The Words That Burn: An Exile's Diary of Survival

The notebook was hidden under a loose floorboard near the radiator. Eleni found it by accident while searching for a lost earring. A worn leather cover, no inscription. Inside, tight, nervous handwriting that raced across pages as if every word had to be captured before it escaped. She sat on the floor, back against the cold wall of this Brussels apartment she had just moved into, and began to read. The first entry was dated three years earlier. “Today I bought this notebook. I don’t know why. Perhaps to prove I still exist.” The author’s name was Selam. Ethiopian, like Eleni. Thirty-two years old. A lawyer in Addis Ababa before everything shifted. The pages first described fragments of daily life: the taste of morning coffee, light on the Entoto hills, her niece’s laughter. Then, gradually, shadows lengthened. Allusions to threats, disappeared friends, nights spent listening to street sounds while holding her breath. Eleni turned pages slowly, as if moving through fog. She recognized this language of fear. She had spoken it herself. The account of the escape came without warning. A March night. A backpack packed for weeks. A smuggler whose name went unmentioned. Crossing Sudan, suffocating days in overloaded trucks, avoided glances. Selam wrote with surgical precision, as if noting details—the color of sand, the smell of gasoline, the metallic taste of fear—could protect her from madness. “I became a body in motion, a bundle of taut nerves. My thinking stopped. Only my sense