Conviction Wins

Dr. Guncha Gupta posted under Flash Fiction QuinTale-20 on 2020-06-19



March 2019  Naomi! Naomi!  Crowd went berserk as soon as she took to the stage. Garcia, her campaign manager, knew she owned them with her first sentence.  “My people! My family!  These are difficult times. We must stand united. We are a country of honest, hardworking people. We are no slaves, as President Ronaldi has had us believe. Black or white, all have equal rights. We must shed our fears and raise our voice against atrocities. So cast your vote. Vote, for equal rights, for freedom from discrimination”. Naomi! Naomi!  They loved her. When they heard her, they forgot their colour.  March 2018 “Señor, my husband has been missing”.  “Who is your husband madam?” officer on duty had asked her.  “Christano. He ... he works with the government,” Naomi mumbled.  “I am scared for his life”. “Now why would you say that?” the officer asked. “He has not been in agreement with President Ronaldi’s ways in office,” Naomi persisted. The officer looked shifty, letting out a suppressed cough. “Maybe he ran off with a chick,” goofily he chuckled at his sick joke.  Naomi tried to calm herself. “He is a family man Señor,” she stuttered, annoyed. “Come back in the morning señora. We cannot register your complaint yet,” the officer was rude. October 2018  She was working in her office when a shrill wail sounded. Naomi with a few others rushed outside. Uniformed officers were cuffing a black man, leading him towards a police jeep, roughing him up as they went. A wailing woman tried to pull them away. “Please señors!”  Naomi signalled to her staff, who brought the woman in her office.  Once calm, the woman told Naomi how her husband had witnessed assassination of a colleague of colour. He suspected President’s office to be involved. They framed him, taking him hostage. Naomi was transported back in time... Christano had been distracted that day. Naomi suspected it had something to do with a file she had seen on his desk. A picture of a coloured man clipped onto it with a cross mark in red. Disturbed, she made a mental note to confront him at night.  She never got a chance. Her husband disappeared that night. In the past few years atrocities against people of colour had increased.  Naomi had been devastated. A housewife with three kids. She might’ve succumbed to crime or depression like so many women around her, had she not decided to give life a fighting chance, picking up broken pieces of her life for her children and above all for a cause her husband seemed to have been fighting for. She decided to swim against the tide for her motherland, starting an NGO that helped women and children in need, to standing up against their President of fifteen years, Ronaldi Martínez. Today when the crowd cheered her wildly, she was proud to see how far sheer grit and determination had brought her. _______________________________ Glossary:  Señor: a form of address to a Spanish speaking man. Señorita: a title or form of address used of or to a Spanish-speaking unmarried woman, corresponding to Miss.

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