It was a peaceful morn at the foot of the mountains. The sun looked coyly radiant, slowly rising from behind the hill. I must have been sitting on the cement steps because my derriere was going numb from the cold despite the warm embrace of the morning, filled with the chirping of birds and the delicate ringing of tiny bells at the fascia of the church—bells that danced with the gentlest rustling of the wind.
I detached myself from the earth and stretched my legs, reaching upward like a tree that had sprung from nowhere. That was when I saw it—a swirl of dust rising in the distance, small at first, like the breath of the land exhaling. But it grew, fast and furious, until it was a thick veil, turning the sun into a pale shadow behind a brown screen. Then, emerging from that storm of earth and motion, hundreds of thousands of black dots appeared in the distance.
Farmers turned warriors, marching behind a figure atop a white stallion. Their steps—deadly quiet from where I stood—carried them forward, closer and closer, until I could make out faces, the dust clinging to their brows, the glint of sunlight on their weapons. The emperor stopped. Dismounted. Walked forward, up the stone steps.
He prostrated before the great doors of the church. Two deacons and a priest emerged, carrying Saint George’s icon in a gilded frame. The emperor’s lips moved in supplication, but his voice was lost to me. I only saw the way his shoulders lifted and fell, how the wind tugged at his cloak as though trying to carry his words up to the heavens. The wind shifted and the dust, caught in its grip, began to rise again. Higher, higher—until it curled into the air, settling over the battlefield.
Adwa. A barren land stretched before me, the sun already past its peak. The smell of gunpowder, of sweat, of something sharper—iron and earth mingled in the afternoon air and assaulted my senses.
Now I saw women and one big lady whose presence commanded attention and alertness wherever she traversed, tending to the wounded. Burnt and pale faces gathered in one place; the war, decisively over in just hours. Some were kneeling beside those who had arrived with chains and guns, but who now lay broken, their bodies trembling, their eyes empty of conquest. I saw one of them, an invader, reach for his canteen, his fingers shaking too much to grasp it.
A shadow passed over him. A hand—dark, soft, steady—lowered a water skin to his lips. He drank without looking up. Under the great acacia tree, priests moved among the wounded, whispering prayers in hushed voices, their fingers pressing crosses into foreheads. Far beyond them, the emperor knelt on the blood-soaked earth with a triumphant, but painful gratitude.
The land did not yield. The people did not break. Shadows of warriors stretched across the dust, their figures bent but unbroken. The clang of metal had faded, but their echoes remained, clinging to the wind, to the mountains that bore witness, to the hands that still clenched the earth as if to reassure it, we are still here.
The wind wove through the battlefield, through the footprints of those who had stood, who had fought, who had refused to be uprooted. It carried with it whispers of their defiance, the undying hum of resilience. Evergreen was the breath of the living and the silence of the fallen. Evergreen was the land that did not bow. Evergreen was the memory that would not fade.
A woman sat at the edge of the battlefield, a tattered shawl wrapped around her shoulders, her hands caked with the blood of those she had saved. A child stood beside her, wide-eyed, taking it all in. He pointed to the bodies scattered across the dust, his voice hesitant.
“Did they win?” he asked.
The woman did not answer immediately. She reached down, took a handful of earth in her palm, let it slip through her fingers. The soil, dark and rich, clung to her skin. Finally, she whispered, “They did not lose.”
The child frowned, looking up at her. “But they are gone.”
She turned to him, her eyes steady. “Gone? No, child. They are here.” She placed her hand over his chest. “They live in the breath you take. They live in the ground beneath your feet. They live in the wind that carries their name.”
The child exhaled, slow and deep, as the wind stirred around them.
And when the wind came again, it carried the same word, again and again, through the trees, through the bells, through the bones of the earth itself:
Evergreen.
Writer | Sofia Ahmed Seid ’26 | sseid26@amherst.edu
Editor | Amaya Ranatunge ’28| aranatungearachchi28@amherst.edu
Artist | Amaya Ranatunge ’28 | aranatungearachchi28@amherst.edu