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2001
Barnard/CBS Essay Contest -- Third Prize Winner
Landa Alhanshaly
Richmond Hill High School
Breaking
Free of My Chains
My
first memory is that of reality--an immutable reality.
My age I will never know for that is part of a
person's identity and I was not a person. Yet
I was given a name, "Harriet." "Harriet" is what
distinguished me from the horse I was to feed
every morning.
It was before dawn one morning; my orders had
been to go to the well and bring back a bucket
full of water with careful instructions not to
spill a drop. As I carried the heavy bucket, being
as small as I was, my energy flagged and I dropped
the bucket. I collapsed to my knees. When I finally
gathered my strength and opened my eyes, it was
then that I saw and understood the reason for
my misery, my melancholy and my despondent state
mirrored in the water. I saw before me my own
curious features enveloped in an ebony background
staring at me with horror.
During
the years girls mature, I began to question this
reality, my reality... my state of bondage. I would
ponder about the concept of a god and his decree.
I came to the conclusion that the exploitation
and degradation of one human by his brother or
the institution better known as slavery was against
the heavenly being's will. After all, was not
my mother's face flushed with pain during labor
as much as my master's mother's? Do I not possess
the capacity to think like my master? Do I not
have emotions like my master?
As
I grew to my full height, my desire to breathe
without fearing the merciless lash that drew blood
was ineffable. My partners in chains feared the
one moment of possible capture far more than a
life of slavery. Having not found prisoners willing
to escape with me, I finally gained enough courage
to flee this bondage on my own.
My
journey was difficult, and the fact that any second
I could be dragged back and devoured by the ferocious
and hideous monster of slavery of which my kind
had become the favorite delicacy was alive and
throbbing in my mind. The yearning to be free
could only be paralleled by my successfully attaining
it.
Although
I thought that once I reached freedom I would
never return to the slave world, I returned nineteen
times to help my fellow people escape to the north
following my only guide--the north star. During
the arduous trips we stopped at "stations," which
were inviting homes that provided us with sanctuary
and other basic necessities of life. The passengers
of this "train" of which I was "conductor" knew
fully well that they had bought one way tickets
and that there were no refunds, only severe punishments
in case of unforeseeable changes.
Harriet
Tubman has my admiration, a woman who saw through
the veil that covered the eyes of the majority
of the black people. This veil was manufactured
both consciously and unconsciously by society,
both whites and blacks alike. Tubman, an iconoclast
of her time, recognized all the evils of slavery,
escaped them and then returned to them, risking
the very freedom she had striven for. She did
that which so few of us could ever have done;
every time she made a trip, she sacrificed the
one thing she held most dear in her life in the
hopes of being able to share it with those less
fortunate.
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