Chapter 2: Roots
Editor’s Note
By Melda Sherman
Living in Limbo is a narrative series adapted from true migration stories. This is not simply the story of one Adem or one David.
Adem’s journey carries traces of the real experiences of dozens of people who have traveled through Mexico in an attempt to reach the U.S. border. David’s story reflects another side of migration: the memories of Americans whose families arrived in the United States from somewhere else generations ago.
Names, characters, and certain events have been adapted for the purpose of storytelling.
But the emotions are real.
The goodbyes are real.
The fears are real.
And so is the hope carried by those who wait before that gate.
Because migration is a story as old as humanity itself. Perhaps people are a little like seeds.
We are born somewhere, put down roots in its soil, and learn to call it home.
Then, one day, a storm comes.
Sometimes a tsunami.
Sometimes a fire.
Sometimes war, poverty, fear, or simply the possibility of a better life.
And the wind uproots us. Carries us away. Drops us onto unfamiliar soil. And there, somehow, we try to take root again.
Perhaps that is what migration really is:
The struggle of a seed, carried to another land, to grow again.
Previously: The Border
In the first chapter, we met Adem, a man living in Ağrı, Turkey.
Agri/Turkiye
Hoping to build a better future for his family, he risked almost everything he had and decided to try to reach the United States through Mexico.
The land inherited from his father…The mortgages…The tractor sold to a neighbor… And a future he was trying to buy for $12,000.
. But when Adem reached Mexico City, he was sent back before his journey had truly begun.He returned to his village. To Aygül.To his children.To his own dinner table.From the outside, everything appeared to be the same again. But it wasn’t.Because sometimes a person returns home without ever truly coming back.Adem’s body was in Ağrı.His mind was still standing before the gate he had failed to cross.
. Thousands of miles away, at the San Diego–Tijuana border, David was on duty when he noticed a barefoot little boy behind the fence.
USA
He thought of his own son.
One question crossed his mind:
“What makes him any different from my son?”
Two men stood on opposite sides of the same gate.One wanted to cross it. The other was responsible for guarding it.Now, the story takes us further back.To their roots. Because sometimes, to understand where someone wants to go, we must first understand where they came from.
Roots
San Diego was still asleep.
David sat alone in the kitchen, going through an old box he hadn’t opened in years.Inside were photographs.Yellowed letters.Old passports.A few documents with curled edges…A small archive of a life that had belonged to his grandfather.His grandfather had immigrated to the United States from Italy in the 1950s.David, on the other hand, had been born in America.
America was not somewhere he dreamed of reaching.
It was home.His childhood.His school.His wife.His children.But as he looked through those old letters, a simple truth suddenly felt different:
The country he called “home” had once been a foreign land his grandfather was desperately trying to reach.David opened one of the letters. A few lines his grandfather had written decades earlier were still legible:
“The sea was very dark. But the smell of the land carried the promise of a new life…”
David fell silent. He thought about how much a family’s story could change in only a few generations. Once, his grandfather had waited for a gate to open.Today, his grandson worked at a gate others were waiting to cross.There was a strange irony in that. David picked up another old photograph.The boy in it was his father.He was thirteen years old.The Bronx, late 1960s.His father rarely talked about his childhood.But there was one story David remembered well.When some of the children at school learned that his father was the son of Italian immigrants, they mocked his last name, his family’s food, the things that made his home seem different from theirs.For a thirteen-year-old child, it doesn’t matter how large the world really is. Sometimes the whole world is nothing more than a school hallway.And a few careless words spoken in that hallway can remain inside someone for years.
. One afternoon, his father came home upset.David’s grandfather sat his son beside him and said:
“No matter where you go in this world, the first walls you must tear down are the ones inside you.”
David had known that story since childhood.But now, for the first time, he heard it differently.Because every morning, he went to work and stood before a real wall.
Real fences.
Real gates.
Real people.
The grandson of a man who had once waited for a gate to open was now standing on the other side of one.
A Second Goodbye in Ağrı
Adem had returned.But the journey inside him had never ended. His children were running around him again. Aygül was pouring his tea again.In the evenings, they sat around the same table.Adem tried to smile. He listened to the children’s stories. Sometimes he even joked with them. But every now and then, Aygül noticed his eyes drifting somewhere far away.
Adem was there.
And yet, part of him wasn’t.
He had promised he would never try again.
He had promised Aygül.
He had promised himself.
But as the days passed, the gate he had failed to cross grew larger in his mind.
Eventually, he decided to try one more time.
This time, by another route.
Through an old acquaintance, he contacted a man named Derman, who claimed to know different ways of reaching the border.
“This route is harder,” Derman told him.He paused.
“But there are fewer controls.”
Adem said nothing. Perhaps he had already made his decision. Desperation has a strange way of changing our relationship with fear.Something we would normally say “never” to can slowly begin to look like our only option. This goodbye with Aygül was different.The first time, there had been excitement alongside the fear.Now they both knew what the journey could mean.Aygül looked at him.Perhaps she wanted to say, “Don’t go.”
But she didn’t.
Adem could have said, “Everything will be all right.”
He didn’t say that either.Because neither of them knew if it was true. As Adem walked out the door, Aygül simply watched him leave.Sometimes, when we send someone we love away, we cannot follow them. So we tuck a piece of our heart into their pocket and send it with them. Perhaps that is why no migrant ever truly travels alone. They carry the fears, prayers, and longing of those they leave behind. Adem set out once again. But this time, there would be no bright airport corridors ahead of him.
The road waiting for him would be longer.
Darker.And far more dangerous.
He did not yet know that somewhere in Mexico, he would find himself traveling beside people who had been scattered there from different corners of the world.
Different countries.
Different languages.
Different stories.
But the same hope.
Perhaps people really are like seeds.
And once again, the wind had begun to carry Adem away.
To be continued…
Chapter 3: The Wind
Some doors open. Others remain within us.
