Three bedtime stories

Well, I was almost in bed. I was supposed to be. It was just that I was suddenly overcome with a strong feeling of Saharan thirst that would often strangely coincide with an ever too early command to go to bed. I had always felt that I would miss something while I was sleeping. So as I was tiptoeing barefoot through the corridor on my way to the kitchen, with the corner of my eye I caught a glimpse of something that momentarily rooted me to the spot, blinking in disbelief. Two people were pushing the heavy freezer in the direction of the front door. For a moment I thought that somebody wanted to rob us off our food supplies. However, that was only until I realised that the door was closed and that the reckless robbers forgot to pull stockings over their heads so that I could clearly see their faces. They were my parents. Before I had even had time to ask for an explanation, I was sent back to bed in a tone of voice that I knew very well meant “No more information available, only more trouble. Retreat and ask no more.” When I got up for school the next morning, the freezer was sitting back in its corner, mysteriously silent as if nothing had ever happened.

 

A couple of months later I was alone in another bedroom, far away from home, wide awake late in the night. I was preparing myself for an important conversation. It had to be done properly as much depended on it, actually my whole life. Normally I would have found comfort in a gentle stroke of Mum’s hand or sitting on my Dad’s knees, yet that was not an option any more. Not after days of seeing them nervous and distracted, wandering around aimlessly, only occasionally exchanging glances instead of words, as if they expected that one of them would come up with some miraculous solution to a situation that got completely out of control. It was them who needed comfort. The whole world was upside down obviously. How was I to fix it?

Was I supposed to get on my knees? Introduce myself? Apologise for my stubborn denial, scorn and mockery of anybody who had ever attempted anything similar before? I recalled all the endless arguments with other kids on the subject and thought that I had little chance of success in this conversation considering everything I had previously said. Yet, that was my last hope so I cleared my throat and did my best.

 

I sprang up in bed on the sound of an explosion roaring like a thunder through the canyon whose steep walls surrounded the miniature town in which I lived with my aunt and her family a year later. (Obviously my conversation didn’t go all too well). I could see a myriad of stars dancing before my eyes as I jerked my head a little bit too hard and hit the side of the bed. My cousin sleeping next to me seemed to be more alarmed by my moaning than the explosion and a few moments later was back in horizontal position. I stayed up with my ears pricked expecting to hear some commotion coming from the outside but there was nothing much going on. A few quiet voices and a couple of steps perhaps. The town slept undisturbed. An explosion here or there, who cared? Even the kids played with dynamite on the New Year’s Eve competing whose bundle would shake the town better. I expected to see some parts of the canyon missing on January the first. So after a while the pain in my head subsided, the stars dissolved and I retreated to my side of the bed thinking that I would rather miss whatever was going on and sleep it all over.

Hands up mister! Hand over your life!

Luckily they didn’t shoot him. He got out alive. But his life as he knew it was taken away from him for good.

Yes, houses got blown up in the night, shop-windows got stoned, people disappeared. And yes, he was of different ethnicity, but only on the paper. In real life, he was much like any of his neighbours. He never cared much about history, tradition, customs, religion or whatever usually comes up as a bone of contention among people. What he strongly believed in was justice, fairness and the principle of goodness. You don’t do any harm to anyone, no one does to you. And even though most of the people of his ethnicity got scared enough up to that point and fled, he decided to stay. He thought that if he kept a low profile and abided by all the new laws they would let him and his family be. That was all they wanted.

The man who barged into his office with a gun one morning was of somewhat different world views. It was as if a black hooded executioner came in with a death sentence. His face was more than familiar. He was a local policeman, labeled by the authorities as a little crazy but was nevertheless conveniently kept for the purposes of all the dirty work that needed to be done. However, he decided not to shoot him. He came up with a better idea. It was to make him remember his last day in the city that didn’t want him. Whether he was obedient or rebellious, little did it matter. With a gun pressed hard against his back and with his hands up in the air, he was pushed out of the office into the busy city streets. It was a beginning of a long and lonely procession through the familiar streets and squares, past the familiar cafes and the familiar faces, friends and acquaintances. He marched on and on yet nobody said a word as he quietly, one step after another, walked out of the city and joined the thousands that had left before him. 

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What cannot be said...

I have noticed that our lives mimic nature more than we are aware of. Spells of sunshine interchange with the ones of dark clouds hovering above and then all of a sudden a thunder strikes down, sends shivers down your spine, throws some new light on the world and makes you look around with a new insight. After a period of heavy rains, what might follow is a period of long drought. Having cried their hearts out over some deep irrecoverable wrong or misfortune, people sometimes just bottle up. They become indifferent or lifelessly submissive to what ever is going on around them. You can see them walking around with “Do what you want with me. I don’t care and even if I did it wouldn’t make a difference.” attitude written all over their faces. 

I used to think that tears are only for the weak. I didn’t like them, mostly for the fact that you can’t control them. Once they build up in a mighty torrent, nothing can stop them. Before you even know it, there is a terrible flood of emotions all around the place. Who would ever want that? So I decided to stay clear of the disturbing matters. On the one hand, I wanted the world to know where it has gone wrong, on the other it was too hard to speak up to it. 

When I finally decided to sketch some of these episodes from my past, I did it out of wish to help other people, hoping that it might speed up somebody’s recovery process. I wanted to take this special somebody by the hand and help them back into the world. I wanted to tell them that you can always stand up to your past, thank you for the lessons it taught you, acknowledge the traps it might have led you into and then move forward much stronger. I wanted to bring down some walls of silence between people and replace them with bridges of understanding. And I would still give any minute of my time to put my whole heart and mind into doing any of these. 

However, as it often happens in life, you set out to help somebody else, yet in the end you realise that perhaps the healing process was equally needed to you as well. I became aware of it only recently when a friend told me that he was amazed at how positive I was talking about the hardships from the past. He ascribed it to my character and made it sound as if I was born lucky to go through it all so easily. It made me smile really. I had some explaining here to do describing that it was a product of much effort rather than the influence of some lucky star I was born under. However, I think that much can be ascribed to writing as a lot of unresolved feelings get much clearer in the process of putting them into words. And if you think that it can be of good use to somebody and you give it a purpose then the writing mission works both ways. A French philosopher Derrida once said that “what cannot be said must not be silenced but written”. I couldn’t agree more.

I went home that evening flying on a brand new pair of magic wings, which seems to me always come as a reward after a long tough battle, thinking one happy thought over and over again “I’ve made it! I’ve really made it!”.