The Grid

by Carlton Winnfield

  As they entered their family village, people came into the street, first pointing at them, then coming up to them and welcoming them back home. It was good to see them, they said. Welcome home.

  They walked to the other end of the village and knocked on the metal door that was the entrance to the courtyard of their parents’ home, the place where they had grown up, running through the courtyard barefoot and laughing, the place where the woman’s two children were. They waited. Soon, they heard the shuffling of old feet making their way across the courtyard to the door. They heard the latch being moved, then the door slowly opened and an old man stood there, looking up at them. He simply stared, saying nothing. He began to tremble. He bent his head down and began to cry. His two children went to him, to comfort him. After a few moments, he took a deep breath and lifted his head to look at them, amazement and bottomless affection in his eyes. “How is it possible?!” He stammered these words, barely able to say them, his eyes shimmering with tears. “We thought you were lost to us, forever!” He lowered his head and began once again to sob.

  His daughter put her arms around him, looked at her brother. “We were, Papa, but we found our way back.” She hugged him.

  After a while, the old man softly moved back from his children’s embrace and looked at them, a smile now on his face, as he nodded his head. “An angel must have saved you and sent you home to me.”

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  The young man lay in the hospital ward in Gwadar. He had been there for some weeks. He had been found unconscious in a garden shed in some distant small town. No one knew why he had been in that state in that place. There had been a large explosion in a house near the shed, it was said, but no one knew if that explosion was related to his condition or where the owners of the shed had found him when they went to it the next morning to retrieve some tools to help with the cleanup of the debris that luckily had been confined to the courtyard of the destroyed house. The man had no identification on him when he was found. He had had a broken wrist that the hospital staff had mended. The hospital staff had determined that he was in a coma. He had yet to regain consciousness. No one came to inquire about him – no friends, no family.

  One of the multitude of flies in the room landed on the man’s neck. Despite the best efforts of the hospital staff to keep them away from the patients, some always found their way through the netting. It was an unwinnable battle. The man didn’t move. He didn’t seem to feel the insect’s presence. The fly bent over the man’s neck and extended its proboscis, biting the man above the jugular vein. It then flew off above the netting and was gone, as if it knew its way.

  Several minutes later, the man’s breathing became increasingly shallow. The rate of his heartbeat gradually slowed. After several more minutes, both stopped altogether.