My Lozen, how can I write a story about you?

The words stand in my heart and wait like a swollen river to pour out, but they do not yet pour out. They wait for some sign and torture me. My head tells me to take a paper and a pencil and go, to write everything about you, about our country, our people, about the lost freedom, but my heart stops my hand, sinisterly. It asks me how our history can be written in the language of the white man when he will never understand it. The white man understands only numbers, and they have already been written out. They know when they first came to this country how many there were, and how many of us and they know that they’re still counting, how many of them there are now, and how many of us there are not. No, I cannot, my Lozen, write a story about you in numbers. I learned the language of the white man, and I learned to write in that language, but I think the words on this paper will capture your soul, and one does not capture a free soul, at least that’s what you said.
So I will speak, I will speak to all who want to hear the story of you and let the words fly freely like birds, like gentle winds.

I envied you, I admit when we were little, I envied you on everything. Your mother was skilled in many things. She knew how to fold and work the skin so well that your suits and loafers were always the softest and most beautifully decorated. You seemed to walk as if on top of a cloud in them, and I think walking is something you did the least of. Your brother Victorio carried you on his shoulders and bounced, and you giggled and held onto his hair like a horse’s mane. Then he put you next to him on a horse, so little, and your happiness was neverending. I envied you, I say, for being the daughter of the chief, for having such brotherly love, for having so much more than me. Somehow, when we got a little older, we started being friends. One day, my mother sent me to fetch water, and I sat on the bank of the river and watched its whirlpools. You came up to me and handed me a bundle. There was a nice piece of jerky in there. “Take it,  “you said with a smile. “No’’, I said, offended,  “my father is a good hunter, he always brings us good prey and we always have enough food “
 “I know that “, you said with a smile.  “I know you have enough food, I brought it to talk to you.“
 “To me? “ I asked in amazement.  “But you have brothers and sisters who love you, especially Victorio, he takes you everywhere with him.
 “Well, you also have brothers“
 “Yes, I do “, I said with a sigh,  “but they do not notice me, they are just waiting for me to grow up, so that they can marry me off as soon as possible’’.
 “That is why I will not marry, “ Lozen said calmly.
  “How?“ I wondered, “How can that be?’’
 “Well, yes, I told my father and mother, and they think I’m joking, only Victorio believes me, and that’s enough for me. “
So from that day on, we became inseparable, we grew together and I was overjoyed when we followed Victorio and learned from him everything a young Indian needs to know. I
 don’t want to tell you, white man, about what you already know. Conflicts were constant, killing on both sides. You wanted more and more, we defended what we had, and we had less and less, so in the end, we only got reservations back from your greedy hands, but the soul of an Indian cannot be imprisoned in a reservation.

I want to tell you about that soul, about her soul. Each village had its own medicine man and all these medicine men were a little strange and peculiar. Their huts are usually far away, they have their secrets and one goes to them because of illness or for a prediction. Ours was particularly strange, he lived in the opening of a rock and rarely went down to the village. He used to name the children of the village after his own volition, and those names were so ugly that we children laughed and teased each other. A blind eagle, a lame bison, a stupid owl, a silly storm, and so on. Lozen never wanted to go to him, she claimed that he did not know how to predict when it would rain and who would win which battle that well.
 “My mother taught me to make balms better than him, and my father taught  Victorio and me that our mind is always open and free, so if it is the will of the gods, we will acquire the gift of seeing better and farther than others. This gift was given to her and she knew how to use it. She could have predicted the arrival of the enemy or a stampede of wild animals, so we got out of the way in time.
But something was pulling me to go to the medicine man. I wanted so badly to know what name Lozen would go by. I secretly took her embroidered belt and rushed to the old man. I told him that the belt belonged to my little sister and that I would like to know what name he would give her. The medicine man took the belt, moved it from hand to hand for a long time, lifted it up, smelled it, and finally said  “Dream of the Wind“

  “What? “ The medicine man was silent.
 “How can the wind have a dream? You are many years old, old man, you have started… “
 “It can, the medicine man interrupted me, “everything that is created by the gods has a soul and has its own dreams “
 “A tree, a stone, and a river, too?  “ I asked in amazement.
 “Yes, tree,  stone, and a river. A small tree dreams of growing as soon as possible and being closer to the sky. A large tree no longer has such dreams, it realizes that attachment is its destiny, so it dreams of having wings. A large stone breaks under its own weight and dreams of being a flat and fertile valley, and a pebble, dreams of being held in someone’s hand and kept like an amulet.  “
 “And what do the winds dream of? “, I asked impatiently,
 “Evil winds dream of destroying everything in front of them, of wreaking havoc, and when the gods sometimes allow them to do so, they are content and dream the same dreams again, because they do not have others. And gentle winds, they have a lot of dreams, to help a young bird in its first flight, to flap things that are drying, to braid someone’s hair, or gently stroke their face. You see, this sister of yours, she is the dream of a wind “

I went down the slope and remembered Lozen standing on the top of the hill with open arms, while the wind lightly wrapped the strands of hair around her head, remembered Lozen as she rides with open arms, again with the wind in her hair and it always seemed as if she was just a little bit closer to flying. Now I know, my Lozen flew, flew on the wings of the wind, the wind whose dream she was.
That day, I found out that the winds also have their dreams, and that every person has them, I always knew. Some are small, some are big, and my Lozen had only one dream, a dream of freedom. It is written in your books that we are imprisoned in reservations, it is written that we are imprisoned in the  “40 acres of hell “ and that several of us under the leadership of Victorio escaped from there. Our outlaw life, full of dangers, was our dream of freedom, and good winds helped Lozen to smell, to feel the danger, and to preserve our freedom for as long as possible. Because we had nothing else but her. You wrote in your books about our great chiefs, about Geronimo most of all, even with respect, but what did your false respect get us? We disappeared, killed both with bullets and with the diseases you brought us. So my Lozen ended up in a dungeon, and one day she died of tuberculosis. We begged and negotiated and eventually managed to get her body. We laid it in a place facing the sun and sang our ritual songs. The wind played with the strands of her hair for a long time, crawled into them, tangled them, and then suddenly fell silent. As if everything had stopped, the birds were silent, and the leaves on the branches did not move. The wind had lost its Dream.
How to write it all down on a piece of paper? I can only tell you, because you have to come, you have to see that Apache land, you have to stand on the top of the hill and spread your arms like you are flying, you have to be Lozen for a moment, you have to be someone’s Dream for a moment.