After Sixty Years

Sixty years.

It had been sixty years since Aida had breathed such unpolluted air into frail and disease ridden lungs, sixty years since she had smelt the blend of fresh pine and olive groves, sixty years since she had stepped foot in the village of her birth.

The gravel rolled beneath her boots, she had been much more nimble, much more lithe the last time she had walked this path – or rather, the last time she had run this path, clutching her younger brothers shaking hand and following their father through the night – red and yellow flashes intermittently lighting the distant horizon.

“Tayta?” her grandson gripped her elbow. “Are you alright?”

She nodded, tenderly patting his hand.

Her feet could not run up the path to her old childhood home the way they had once run from it – rather, she shuffled her way to the place where her mother would lay herbs to dry in the sunlight on the front porch, where her father would tell stories by the fire at night, where they celebrated her cousins baptism and her aunties wedding, and where they had been sitting when they learned that the armies had crossed the border.

Her grandson guided her further and further till eventually, she could see it clearly, the stone house at the end of the lane with its citrus trees and clay roof that was now caved in.

For sixty years it had stood untouched by human hands, left purely to the whims and whiles of the Mediterranean wild – with weeds spurting from the cracks and grass that reached to your waist.

Aida chuckled as she thought of how mortified her mother would be at the state of her garden and home. She could almost hear her calling for her children to hurry and clean their mess for there were guests coming.

Almost.

For it had been sixty years since she had heard her mother call her name, sixty years since she had run through the house dusting the ornaments and cursing her youngest child for trekking mud all over her floors.

Sixty years since Aida had left because of the war, and she didn’t have that many more to spare.

Her children did not believe her, at first, when she told them she wanted to go home, to see it one last time,

“Ma, you are not well. It will exhaust you.”

“I will be exhausted anyway,” she shrugged.

“Ma, you are not well. What if you don’t make it back?”

“I’m going to die anyway,” she waved.

Her mind had been made, and all knew that Aida would not be swayed.

Her grandson James had been the one to volunteer to take the journey with her, along with his wife and children of his own.

With her rattling bones, eighty odd years and disease ridden lungs, she went. On two planes and across time zones she went, across 11170 kilometres and 20 hours she went.  

To the place that had once been home she went.

Once.

For sixty years she had thought of this place, of how it all had been.

Everything had changed, the village, the people, her life. When Aida got there she saw that this home she had left behind was now no home at all, reduced to rubble and roots.

This, Aida could accept, for she had come in search of more than the pile of stones she had once lived in, there was something in that pile of stones that for sixty years she had wished she had thought to take with her – the photo of her family.

Photos were no trifling commodity when Aida was young, there were no cameras in the village and so Aida, her parents and her little brother had dressed themselves in their finest of fineries and taken a coach to the city.

Her father was so proud of the image he paid extra to have it

Aida remembered the people of the village stopping by all that week to see it displayed on their mantle piece. She remembered how amazed and mesmerised they had all been, that such a likeness was possible.

She thought of that photo often, trying to recall all it’s details in her mind’s eye, trying to remember the way her mother had looked.

She had lived in her new country for three full years when she realised she could no longer picture her mothers face. She would squeeze her eyes shut, remember her laugh and her scolding and her warmth, but her face… it was gone.  

The picture had not made it out the door with them when they packed their essential belongings and left that night, and her mother had not made it out the village.

That she would never forget that dreadful night, that she hadn’t retrieved the photo from the mantle, and that she could not remember her mother’s face – these had been the things that had haunted her these sixty years.

How she hoped the photo was still there.

James led her to the door that had long since fallen from its hinges.

The small houses floor was rubble and dirt and weeds, yet still, out of habit, Aida wiped her feet on the threshold before she stepped in.

The house was smaller than she remembered, or maybe she was bigger, or perhaps still she had simply gotten used to bigger things.

The dinner table around which many a family dinner was had, had collapsed, any glassware of finery shattered on the floor – and yet it was all there.

Dragging her weary feet across the rocky ground, she shuffled towards the stone fireplace.

The mantle had fallen, and chunks of the fireplace with it. Aida searched the floor, pushing rocks aside with her feet, and scanning every surface and crevice of her once home until she saw it, the smallest glint of bronze poking from beneath the stones.

With great effort, she bent down.

“Tayta, let me,” James lurched forward.

But Hamza had already lowered herself onto the floor – she pushed aside the debris and reached for the frame which her father had once been so proud of.  

She shook away the shattered glass and blew the dust from its surface.

She saw her father, standing upright with his pushy eyebrows and moustached lip set in a stern glare. She saw her younger brother, just a child at the time the photo was taken, staring perplexedly at the man behind the camera who was doing all sorts of tricks to hold the children’s attention. Then of course there was herself, with a large bow in her hair and cheeky smirk across her little lips.

Aida felt her heart leap, there she was, her own dear mother.

Her hair was pinned up in a way that still allowed her heavy waves to fall beside her plump face and upon her shoulders, her were lips pressed neatly in a line.

She was not smiling, as this was not the custom in photos, but she her hand wrapped softly around her daughter’s waist, holding her close by her side.

It had been sixty years since Aida had seen those eyes, and although the photo did not show it, she now recalled that they were hazel.

In her old age, Aida found she cried a lot more than she did in her youth – and cry she did. Not a heavy, heaving, uncontrollable sort of cry, but a soft misting that began in her heart and worked its way up her throat and settled in the back of her eyes, slowly seeping through and down her face.

Her hands and breathe alike shook as she traced the figures in her families picture with her aged and wrinkled fingers.

Aida let the tears run.

After sixty years she finally had it back, her families photo, and the memory of her mother’s face.