The Dusty Roads

The buildings slowly blurred into unrecognisable blobs; smooshing against each other like an abstract painting. The exhaust roared, springing the car to life. The wheels rolled forward trying to escape years of unimaginable torture. Make-up smeared across my hands in a palette of different shades. Bright pink lipstick and flawless foundation outlined the image of what the world wanted to see.  Mother always taught me a full face of make-up is one to face good and bad. She whispered this to me a long time ago as we rocked on the overcrowded, dirty boat that brought us to the land of the unknown. I remembered that on that day the boat finally slid onto the sand followed by whoops and cheers. The cheers stopped when we were ushered into queues, waiting to be told where to go next. A powerful odour of unwashed bodies and salty seawater wafted in the air. My mouth formed a small O exposing my big, childlike teeth. They took us to a place enveloped in barbed wire. Faces marred by hopelessness watched silently as we entered;  our fate unknown. I fell to my knees in despair. I was only ten years old. Those next months made me understand what we represented to the world. I remembered the bombs raining down on our home and naively thinking other countries would save us. Were we worth nothing? At the camp In our make-shift putrid tent mother whispered in my ear, “Be careful Sadeta, they hate us here because they think they know us.” I clasped these words to my heart until we were brought to this small town.

The town contained just three bare streets, the remaining buildings on the verge of demolition. Gifted to us  was a sustainable house sufficient for five people. The mirror, a gift from the hospice shop, reflected the emptiness in our eyes. A soft pink scarf hung gracefully across my small shoulders. My older brothers laughed sadly. Their eyes showed depletion and exhaustion of body and spirit. The people of the town feared us; we who were so different to them. We were their nightmare best kept hidden. The barely disguised disgust on the faces of bypassers made me realise that nothing we could do would ever change the way they saw us.  I remember that day in the nature reserve near the town. The river flowed calmly over the rocks peeking out from the floor beds. The water flooded the bank seeping through our shoes. The grey clouds looked down on us almost reproachfully.  Through a red haze I saw my scarf flutter before I dropped it  into the water. Mother cried out painfully grasping and wringing out the cursed fabric. My black hair whipped up by the wind shrouded my face.  

“Sadeta, why…?”

I stormed off because without needing words, my mother already knew the answer. 

The mistrustful looks never stopped. 9/11 and ISIS were always discussed in hushed tones and abrupt silences replaced bawdy conversations as I passed. All I could do was write. My hand journeyed across a new creamy page everyday bearing witness to my innermost thoughts and recounting my pain. One day a teacher looking over my trembling shoulder saw my writing. 

“ I’m surprised you write so beautifully. I didn’t know you people could do that. You could be a writer you know.”

She made me feel so small and insignificant. I could hear her thoughts as though she had inserted them directly into my brain. We expect you to suffer in submission. Accept who you are.

“ I will be a writer,” I declared. The class fell dead quiet. I opened my school bag emblazoned with a symbol of our nation, pulled out a news magazine and shoved it in her face. The cover showed an image of a war that raged relentlessly. A small child covered in white dust stood in the middle of a street filled with rubble, alone and broken. 

I never returned to her class. 

At home a clean application form lay on my bedside table. My parents had gone to the public library to print it. They told me the next day that the librarians stood as far away from them as possible, like they were a plague that roamed our town. 

“Education will free you,” my parents told me. My father folded my hands in his hard callused ones. On a small box TV we watched the news covering my previous life. There were the innocent  victims of violence risking their lives for welcoming arms. My mother whispered to herself, “They will be surprised, like a child without a christmas gift.”

 We didn’t expect what happened next even though we knew that safety was an illusion.  The sparks of star light above did not warn us of the brutes filled with resentment inviting themselves into our home.  Entitlement raged against need. In that moment none of us were people - we were ideologies. From inside the closet I heard a shot ring out. Four deafening shots later the front door banged shut  leaving behind the putrid stench of  hatred. Death followed. 

The once green field, now dusty yellow rolls into the desert sands. The numbers on the digital clock of the car’s dashboard seem bolder than usual. Isolation and loneliness surround me as I cascade deeper into nothingness. I may be the first person to drive on these deserted dusty roads for months. Nobody drives away from their past. You arrive and stay there until your shrouded corpse is lowered into the earth. Your body will decompose and fertilise the sinister crop of every citizen. I could not come to grips with the pain. Once again I smelled the metallic odour wafting off the carpet. I prayed that when the closet door opened I would be saved by my family. 

I was wrong. 

As I drive closer to my destination, the sand turns pinkish red, blinding me. The police sirens ring faintly in my head as I near the place.  I see the dark concrete of a road. Flashbacks spark my vision. I remember the ladies in their posh white dresses puckering their lips in sympathy. I knew I had to leave. I clasped my oldest hijab, the pink one, the colour of watered down blood.  It went inside my cracked suitcase alongside my other clothes.  I passed by the room where my parents and brothers met their end. The burial of the four most important people in my life broke me. But broken as I was, I knew I had to flee. 

The car jumps slightly when  I hit the main road. In the bleak distance the buildings become clearer. For the first time in weeks, my heart is still.. The ache is gone without a wave of farewell. Clenching the steering wheel hot tears gush, washing away my facade. 

Drawing closer, a cardboard glued proudly to a wall reads...

Make the world hate again. 

I forgot to bring my university application, I suddenly think before the car comes to an abrupt stop.