Amir Saleem

Azmeera: The Harvest Girl

Azmera was the youngest of the nine children of Kashka, the old Ethiopian farmer living in a village some 70 kilometers from Adowa. Kashka named his last child Azmera which meant harvest for she was born in a year when he reaped the best crop of his life. Ever since however, there had been famine and war that plagued his world.

Azmera always wanted to work in the field helping her father and brothers but she was never allowed to do that; “you better tend to the house chores and help your ailing mother” his father would tell her and brisk out of the house.

She did help her mother, but at the same time she started experimenting with vegetation plants in her backyard. She was born intelligent with a great sense and keen eye for botany at its most informal stage. She kept all her efforts until after many months of hardship, she finally grew a large sized pumpkin, it was at least three times bigger than any she had ever seen. Now was the time to let her family know she wasn’t named Azmera for no reason.

She picked two of the most perfectly grown pumpkins and ran out towards the fields to show her father that he could be proud of Azmera. She was a few hundred yards away from the fields when she saw soldiers of the rebels entering her village; she thought of going back but it was too dangerous, they would burn her house anyway.

She ran faster towards the fields but it was too late; there was fire scattered around in the fields, many farmers and animals laid massacred in the ashes of months of their hardship.

Everything around her went blank, she couldn’t see anything but a blank sheet wrapped around her world; all she was left with was her name.