BY AFSHAN NABI (MBG/III)
afshan.nabi@ug.bilkent.edu.tr
There once was a man who fell against a curtain.
As his body began to tilt, his stomach kicked out and his heart dropped down. His panic became debilitating as he felt nothingness stretch out beneath him. He found himself wishing the curtain was a wall. But this was a fall, and the curtain was not a wall.
Solid ground would break his fall; his body would sprawl out clumsily against it. Dreadful panic. But it would not be so bad; how much could it possibly hurt? He knew he might bump his head, maybe his shoulder and side would be bruised, and maybe he would twist his ankle. He might feel some aches for a few days. Patches of his skin might become discolored, purple and dull green, for a while. But the pain would not be maddening, just mildly uncomfortable. And he would be still be alive. He would be fine. Why then was he feeling this terror as he fell? What was he so afraid of? His body tilted further…
He jerked awake, and found himself lying in bed, safe between the sheets. The panic was still nesting in his heart, gnawing at the walls and into his blood vessels. But it was fading fast. As he sat up, the last dregs drained away, leaving him with only the memory of terror. Restless, he swung himself off the bed to look out the window in the room. He was high up; he could see the tops of trees, yellow and brown, some parts still green, all lit up by a golden glow from the sun. A road snaked across the landscape and stretched out away from him, into the trees. He saw shadows, straight as tree trunks and with as many branches, cut out against the road. The shadows were dark, untouched by the golden sun, like traps lying on the road empty of people and cars. Everyone had been trapped by the shadows. He recalled how the noise of the cars had drilled through his ears and bored into his skull when he had been trying to find sleep. The sound had been incessant and irritating, like insects crawling on his skin. He found himself wishing the shadows would swallow all the cars and the city, leave him with the sunlit leaves and the autumn breeze pulling them off the trees. He wished for quiet, to hear the scraping of the leaves landing on the pavement. Or caught in whirlwinds and dancing in circles, dizzying him…
He was on a riverbank, his feet on the sand at the edge of the water. A flock of white birds waded in the water, standing on their thin yellow legs, lazily watching the water and the land. He wanted to move closer. But as he started to take a few steps, he froze, for one of them had suddenly launched itself into flight. Its white wings, thin but several times wider than its body, flapped with indescribable grace. It stayed close to the water’s surface; its wings touched the water at the lowest point of the flap, and the water erupted into perfectly circular ripples that swept outward. He could see the bird’s reflection flit across the water. He imagined that this blessed bird, which waded in the water and flitted on wings across its surface, was also watching its reflection and admiring the grace it saw there. Another bird left the flock and soared behind the first one. He felt his heart sink, thinking the whole flock would follow the two birds to places where he could not follow. He remained frozen in his tracks. But to his great joy, the rest of the flock did not rise up, though some of the birds closer to him did pointedly wade farther away. Ripples left their feet and grew into ellipses behind them. He did not try to move closer to the birds. He stood there, very still, watching them, but pretending not to, wishing he could wade in the water and fly on white wings right over its dark surface…
He knew now that his eyes constantly lied. They showed him some things that were not there and did not show him others that were. He discovered this as he lay down in his bed, preparing to sleep. His eyes had always said that the sky was so far above his head that a thousand of him, standing feet on head, would not be able to touch its blue. He would never be able to run his fingers through its wispy clouds or taste the orange of the sunset on it. But as he lay back, waiting for sleep, staring at the closed window, he saw the sky pushing against the glass, trying to break in. He was keeping out the sky he longed to touch. He had never dreamt that his eyes could lie to him. And so, he had spent a lifetime dreaming of reaching the sky when all he had to do was open his window and let it wash over him…
But when he awoke, he had forgotten again.