The faucet oozed a chain of intermittent tears. She cupped a few drops and wet her face, letting out an inaudible sigh. The warplanes were as loud as ever, and so was the interminable dialogue in her head. For how long, she wondered, would this routine go on, and left the bathroom with her face dry as if she’d never washed it in the first place. The heat was insufferable enough to evaporate an entire sea.
She headed towards her sleeping mattress, her legs seemingly acting of their own accord. In the crowded 70 meters she must now consider her home, the walls had witnessed her yelling; her begging; her silent prayers; her withering; her slow perishing. The hands that braided her hair, and the feet that walked over rubble in her worn-out shoes, had at some moments felt like they didn’t belong to her; as if they had never been hers. Even her limbs conspired against their owner. She had entered a phase of disassociation due to the surrounding overstimulation.
She lay back on her mattress, strategically placed near the gap which had been a window. This was her haven, her sanctuary. However, this was a completely ridiculous thought. No walls offer protection from the F-16 planes. The sense of safety provided by those walls was a false one; a deception she and her other displaced roommates put immense effort into believing.
Facing the cracked ceiling, she slowly breathed in the dusty, stagnant air. Momentarily, time had stopped. Both the warplanes and her head were quiet now, and her muscles felt owned and warm. It was this moment that she waited for each day. The moment when she escaped into her own “Golden Country,” that blissful dream state far from the grim reality tyrants offer. It was her idyllic place of freedom, the world and life she was deprived of because of war.
The red-finned dace swam in unison, and the willow leaves fluttered with the motion of a dreamer’s eye. She walked barefoot with rhythm on the short, wet grass and inhaled the terracotta-scented air. Chet Baker, that jazz maestro, was the only thing in her ears. In the Golden Country there are no horrors, no anxiety, only nature’s tapestry and jazz. The piano sounded softly, and the trumpet’s notes danced around her like fairies. Her open palm felt the river’s current; its refreshing chill sending a tingling sensation to her spine. All the while, the jazz prince of cool sings repeatedly in her head, “Look for the silver lining. Whenever a cloud appears in the blue, remember, somewhere the sun is shining.”
Yet, this serene moment couldn’t last. She returned to the dystopian reality with her usual blank face. Her feet walked her back to the teary faucet. Its drip reminded her of her own tear ducts which, like her arms and legs, had been acting of their own accord since the beginning of the war. Perhaps this explained her urge to wreck the stupid faucet with a hammer. She wondered while spreading the few drops of water on her face, when the warplanes were due to return.
She had been forced out of her home to find another temporary one. What frustrated her the most was that this evacuation was her third. “A person can only truly feel at home once in their life,” she remarked to others in the crowded truck. She recalled her abandoned, original house at that moment. It was likely a home to rats and pigeons by now. Its windows and doors must be scattered fragments, her belongings stolen by thieves and her diaries read. The cigarettes hidden in her winter coat must have expired and the militias in the neighborhood will have left every house haunted. She knew at the end of the day, the remembrance of her original home with its burgundy walls and shelves of flavored tea would always endure, and no bitter reality would make it otherwise.
She smiled ruefully at her bittersweet landscape of memories containing what had once belonged to her. She tilted her neck slightly backwards and cocked her head at the mint-blue sky with her feet dangling from the edge of the truck. The birds were fleeing to somewhere merciful and quiet, and the clouds shaped the faces of the people she missed. Yet in all this company, the sun seemed lonelier than ever, just like the focused pair of eyes beneath it. Hidden away, she had hardly seen the sun or felt its rays in months. It was her first sun: her small compensation for the many homes she had been displaced from and would be displaced to. It exuded rays of hope and echoes of Chet Baker calling her to look for the silver lining.
