Tuesday, December 04, 2007
Shoot Anton.
There was a pistol on the wall.
Mus thought about his journey through Greece, 25 years ago, and stopped mid-sentence as he stared down at his coffee. He had just finished telling her about the rocks in his head. Those rocks of Arabic, Greek, English, Finnish that grinded through his mind painfully.
But yes, Greece – when he had arrived as a refugee from Syria so long ago, speaking a kind of pidgin English, with no choice but to communicate. He had learned to listen, and that’s when those rocks started entering his head. Greek, English, and whenever he could Arabic. Cutting through his brain and reopening the wounds just as they were healing, slow rounds of sharp rocks, grinding, grinding.
Greece, finally getting those words out. Finally able to say a few lines, to express some of what he felt, to write down a few rhymes, and most importantly, finally allowing those rocks to become pebbles, only kneading and prodding, but never cutting. But unable to stay there for long. And at the end of the rocky, paper littered tunnel, Finland. And how the rocks there cut, and were covered with ice.
She looked at him sympathetically as he told her about the rocks. Yes, it seemed that she could imagine the rocks in his head as he counted them on to the table – 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 … mixed with the tears. Why could he so easily cry in front of this young girl who said nothing to him, but simply listened patiently to his broken Finnish?
There was still a pistol on the wall.
The rocks. The rocks were worth it. They were worth the pain, and they were worth the tooth-gnashing grinding as the synapses in his brain were formed and broken and healed over again. Each day Mus let them surface for a few minutes, and make a few cuts, but today…
- Are you sure you don’t want to use a tissue?
She held out a yellow napkin to him. The rocks were worth it. At the end, he felt how great it was to be able to say, with sincerity, a simple ‘hello’. And to know that at the end, he could still look with dignity at this girl across the table and say:
- Chekhov is wrong. I don’t have to use the pistol.
fon @ 7:06 AM link to post * *