April 23

​‘It would have been easier if the decision had been taken in that summer of 1941 to abandon the trek to the mountains’ continues Great Grandmother later on.

‘But there was a big downside. If the pasture around the town was consumed by the herds over the summer there would be no winter feed. The herds would have to be slaughtered at the end of the summer. We would all be blamed for the destruction of our wealth when the men returned.

I was just starting on my teenage years. I was not consulted. But I listened to the arguments in the market place. No one wanted to take that decision to slaughter the herds’.
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‘Going up to the mountains was not easy either. In those days we had no trucks. We had mules, horses and some camels with a few old men as camel drivers. But we did it – not only in that year, but in the following summers until the men began to return in the years following the war when they took charge again’.
 
‘It took me a long time to admit it without feeling in some way guilty. But those summers were marvellous for me. Of course I worried, along with my mother, about what was happening to my father and elder brothers drafted into the army. But there was a freedom to my teenage life’.