Five years ago, I left, and now I lie inside this freezing, airless room, under a thin white cloth, remembering the distant past when I became a migratory bird. Flying across mighty mountains and over three seas, birds reached our village cradled between lakes. Thousands of birds returned each year to fill their bellies and wet their beaks in our lakes.
"No fireworks — the birds will scatter," — an unwritten law, etched into our marrow. Fallen chicks were raised as kin, feeding them fish, borrowing what we could to mend a broken wing. Hunters were chased from the land. Weddings passed in silence, festivals folded into hushed prayers. The only music we craved was birdsong — the fragile symphony of chirps and quarrels, whispers and wingbeats. Even the tree bearing the most nests became a quiet contest, pride wrapped in silence.
Birds came from the end of the world to visit us, while for us, the world ended where the lakes ended. Like algae clinging to the tank floor, surviving between drought and rain, shrinking and rising with the seasons, we stayed. We knew only how to hope for the birds' return. We cycled between disappointment and hope. We clung like algae, refusing to leave the waterless lake.
But I couldn't be like algae. I wanted wings to fly, fields to feed, stories to tell. A sky to glide, mountains to cross, seas to conquer. I left to seek my feeding ground.
From the marsh lake bund to dry foreign sand, where no bird had ever carried our stories, I flew. I arrived with nothing but the strength I borrowed from the birds, and the stubbornness rooted as deep as our lakes.
It has been five years since I last visited home. There was always something more. And every year, home drifted further away.
I saved enough. I was ready to return home from my feeding ground — not as a debtor, but as a bird returning from feeding ground, heavy with stories, stronger and wiser.
Now, it was my turn to leave. Instead, I lie here — my name hangs from my feet, misspelled. They are discussing how to send me back.
If my journey must end here, let it not be in vain. Send money to my family instead of me. Let the ticket money become survival money, as it always did.
And please — let my villagers hear the story I never got to tell.
"Remember — not everyone loves migrating birds like we do. My days here were long and hard, but I never shied away from toil. I stood tall, proud of my labor. I bowed to no one, never lost my honesty. And now, I leave this world with the quiet pride of a man who believed in honest labor. And don't forget — I am a bird, like the ones that came from the ends of the earth to feed in our lakes."