Amnesty International - Freedom: Stories Celebrating the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Compilation copyright 2009 by Amnesty International UK

Short stories copyright 2009 by the individual contributors, unless noted otherwise below.

All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Broadway Paperbacks, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
www.crownpublishing.com

Broadway Paperbacks and its logo, a letter B bisected on the diagonal, are trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Originally published in Great Britain by Mainstream Publishing Company (Edinburgh) Ltd., Edinburgh, in 2009.

March of the Dinosaurs by Liana Badr first published in 2007 by Saqi Books (Lebanon)

Comrade Vadillo by Hctor Aguilar Camn first published in 1991 by Ediciones Cal y Arena (Mexico) in Historias conversadas

Gray Wolf (A Folk Tale) by Alan Garner first published in 1998 in the UK by Scholastic Publishers

Asylum from Jump And Other Stories by Nadine Gordimer. Copyright 1991 by Felix Licensing, B.V. Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux LLC

Mr. President by Juan Goytisolo first published as the sections Espejo de demcratas (pp. 412), Aviso para malpensados (pp. 4950) and El uno y nico (pp. 12931) comprised within the novel El exiliado de aqu y de alla by Galaxia Gutenberg/Circulo de Lectores (2008) to be published in English by The Dalkey Archive Press

Busy Lines by Patricia Grace first published in 2006 by Penguin Books New Zealand in the anthology Small Holes in the Silence

Tetanus by Joyce Carol Oates first published in TriQuarterly in FallWinter 2008

The Scream by Rohinton Mistry first published in 2008 by McLelland and Stewart (Canada)

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Freedom : stories by the worlds most accomplished writers on the Declaration of Human Rights / Amnesty International. 1st ed.
p. cm.
Summary: Inspired by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), which starts memorably with Article 1: We are all born free and equal, Freedom is an enthralling anthology of short storiesProvided by the publisher.
1. Human rightsFiction. 2. Short stories. 3. Fiction21st century. 4. United Nations. General Assembly. Universal Declaration of Human Rights. I. Amnesty International.
PN6120.95.H784 F74
808.83108355dc22
2010010573

eISBN: 978-0-307-58884-5

v3.1

S torytelling is as old as the hills. It is the ancient and powerful way we humans have always used to communicate. Throughout our lives we tell stories and we listen to them, and when we do this we are building bridges. Our stories are carried on our breath into the minds and hearts of others.

Stories interpret the world around us, nature, stars, the movement of the sea, life itself. They explore the past, connect to the present, imagine the future. They have carried our histories, cultures, traditions, spirituality and morality through the ages.

And stories entertain and amuse, provoke and inspire. Through them we see into the world we live in, the people we are, the people we can be, and we understand that we are human. In many parts of Africa, we have an untranslatable word for humannessubuntu. At the heart of this concept, this philosophy, in all its versions, is this message: a person is a person because of other people.

The best of imagined stories always carry the ring of human truth and reality, while real-life stories convey the joy of love and achievement or tell painful truths of the agony of inhumanity. They touch the heart and stimulate the imagination, as the stories in this wonderful collection show. At the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa, I witnessed many remarkable people telling their own stories with dignity amidst their anguish and trauma. These stories are the stuff of history, they light up or dim the eyes of both teller and listener.

This book Freedom is a collection of stories that celebrate the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It is now sixty years since the United Nations adopted the Declaration, a remarkable achievement in itself, being the first international proclamation of the inherent dignity and equal rights of all people. It arose, like a fresh dawning sun, out of the terrible shadows of the Second World War. It is the foundation stone of all international human rights law and still holds enormous ethical value for all of us, wherever in the world we happen to live.

It is a huge tragedy that the Declarations enlightened aspirations, the upholding of individual freedom, social protection, economic opportunity and duty to community, remain unfulfilled for so many people today. But the fact that so many people today know about it, know that these rights belong to us all, and stand up for our rights, is an enduring sign of hope that humanity will prevail.

Why are our human rights so crucial? It is because they have grown out of humankinds great instinct for what is right. We are all born free, as the Declaration says. We are made for goodness and for justice; we are not created for greedy, selfish and cruel behavior, nor to be enslaved to the whims of others. Dictators and those who keep them in power prefer to ignore that this is a moral universe and that right and wrong matter. The proof of the inherent morality of the universe is that we are all appalled when we encounter abuseswhen, for example, we see long lines of refugees fleeing from atrocities. And we all know true goodness, true compassion, when we encounter it, because it shines out, often in the most humble of surroundings.

It always takes my breath away to see people sacrifice their comfort and even risk their lives to help others where they perceive a hurt or an injustice. It happensand more often than you may thinkbecause we are not single entities operating in a vacuum. No, we are all connected to one another, and our behavior, whether good or bad, reverberates across society and down the generations. This is ubuntu, again, and it is the essence of being human. If we dehumanise others, we dehumanise ourselves.

And what have art and literature to do with human rights? They are all bound up with this wonderful talent we humans have: to empathize with others. If, by reading any one of the stories in this anthology, we are enabled to step, for one moment, into another persons shoes, to get right under their skin, then that is already a great achievement. Through empathy we overcome prejudice, develop tolerance and ultimately understand love. Stories can bring understanding, healing, reconciliation and unity. Our own feeling for their inner truth, our capacity to empathize with others, brings us closer to God.

If you are reading this book, there is a good chance that you have at least some of the advantages of freedomyou have been educated and are able to read, you can afford to buy this book or live in a country where public lending libraries exist, and, finally, you are permitted to read this book, which is doubtless banned in many countries of the world. No part of the world is free of injustice. All of us, everywhere, have a responsibility to try to make things better.

This is truly a great book of Amnestys. To harness the God-given creative talents of these wonderful writers and connect them with each Article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is an inspiration. We are made for the sublime and for freedom: it is my hope that these stories will help us to achieve it. For these writers to contribute their remarkable gifts to the cause of human rights is a sign that injustice will not have the last word.