A Cry for Freedom

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A Cry for Freedom

A couple of years ago, I was driving with my daughter to Tauchera and Al Marej area just to wonder in the countryside and take some pictures. I was driving on the coastal road when, looking in the back mirror, I noticed something lying in the middle of the road that looked vaguely like a small animal or a bird. I stopped and drove in reverse until I arrived where it was. Eventually, it was a bird, a migrating one I guessed, hit by a car in its wing and it couldn’t fly anymore. My daughter wanted to take it home and try to treat it until it gets well, so we put it in the car and drove on.

And so that’s how it came to our house where my daughter put it in a spare cage and provided it with food and water and tried to ease its wound by spilling water to it.

She kept doing so for few days until she thought it got better and became in a good shape to fly. However, whenever approached it became very violent and tried to fly out hitting the roof and sides of the cage. It wasn’t tame neither thankful at all!

One week later, we took the cage and drove outside of town to the farms area near the airport of Benina where we stopped at a friend’s farm and put the cage on the ground and opened the door and there it was!! It just jumped out of the cage; it made such a piercing joyous cry (at home it never made a sound) and flew away like a bullet toward the trees!!!

I looked at some books and found out that that bird could be what we call in Arabic Gunbraقنبرة . It is a migrating bird that comes from the north to the African coast in Autumn looking for the warm climate in Winter time and it only makes a singing sound very rarely and only to express joy.