Upon arrival at my apartment in Khartoum it turned out that on my balcony in one of the plant pots I had two chicks. Not a typical place for keeping your young when you are a mother dove but I guess she had her reasons to pick that spot. January being one of the cooler months, but temperature was rather hot especially around midday. There was little shade there but the chicks must have been there for a few days and survived thus long. The mother was not to be seen and I left them alone. I would peek from the window at them every now and then. I liked the idea of having some creatures, even wild, to keep me company. In the evening I had a better look at them; one was literally half the size of the other. I worried for him but little was to be done. The next day when I got back home the little one was dead. Unsure of what to do I only shifted his dead body a little to give more space to the survivor. I wondered if the mother had been around. She must have been or else both of them would have been dead. Someone said it was the second lot on the balcony so I was a little more reassured that my buddy would be ok. The routine was now that every morning and every afternoon after work I would check in on my buddy. He was changing; the very fluffy feathers after a week resembled more what you would expect out of a bird. He got stronger and was standing on his feet, walking a little on the pot rim curious about the world around him. On the weekend I spotted the mother feeding him: they both got quite agitated and he would stick his beak down her throat and she regurgitated whatever she had inside her for him. I felt rather privileged to have this spectacle right in front of me on my balcony without David Attenborough’s narration. She was back quite often but this was the first day I was able to observe this. I had gotten rid of the dead body as I thought it started decomposing. Although in this heat I was not sure rotting would take place; maybe things just dried up completely? I had no idea. The buddy looked stronger every day as his mother seemed to have known what she was doing. Things were going well but on Sunday afternoon I got home and as usual checked in on the nest. It was empty! That was totally unexpected and I was confused. The bird would not have been strong enough to start learning to fly. I looked out down on the ground; no trace of a bird body. I was saddened. I went inside. A bird calling could be heard. The kind I used to hear at home but not here before. I looked outside; it was the mother calling out. I knew it was in vain, but whatever happened to my buddy I will never know. I was very sad: first the small one died, now this one. I did not want to take it as any bad omen. I tend not to be superstitious. The low sound of the dove mother only made the matters worse for me. I felt sorry for her.
I started thinking about her and all the efforts that she put in, all in vain. I was in a country that was not friendly to women. Or was it true about females in general? Or is the whole world not really female friendly?
Women here are wrapped up completely or nearly so. To be fair men are too but they are wearing white, the best colour for sunny weather. Most women just donning black dresses and black trousers underneath. This cannot be comfortable. I thought about how many children women here had and how they were not given a say in it. And how the female genitalia mutilation was certainly not a thing of the past.
I was thinking of the whole female part of the world, humans and animals. We have to bear the toll of reproduction. Well, with some exceptions in both worlds. How is this fair? How can the whole world be arranged this way? And how can we just sit there and take it? I could say I was lucky, I was given the free hand in organizing my own fertility to be controlled but I was in minority. A great minority throughout the history! Only recently had the medicine technology allowed women to think of their reproduction as something to be harnessed. And that only in some parts of the world. How lucky for me! All female animals seem to spend most their mature life either pregnant or looking after their young. Humans do not seem to be that different. As soon as kids grow up the older generation seem to demand grandchildren…
I was still thinking of that chick. Surely, some creature snatched him for food. Looking at nature and everything in it, we are all just a part of the pecking order. Each organism is seen as a morsel of food for its predator. This seems to be the working order of things. Be vigilant and run or be eaten.
Maybe being eaten at an early stage spares you the meaningless struggle of life?
Many years ago as a fun activity I was dragged to a paintball game. We were divided in two groups and there was to be a small prize for the winning team. It was hot. We were handed camouflage outfits, helmets and guns and off we went to the forested area to have our battle. It was a feeling I will never forget, a totally stupid feeling. You try to have your eyes around your head whilst you realize it is quite impossible. You feel vulnerable and exposed. That toy gun did not give much reassurance and it was a game after all but the feeling itself was still there. Nobody wants to be shot first! And it was not even real shooting! I do not remember how well I did, I thought this whole thing was just a pathetic attempt of entertainment but this feeling will stay with me even though it is not ever to be compared what it is like to be in nature surrounded by predators. But then maybe animals do not overthink it the way I do. So maybe they are not constantly feeling in danger…
But that brings me to the topic of war. The soldiers must feel the same thing only a few orders of magnitude inflated. After all the wars are real, the guns and bullets are real and it is their real life on the line. I will never understand how people can voluntarily enlist and go to the front. I will never understand how it is a turn on for some women to be with a guy in uniform. But then there are many things I will never understand. How can we consciously, willingly, go to war and how can we endorse wars? I can understand tribal conflicts where it is a lot manhandling your enemy. This seems fair: men against men. But when technology takes over and one bomb can take tens, hundreds of lives that is just silly. When politicians make deals behind closed curtains and naïve people decide to put their lives in danger just in the name of some ideology that to me is pure madness.
I wonder if this illusory feeling of men protecting the whole tribe is behind the culture of women toiling away day in and out to repay or to pre-pay the men for their protection? Is this kind of an investment to secure the men’s loyalty for when a conflict breaks out they will put themselves out and go and fight?
It seems to me that all over the world generally speaking women are oppressed. I am not a feminist; I would only like to see things fair. It does not take much observation to notice that in many parts of the world women are responsible for so many more things than men are. And yet we let the men dominate us, put us in an inferior position, make us run around the mill and then we come back and ask for more. Thinking back about this poor mother dove. She gave her chicks the best she had, building a nest, finding food, feeding them. Where was the male dove? Frolicking around or getting strong for another mating dance? And the next mating season she will go through exactly the same. I just look at this and a wave of sadness overcomes me. Why is life so unfair? Why was I left with no chick on my balcony? Who the fuck took my buddy away?