Curfew

I was sixteen. Alone. In a city so different than mine that it felt like a different country. The 'hostel' I was in was a house rented by some people together. One of the women knew a woman who was a friend of a friend of my mom's. That is how I got the space to spend the duration of my internship there. My roommates were a forty-five year old lady and her nine years old daughter. My bed was actually the daughter's but she had given it to me for the duration I was there. I shared the sole closet with them. I had brought my own utensils. 

First time away from home, I was secretly freaked out but I put a brave face for my parents who had not wanted to send me away in the first place. I had won my first step into independence the hard way. I wanted to not let my feelings get in the way. My parents had arranged for the friend's husband to give me a ride to my work place because it was next to his work place. After two days, he refused, saying it wasn't feasible for him. He simply called me at work and said he couldn't pick me up and I should arrange a ride.

In a new city, in a new work place, at my first ever internship where all other interns were from the same school, it was pretty scary. Thankfully, one of the interns' mom had overheard me while I was on the phone and said she could drive me home. Embarrassed, I agreed. Much to her daughter's mortification, she decided to give the new kid a.k.a. me pick and drop every day. I was supposed to walk to the main road a few blocks away and she would pick and drop me there. The area I was living in was sparsely populated and I had heard quite a few scary stories, which made my heart beat fast at her suggestion, but I didn't have a choice. She was German. She had moved to the city some seventeen years ago. 'I know how it feels to be new and alone in a city.' She had said when I outwardly protested seeing how her daughter had reacted. The daughter simply refused to acknowledge my presence after that.

That same month, talks broke down between the government and a group of people demanding to put an end to, what they termed something towards the meaning of, obscenity centers. Apparently there were amorous massage centers in the same street as a children's library, a big market and a two houses of worship. I personally do not know what the actual story was from that group's point of view because everything I heard was through heavily government -influenced media. The group included some UN employees, clerics, educators and students. Apparently they had guns and live ammunition with which they fired at law enforcement. Army was deployed. A curfew was declared. Government bombed their 'headquarters'. I was living about a mile and a half away. All I heard for six days was the blasts of the bombs, the wails of the ambulances and the panicked rumors that everyone who left the house brought with them when they came back. All I saw was the glow of burning buildings in the night sky and a panicked hush that ensued every time the phone rang when someone from the house had stepped out. A pungent smell (later claimed to be of white phosphorus, I do not know how true that is) filed the air. It was hard to step out on the balcony or patio to take a deep breath. Me being asthmatic, it made things especially hard for me. I had to rinse my nose and eyes every few hours to ease the burning. The blocks closer to the place being bombed were out of food, electricity, water and other supplies. They were not allowed to get out of the houses if they needed to. 

The glow and drone of the television was a constant day in and day out. Then around the fourth day, our electricity went out. It was restored some thirty hours later. Our cell phones ran out juice. It was July. There were three children in the house under the age of ten. The place was close to city center so we couldn't get there to buy anything fresh. We had to rely on the small grocery store in our neighborhood. Many people had left the area to go live with their families or friends elsewhere. We were the only occupied house in our street except a boy of about nineteen who lived across the street. We heard him every evening playing his guitar. He started playing around five and played till about nine sometimes even later at night.

Six days later, when everybody inside the building had either been killed or arrested, the curfew was lifted. We went to work for the first time. We left early that day. The lady driving us said that she wanted to see sunrise from a place where there wasn’t any smoke obstructing her view. On our way to work had been a graveyard under construction. That day we saw some graves being dug and some new ones besides them. There was a small crowd. We had a hunch of whose graves they might be but we stayed quiet. The words, unsaid, hung in the air. It was scary. Not being able to say what was on your mind because you did not know if that would lead you being portrayed as a spy in front of the government. Across the safe distance of time, it seems a tad paranoid now but such were the times.

The lady decided to go in. Her daughter and I looked at each other and shrugged. It was the first time since we had started going together that she acknowledged me.

She parked the car. We got out and walked a few steps to the graves. The dirt on them was fresh and moist. There was a long line of coffins made with cheap wood. They were emblazoned with a welfare organization’s logo. About five grave-diggers were digging a long horizontal hole in the ground. Apparently it was to be a mass grave. No one had time to pray funerals for all those dead people separately or to dig graves for them. The sun was rising in the background. Its first rays shining on our faces. We stood silently, taking the view in.

I noticed a woman, dressed in green, roaming around the bodies, bending over the little window of each coffin. Each gave her the view of a white shroud. She looked closely at each; like somehow she was able to see through the shrouds. She stopped at few of the coffins and pressed her ear to the window, listening keenly. I was intrigued by the peculiar behavior. Curious at what she might be seeing, I peeked meekly at the nearest coffin’s window. I only saw a white cloth. The subtle rise and fall giving away the presence of the human body wrapped in it. I looked up and my eyes met with the woman’s. She ran over to us like a crazy person. Yelling unintelligibly. The lady, who I was with, hid her daughter and me behind her. Her pace slowed and her words became intelligible as she neared. ‘You know where my son is? Right? You do, right? I have been looking since two days. He had left home to go pray. I went to the market. They said check here. He is not here. Right? Tell me he is not here. I met him this morning. He looked very handsome. He is beautiful. He is my youngest, you know. He is so beautiful. Will you take me to him? I see you have a car. I can go with you. I am very tired. My legs hurt. I am hungry. But I think he is hungry too. I had cooked and asked him to eat. But he said he was going to come back and eat. He is hungry. Did you hear me? HE IS HUNGRY!!! I NEED TO GO FIND HIM!’ She wandered off still yelling.

I stared after her, stricken. One of the grave diggers (who had probably walked over to us to send her away) stepped forward and said that she had been around for about eight days. ‘She stays here day and night. It is a big place. We cannot always find her. No one knows who she is or where she came from.’ He said.

Our chaperon huddled the two of us back to the car.

I ended up going to college in that city. The graveyard was on my way again. Every day, twice a day (sometimes more) I would re-live that moment, wonder what happened to her and pray that her son wasn’t one of the ones in the coffins and that she had found him.