Hi! I’m Mundoitji, a Shark Island escapee.
It was a bitterly cold morning, and thin layers of ice had gathered on nylon huts.
The firing squad locked the war prisoners inside the ice-covered nylon shacks. The soldiers cuffed icy metal rings around our hips. Suddenly, a long-bearded man showed up. “I need three prisoners,” he said.
Instantly, the prisoners wrestled and stampeded each other towards the steel gate. Soon, flabby breasted-women lined up before the trader, as he inspected our numbed hands. The Billy-goat bearded man singled out three women. “You’ll dig sugar-coated stones,” said the trader, sipping a steamy drink. The vapour from the mug clouded his facial hair.
“What’s a diamond?” he asked. A long pause in the breezy cold followed before I lifted up my shivering hands. “Precious stones,” I said. “You’ve to fill up these,” he said, pointing to flat-topped and rounded corner coffers.
“I’ll gift you genocide passports to work for settlers,” he said.
Suddenly, our knees touched the ground, and pleaded with him not to return us to the death-bound concentration camp.
We crammed at the back of a yellow truck, and skidded on a winter road towards a mound of sand. Later, he dropped us some metres from the icy sea.
As we pecked for gemstones, he grabbed a knife-edge tool and dug through a heap of sand. Beneath the reddish sand, he unearthed several upper jaws.
“Pack the grown-up skulls in here,” he said, pointing at the leathered cases. “The children’s skulls in the pyramid-shaped boxes,” he said, lifting a creepy skull.
Soon, we chock-filled five chests to the brim. Thereafter, blades of cold sandstones collected on our faces.
Now, the trader loaded five trunks at the back of the truck. Later, he dropped five more curved-lid trunks.
We mined more spine-chilling skulls, and packed them inside the musty coffers. By the 10th day in the frozen rain, we had packed 10 square-shaped trunks.
“Where are the diamonds?” I asked. In retort, the trader knocked my forehead with a metal tube of the gun. “The white diamonds will be shipped to Berlin,” he said, chuckling.
I swallowed 10-dust soot to represent the 10 souls I had disturbed. Here, I performed rituals, and worshipped the 10 human diamonds I’ve awaken.
* This is historical fiction