My memory of London only flashes in bits and pieces. Long tunnels, crowns encased by glass windows, mummies. I don’t even know whether any of them are really from London. I remember asking my father inside our blue Volvo where we were going; “London via Manchester/Liverpool”. Maybe it was Manchester, because we entered the football club’s merchandise store; I remember particularly cards of football players that my brothers stuck in a photo album, alongside four years worth of childhood I can barely remember. I remember wanting to go out of a shoe store to see the pigeons at the square, bored with my family picking out their Clark shoes. But I was too afraid of getting lost. So I just stared from the glass windows.
Last night, I return from Brisbane to home. Already used to airport dramas, I chatted with A. about year-end plans and mutual friends. When we arrived, the check in counter told us that I was late but she will try to get me in, mentioning a 2-second window, and airplane calls, that I just nodded through until she printed my boarding pass that looked more like a receipt than a real plane ticket. I said my goodbyes, and sat at the gate waiting (the plane was delayed, as usual), taking out Pablo Neruda’s Selected Poems. Iman gave me a long text message. I replied the same. I think she needs to loosen up. Occasionally distracted by a white girl with her black nanny, I read The Magellan Heart (1519) and am tear-eyed when I come across these verses;
The long night, the pine, come where I go.
And the stifled acid is overturned, and fatigue,
the barrel-top, whatever I have in life.
A snowdrop weeps and weeps at my door
exhibiting the sheer loose-limbed dress
of a tiny comet seeking me out and sobbing.
No one observes the gust of the wind, its expanse,
is howling through the prairies.
I approach and say : Let’s go. I touch South, flow
into the send, see the dry blackened plant, all root and rock,
the islands scraped by water and sky,
Hunger River, Heart of Ashes,
Patio of the Dismal Sea, and, where
the solitary serpent hisses, where
the last wounded fox digs to hide its bloody treasures,
I meet the storm and its voice of rupture,
its voice from an old book, its hundred-lipped mouth,
and it tells me something, something the wind devours every day.
In the plane, I sat next to a young Arab man. I was sleepy and tired, and woke up to see him drinking a Tiger beer. He might be Coptic. I do not know. Next to us was a husband and wife couple complete with kopiah and full-clad hijab. No, my suspicions were untrue. They are not related to my Arab man. The little girl in front of us kept turning behind, playing her hands with his. He squeezes her nose, looks at me, and I smiled. He was listening to Arab disco music all throughout the journey. There is goodness in everyone, I tell myself.
On the train home, I again tried to sleep, but there was a drunk woman shouting and laughing in the compartment below me. I saw back as she exited the toilet, smoking. The old man whose seat across me took out his belonging, a can of Coke, cheese biscuits, packets of instant soups, a small kettle enough only for a cup. I wonder if he was on his way to go camping; but he wore leather shoes. The woman in front of me had her nails painted black. She was reading a book.
I grab my bag out and am greeted by K at the station. In the car, I spatter out nonsense about meetings, drunk people, Dr. Burhanuddin Helmy, and the importance of keeping things secret. He told me I should get some sleep. I said okay, as he handed me back my copy of Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty Four. I do not know when I shall tell him.
The house is quiet. It is way past midnight. I haven’t eaten a thing since four. I reach my bed weary and lonely; thinking of the things that needed finishing for the rest of the holidays. F is driving home from work. I haven’t talked to him for a week. We all must make our sacrifices, then.
perkaraperkara 