ADAHLIA
When I woke up, things had changed. I had slept for a long time, sheltered in a safe space without thoughts, with no lights. I had nearly died before falling asleep, my last thought had been, I wouldn't mind. Dying seemed the right thing to do, even if it was the wrong time in my life. People were almost expected to die in the war zone, in a fight, or on a mission. I hadn't achieved much, I hadn't gotten much out of being alive yet, there hadn't been time. I was nineteen when I fell asleep but I was young for my age, immature perhaps. This way, though, I would have died a spotless hero.
When I woke up I found out that things had changed, for the worse. I found out almost as soon as I woke up, people around hid silence in their eyes, and puzzled as to who to contact about my waking. My father? He is no longer with us, dear, said the matron of the unit where I had slept the last four years of my sleep, deciding in a split second that truth was the best course, especially as long as I was where people could keep an eye on me. My father was no longer with me. He hadn't been for a long time. I suspected right away what might have happened. It was a knot, a gurgling of old fears and new thoughts, my brother, I said. Seb had set loose his darkest feelings, had upset all order, had become a murderer. Then I changed my mind. Can we contact him? Not him, dear. Why not? He is on a mission. How would you know? We keep updated on the close family members of our patients. She brushed me off, pondered a minute. We will call the general, she said. Don't call anyone. She seemed upset. I will go to her, I concluded. I wanted to leave.
Under the calmness of my exterior, a trick I had learnt young, I was a jellyfish hurled by the currents of sorrowful thoughts, raging questions. My father was dead. My head was swarming. My dad is dead. Perhaps he hasn't been a good father. Seb is gone. Our father is dead. He hasn't been a good dad, even though he is a legend in the Resistance stories spun everywhere. He has been a good man, a not so good father. Not even good enough? Did he deserve it? To die so young, to die a violent death? To lock his eyes in the eyes of his son, at the very last, and greet there the eyes of a murderer, his murderer? If that was what had happened. I hadn't been told yet. To me he had been a loving father. To me, yes. But to Seb? In the first instants of my waking I had felt transparent, clear-headed after my long sleep, rested. Now questions that had to remain unanswered swirled and swirled, overturning me.
The general almost did not recognise me when I arrived dressed in black on her deck. In completing the dreary drudgery of her daily chores, in order to survive, I imagine she would repress the memory that somewhere, tucked away, far away from her body which had once held me, I was sleeping. I had slept for years, till my hair had grown so long that I could have dressed in it. I had slept peacefully, far, far away. She dropped the thread of the conversation she was directing when she turned her head and saw me. I appeared before her with no warning, a less strong character may have thought me a ghost. She didn't say a word, just walked towards me, hugged me tight, as if to shield me with her body, as if to push me back where I had come from, inside her, a figment of her imagination or her child reborn? She wasn't sure, I wasn't either just then. She looked at me, patted my long plait, caressed my cheek. She had a question in her eyes, seemed to look at me as if to assess my frailty. She would ask for a medical consultation, I knew she would. Psychological as well. Later she would want to know if and when I could go back to fighting. I dreaded being right. She dared not ask yet whether I had been in touch with him, her other son, my twin. Later she would have to tell me about my father, neither of us would cry. I was a rolling sea, she was nursing her grief in silence, it ached terribly but too much had been aching for too long and she was happy now, happy to hug me back. Pain, grief, family stories could wait a little longer. Now there she was and there was I, unexpectedly, and everything else relented in the tenderness of our hug.
Echoes of his thoughts had to reach me, eventually. ...humans are unreliable, they don't give what you need, not for free; not ever - I am different, I can't reach out, I can't say what I want, I can't ask for it - I am dissatisfied, always - I am lonely, I make myself lonely - laughing is stupid, having faith is stupid, taking life for what it has to offer is stupid - my parents are stupid – they are cruel, like all adults - they are cold, absorbed in lives of their own, battles of their own, they grew up knowing the times required courage, independence and enterprise, they expect me, a luckier boy than them, to grasp courage independently, to do what is so obviously required of me – after training my fingers ache, my head is all an uproar, disconnected scents, impressions, thoughts, I reach too far, I reach too inwardly, where I don't want to go, ever - I am alone now. I was the boundary of his loneliness. I know, I knew then. I sensed his thoughts, they came naturally to me, but I could always tell which thoughts were his and which were mine. I am different too. I always felt somewhat of a blank. Our parents' deluded, disillusioned expectations did not grieve me, did not touch me as much. I was good, I had always been good. He needed more, I could have been given less and still survived. My face and my shape grew into those of a woman deemed beautiful, I used to smile when I met another's gaze, and so people have always wanted to stroke me, caress me and keep me close. I don't like that, I don't warm to that. I am cold, so cold. I am detached. Asleep I have spent so much time alone I have accepted my self as a shell now.
I always said yes even when I wanted to say no, when all I yearned for was to forget everything else and be myself in my own skin, quiet and silent and as immobile as possible. But I listened, I learnt, I patiently sought to smooth my edges, be pleasing, give back what I got. I completed the training chosen for me, I became a good fighter, a brave, intelligent, loyal fighter. No one saw the sham that I was. He may have sensed it, he hated to see me leave for another display of courage. We had trained together, he knew the discipline and will-power I had to put in to become what was expected of me. He knew I would sometimes cry at night and then stop and just stare. He knew my sadness, in the same way I knew his angst, even when we managed to shield our feelings from others. The world around was rough, I was gentle and he was fiery, and we knew. My eventual apathy was made of the same matter as his wrath, sorrow gone sour at having to prove ourselves constantly, of having to join the legend or become pariahs. There was no escape. It was either the good fight, or the bad one. Peace was not on offer, for anyone. Defeat might be, death might be, but plain living was not.
He wanted to protect me, I wanted to share with him the peacefulness I felt underwater, in a calm sea, watching the fish stream by, the plankton and seaweed float, time do its due through the currents. Before we fell asleep, I would evoke that bluegreen beauty and make him float with me, seaweed breathing as part of an order that needed no ruling, no fighting. I could always be kind to him, but sometimes I chose to be hardhearted. I regret that. He needed kindness, all the emotions I seemed to be exempt from he experienced strongly. His anger used to frighten me, his pain too, so quick to flare up from the smallest unkindness, from the slightest neglect. He was too sensitive, I became numbed. Yet when he found no words to express himself and would run off or storm away, I would do the talking, eagerly explain his unformed thoughts, and so people thought I was full and he empty. They murmured that I was kind and he a shut-off kid, a loner kid. But all the feelings I had came from him, the way mirrors reflect back what you put into them. I wonder how much our parents saw, how much they could glimpse from the accounts they received after we were sent away to camp training. Perhaps not enough, perhaps that's where they went wrong. I needed little and he too much in the difficult times we had been born in, yet I got more than he did.
We were expected to grow up devoid of individual dreams, other than fighting the good cause till the last. He dreamt to blast the order around us. I dreamt of marine coves and time for reading, for playing a chess game and dance. Poor dreams, both of ours. How can you nurture your own dreams when you're the legend meant to preserve, nay, to embody everyone else's dreams? We were the dream. Dreams don't dream, dreams cannot dream. Either a dream or a dreamer. It was better when we could share a space, we fit well in the same space. He was big, and I was petit. We had no more special connection than that of space. We fit well in space, a habit from the womb, mental space, space travel, outer space, confined space. We shared space, until that fight when he was not there to help me, and I got hit, and I gave in to numbness, to sleepiness, and fell asleep for a long time, and when I woke up things had changed, our dad had been killed, my mother had had to banish me from her thoughts, he could no longer believe even in his heart that I would ever wake up.