Color Me Blue
Page 10
“Stop it, stop it!” I scream, but I am not sure if it’s only in my head, if anyone else can hear it.
I run over to the control panel, pressing buttons wildly, at random, until someone grabs me from behind, pinching my arms against my back, and I groan with pain, my feet almost lift off the ground by the force of it.
“Stop, stop, stop,” I scream, yell, maybe in my head, maybe out loud, as I am dragged back to my place by the railing.
The boat has sunk now, filled with water, people are floating in the water, desperate shadows among the waves, their numbers decreasing as I watch. Absurdly enough, I think back to when I was little and could not sleep, and I looked up at the ceiling, visualizing sheep, counting them.
Beneath my feet the buzzing comes back, the engine starts, and we are moving away, hands, human hands, sliding, grasping at the bottom sides of the boat, but their fingers find nothing.
I can hear the crying, until there is no more crying, everything is silent, we are moving away, until there is nothing left but ripples in the water.
30
The guard that is holding me leaves. I stand alone by the railing, dazed. That is the word for it, for what I feel. Dazed. I do not move, I just stand there, dazed, on the deck, looking at the ocean, looking at the white edges of the waves, looking at nothing in particular, as the island comes into view.
I walk, dazed, off the boat, I can hear the guards giggle behind my back, laugh at me, joking among themselves. Arien is there, the others have left, to the storage probably, sorting out the clothes.
He puts his arm around me, carefully, as if not to frighten me, but I can hardly even feel his touch.
“Did you fix the container problem?” I ask, in a whisper.
“Yes, I fixed it,” he says, just as quiet, his lips barely moving, as he leads me to my car.
“Can you drive?” he asks.
“I think so.”
“OK, follow me then.”
He seat himself in the van, and I drive behind, only looking at his car, not wondering or caring where we are going.
In the end, we stop in front of a familiar house, and I remember this house, from when I came here, this is where I got my car. I departure the little, blue bubble, thanking the man who owns it for letting me borrow it, and enter the van instead. Arien gets in beside me, starting the car, and we drive away, still I do not care where we are going.
“The truth?” I ask, remembering the girl on the airport back home.
“The truth,” he says.
He was right.
I am still that, dazed, when he stops in front of Madani’s, and I go into my room to pack, before saying goodbye to her. Once, when I was about five or six years old, my father took me up to some mountains, to go skiing, in the winter. We rented a cabin for a few days. One of the mornings, I sat in the little kitchen, playing, when I heard this high pitch, sharp, cracking, ringing, hollow sound, coming from the window. I became afraid and ran to get my father, dragging him with me to the living room window, and there was this long cut, crack, in the middle of it. It turned out the temperature outside had dropped so extremely that frost had actually cracked the window, the glass had frozen. I do not remember much from that trip, but I still remember that sound it made when it broke, and that is how I feel now, I feel like that sound.
I do not sleep at all that last night. I look up at the ceiling instead, remembering, thinking, hearing. Inside my head that sound from long ago mixes with the sound of waves and screams and it all tumbles around in my head.
The next day, Arien takes me to the airport early in the morning, when it is still dark outside. I thank him for everything, and tell him to thank the others too, Mary, Hasin. He follows me to the plane, and this time the little propel aircraft does not frighten me. I just close my eyes as my body is being pushed back in the seat, going up, back to The West, feeling like an important part of me has been left behind. Maybe that feeling of never leaving was right, in the end.
In the airport at the mainland, I once again walk in through that small waiting room. There is a young man there now, sitting where I was sitting, waiting, guarded by a policeman. He looks at me, his eyes going wide when he sees me. On my face I feel that same, horrified expression like that girl had, when it was me sitting there, headed for the unknown, desperate for answers. I look away.
Back home in my apartment, I sit down on my bed. I remember back to that day when we came to The Camps after the storm, and everything was just chaos, the tents spread down on the ground, and how I noticed that many people were smiling, despite of it. From my suitcase, I grab the small notebook, where I had written down what Arien said to me after I asked him why they were smiling.
“Because it’s sunshine today.”
I hold the small piece of paper between my fingers. I don’t let go.