The carts were jammed for thirty miles along the Karagath Road.  Water buffalo and cattle were hauling the carts through the mud. No end and no beginning.  Just  carts loaded with  everything  they  owned. The old men and women, soaked through, walked along keeping the cattle moving. The Maritza was running yellow up to the bridge. Carts were jammed solid on the bridge and camels bobbing along through them. Greek cavalry herded along the procession. Women and kids were in carts crouched with mattressed, mirrors, sewing machines, bundles. There was a woman having a kid with a young girl holding a blanket over her and crying. Scared sick looking at it.  It rained all through the evacuation.

From “Indian Camp,” by Ernest Hemingway

Now that we just celebrated Memorial Day, it is proper that we address the ordeal the civil population endures during hostilities.  Hemingway’s masterful description of an evacuation in the First World War paints a vivid portrait of what takes place under terrible circumstances.  He ends with a sensitive note that steers the attention of the reader toward two individuals—a woman and her little daughter—so that they can put a human face at the center of the story and experience the suffering of their fellow man:    “There was a woman having a kid with a young girl holding a blanket over her and crying. Scared sick looking at it.  It rained all through the evacuation.”

This description reminds me of Salomón Ben Verga’s narrative of the Jewish exodus from Spain in 1492 that I translated into English for “The Poppy Flower,” one of my favorite tales of my book “The Silver Teacup.”

 “And so everywhere they encounter afflictions, extensive and somber darkness, horrendous tribulations, rapacity, sadness, starvation, and plague. Some left by sea, looking in the waves for a path, but there the Hand of God disfavored them, confounding and exterminating them, because many of the banished were sold as slaves in every corner on earth and quite a few fell into the sea, ultimately sinking like lead.”