there. They said the library staff would feed and clothe anybody who stayed there, so long as we kept out of sight when the Administration were around. With nothing left, and nothing to lose, i’ve stayed down in this basement since I left that Apartment. Life has been better since. The library staff have made sure i’ve eaten healthily and kept warm, I feel a lot stronger than I did back in the Naturalisation Zone.

 

They often came and told me that they were working on getting me into the countryside. Things were easier out there, they said. People like me could apparently blend in and live a normal life, free of beatings or factories. They said that someone called Fixxxer knew how to get me past the checkpoints and out of the city, and they were waiting to hear back off him. I still don’t know much about Fixxxer, but the library staff told me that he’s “The only one who has it all figured out”. I don’t know whether he’s a freedom fighter, or the leader of some underground railroad for Unregistered’s. They seem to think he has all the answers though. They kept the Administration from finding me, so I trusted their judgement, and I was far to weak, both in spirit and body, to ask too many questions.

 

The only question I have asked is whether we could go to the Patriot Academy to see my children. They told me it would be too risky to go out in public, they looked at me with sympathy each time I asked. I don’t even want to list what has gone through my head when I think about the fate of my children.

 

Recently though the staff at the library have been talking in hushed tones upstairs, they’ve stayed out of my way a lot. I heard one of them speaking about how they had “Lost contact with Fixxxer” recently and that they were under observation from the Administration. People have come to check on me less and less as the weeks have drawn on, and I am too nervous of being discovered to go upstairs and ask whats going on, so I just listen. Tonight, just before the staff turned the lights out for the night and went home for the evening I heard them saying that to get the Administration off their backs they would have to report me. They were going to tell some civil protection officers that they found me hiding in their basement and they didn’t know what to do with me. They said that it would make them look like patriots, they were so scared of being sent to the camps. They turned the lights out and left the building and left me in the dark and I knew it was my last night here. I couldn’t run, there was nowhere to run to anymore. So I went upstairs, and turned one of the library computers on to write this to you, my story, someone has to know. Every time you pass an unregistered immigrant on the street, see one of my people be dragged into a van and taken away, know that we are just like you, and you are just like us. Know the hard times that we experience, know that we are not stealing your jobs, corrupting your people with our customs, or preaching hatred. We are simply trying to survive against your government. Nothing more.

 

As I heard one of the librarians talk about turning me in this evening I almost wept. Now that I have had time to think about it, if I were in his position, I would do the same. I fled my country and my friends and left them to burn just to survive. Now someone is turning me into the government to protect his life.

 

Who is worse?

 

 

[Pacify all staff in Five Corners Library – Bureau of Security] 

 

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