The Elephant Gate
1943
The elephant stood motionless among the chaos. Even as deadly ordnance rained from the heavens, obliterating everything around him, killing, maiming, burning, he stood as if chained to a tree. Animals in surrounding enclosures shrieked in terror as explosion after explosion shook the sandy ground, their cries filling the air like some grotesque death chorus, accompanied by the whistle of the falling hell. Walls around the elephant crumbled and fell, roofs were blown heavenwards, and bits of concrete and tile pelted his tough skin but he remained, unmoving. His cell mate had bolted from their enclosure as soon as a hole opened in the wall and he had the urge to run, too, but he couldn’t leave her, even as the fire to his back singed the coarse hairs on his back and tail. No, he couldn’t leave her. He had promised her that much.
The light from the fires in the surrounding buildings reflected in the twenty-two year old elephant’s eyes and the thick smoke stung his sensitive trunk. He could taste blood, which was oozing from his left ear, no doubt caused by the explosion that had destroyed his enclosure. The earth trembled beneath his massive hulk, more subtle than an earthquake, but far more deadly on that cold November night turned into hell.
Suddenly a giraffe, freed from its enclosure, bolted past, in search of safety. It disappeared in a flash and tears filled the elephant’s eyes when he again spied the giraffe, this time motionless on the ground.
Humans, just as confused as their animal charges, darted here and there in an attempt to avoid the catastrophe they had created. The elephant wanted to kill them, to make them pay for what they had done to her and for what they had done to his mother.
His mother.
It had already been twenty-two years since the death of his mother, but he still remembered that day, an elephant always remembers. He could still hear his mother’s voice, telling him the story of the creation and of the goddess. Back then he had been known as Da-ra, before the humans changed his name.
Standing amid the chaos of war, among the burning buildings and dying animals, the elephant’s thoughts drifted back to the jungles of his homeland, back to the time before.
1943
The elephant stood motionless among the chaos. Even as deadly ordnance rained from the heavens, obliterating everything around him, killing, maiming, burning, he stood as if chained to a tree. Animals in surrounding enclosures shrieked in terror as explosion after explosion shook the sandy ground, their cries filling the air like some grotesque death chorus, accompanied by the whistle of the falling hell. Walls around the elephant crumbled and fell, roofs were blown heavenwards, and bits of concrete and tile pelted his tough skin but he remained, unmoving. His cell mate had bolted from their enclosure as soon as a hole opened in the wall and he had the urge to run, too, but he couldn’t leave her, even as the fire to his back singed the coarse hairs on his back and tail. No, he couldn’t leave her. He had promised her that much.
The light from the fires in the surrounding buildings reflected in the twenty-two year old elephant’s eyes and the thick smoke stung his sensitive trunk. He could taste blood, which was oozing from his left ear, no doubt caused by the explosion that had destroyed his enclosure. The earth trembled beneath his massive hulk, more subtle than an earthquake, but far more deadly on that cold November night turned into hell.
Suddenly a giraffe, freed from its enclosure, bolted past, in search of safety. It disappeared in a flash and tears filled the elephant’s eyes when he again spied the giraffe, this time motionless on the ground.
Humans, just as confused as their animal charges, darted here and there in an attempt to avoid the catastrophe they had created. The elephant wanted to kill them, to make them pay for what they had done to her and for what they had done to his mother.
His mother.
It had already been twenty-two years since the death of his mother, but he still remembered that day, an elephant always remembers. He could still hear his mother’s voice, telling him the story of the creation and of the goddess. Back then he had been known as Da-ra, before the humans changed his name.
Standing amid the chaos of war, among the burning buildings and dying animals, the elephant’s thoughts drifted back to the jungles of his homeland, back to the time before.