The hours passed, the pain became unbearable. I felt my body tearing apart from the inside. I thought I was going to die, I wanted to die. But something inside me refused to give up. Not now, not after coming so far. And then, in a final effort that drained me of all strength, I felt my son emerge. Matis caught him with trembling hands, that small, slippery body covered in blood. And for a terrible moment there was no sound, just silence. The silence of death. My eyes filled with tears. “No, no, not this, not after all this.” But then Matis turned the baby over, patted his back, and suddenly a cry tore through the silence of the chapel. A shrill, furious, living cry. My son was crying. My son was alive. Matis burst into laughter, a nervous, incredulous laugh, and he placed the baby on my chest, saying, “It’s a boy, a beautiful boy.” I held him close, this warm, screaming little being, and for the first time in months I cried. Not from fear, not from pain: from joy, from relief, from love.
Matis knelt beside us all night, watching over us like a silent guardian. In the morning, he cut the cord with his military knife, washed my son with water from the nearby stream, and wrapped him in his own shirt. He looked at me with something in his eyes I had never seen in him before: tenderness, wonder, responsibility. “What are you going to name him?” he asked. I thought for a moment, looking at that small, wrinkled, perfect face. “Henri,” I said, “like my father.” Matis smiled. “Henri, that’s a good name.” From that day on, we were no longer just two fugitives; we were a family. An impossible, forbidden, dangerous family, but a family nonetheless.
Leave a Comment