That night, driving up Route 67 towards my hometown, the place I had moved to when Mother fled the confines of the small sandstone house she hated so much, I could not keep my thoughts at bay. As I watched the sunset rays illuminate my father’s wrinkled yet peaceful face, the face that I had seen so many times in my dream as a child and wondered whether he loved me, hated me, remembered me, I felt myself drift between memory and the present.
I wanted to speak to father about Iqbal, about my tormented feelings, but it seemed that any phrase I started with would damage the fine web of trust we had established over my stay. I did not know how to approach him, and his silence grew on me, plunging me into reflecting on the past.
What was there in the past?
I remembered father’s home, I remembered mother’s home. And no connection between the two. I remembered fleeing the house as mother yanked and yanked my hand till my shoulder was sore and I had tears streaking down my childish face. I was only twelve. Not so much a child, yet not a teenager either – a somewhat independent individual trapped in a boy’s body, all of which confused me very much.
It was a memorable moment in my life. Everything is quite memorable when you are this young. It is only later in life that you learn the true meaning of this word, facing wars, disease and death. And even then it is difficult to establish what is more important to your memory: a sacrifice you had to make as a child or one you are faced with at a warfront.
Mother. Mother, mother, mother. She chose to flee the centuries-old house, find a glorious life for herself somewhere far, far away. I wonder if she knows about the progress the world has made in the past few decades. The cars, the communication, the infrastructure. Route 67 was built two years ago, neatly linking two distant places by a silver strip that serves the transport of thousands each day. Just think, mother. All you wished was to get as far away as possible from the man that suppressed and upset you, and now… Well, now we have roads and fast cars, and getting far away from that which torments you is much more difficult.
I shifted to glance over at father and saw him staring at me with the same intensity I only now realized I remembered from so many years ago. Those blue eyes shone fiercely at me and I felt he could see right through my rigid composure, right through to those emotions that would not let me rest as I drove on and on into the fading sunset.
And once again I got that tingling inclination, that shiver of hope, that little sliver of trust that pushed me one step further to speaking. I prepared to tell my father everything.
Anna Zhigareva (NZ)
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