The beginning or the end?

The girls at the Emirates first class check-in had been on duty since midnight. It was 6am and they were just starting to check passengers for EK 005 departing at 07:30.

They reapplied layers of pink lipstick within the sharp confines of brown lipliner. They gossiped in Arabic about a colleague suspected of moonlighting as a prostitute. They readjusted their shaylas, wrapping the veils loosely around rich black hair. And they dismissed a leering Bahraini wanting to check in—his ticket was for Manama and it was economy. All in all, it was just another autumn morning in Dubai. Each time the automatic doors opened they ushered in more of the same: expats with wrists full of gold, locals with scent so thick it followed them, and the gentle 23 degree air. Beyond the doors, the sky was wearing its perennial shade of smoky blue and the palm trees lining the forecourt were heavy with bunches of ripening caramel coloured dates.

They stopped talking and stared as two police women escorted a blonde girl in handcuffs through the doors and towards their counter.

“Please, take off now?” I nodded towards the bracelets that had accessorized every trip outside the jail walls for years.

“La. Lazum keep Habibti.”

It was no surprise. You get so used to hearing ‘La’ –no, that after a while you come to expect it. It didn’t stop the heat from rising inside me though.

We approached the check in counter and there was mum. She embraced me, but I couldn’t hug her back, not with the handcuffs.

“We were starting to wonder whether they’d changed their minds,” she said. The nervousness poured out of her. We both knew how unfunny it was, and how entirely possible it could be.

“Mum, they forgot my passport! We had to turn around half way up the Iranian Hospital Road and go back – to the men’s jail - and get it!. Of course they wouldn’t let me call you. I was about to pass out oh my god it never ends … Where’s dad?”

The police women were still standing either side but now yapping a million miles an hour with the check in girls, who were very obviously interested in exactly why I was standing in front of the first class counter in handcuffs. The words flying around in Arabic included “afraj” and  “muhadarrat”, but Sheikh Mohammed was name-checked too.

“Your father just went to call the jail again. He’s in a bit of a panic. But he shouldn’t be far away.”

So all we had to do was wait.  We’d become good at that. Now freedom was right in front of us in the form of a final stamp on my passport and a short walk up the aerobridge, but the scene had none of the euphoria it delivered in my dreams. We were all exhausted – my mum, dad and I. This wasn’t a tearful homecoming celebration, it was the last step in a painfully slow dance.

I moved closer to mum and leaned into her, bending a bit to rest my head in the crook of her shoulder. It was a comfort I snatched whenever we got a contact visit. I inhaled her Bvlgari perfume and it reminded me of home. Aromatic and secure. I had been picturing my parents going through the motions of getting ready for today. They would have been up before the sun rose. My mum wouldn’t have slept at all. They wouldn’t have spoken much, beyond Dad’s departure checklist. The airman in him was procedural, and for once mum would have welcomed the distraction because The ‘what ifs’ were almost too much to bear. What’s going to happen to her? What if Derek goes to Australia? What next?

I had wondered all the same things, yet they remained explicitly unspoken.

As we were standing there, the petite brunette and the frail blonde joined together like Siamese twins, I felt a hand cup my shoulder. It was firm and wide and by the lingering pressure I knew it was my dad. I spun to him for a kiss and he put his hands around my head, scrunching my hair as he hugged me tight. The tears were springing into my eyes now and I had to force them back.  We were so clearly father and daughter. Our Dutch bone structure, broad noses, and strong jaws were identical. His hair was more of a golden syrup colour, while mine was long strands of honey and hay. We had the same large eyes with long brown lashes, but while his were a clear blue sky, mine were stormy like the sea.

He looked at the policewomen and nodded a ‘Marhaba’. ‘Hello’. He had always had some kind of effect on the big local shotias and he was going to try his luck with these two.

“You can take these handcuffs off now? Now she is free.”

“La. No. Must keep until go through. No free yet,” the policewoman said in her best English.

I just looked at him and murmured “Because I’m really going to run now.”

The police had handed over my ticket and passport. Mum did the same then started filling in a couple of departure cards. Dad requested we be checked right through to Sydney, and yes, I would like the window seat. The boarding passes were spat out of the machine and handed to dad. We were seated in 1A and 1B. You couldn’t get any further up the front of the plane without sitting in the cockpit.

Up to this point I had been oblivious to the stares. I’m sure my parents were well aware—even looking out in case they saw someone they knew—but they were accustomed to ignoring the whispers and stuffing their shame into little packages that they could unwrap in private. For me, after 751 days of being inside the system, I was now acutely aware of my presence in the outside world. We tried small talk but it was just white noise.

Mum and dad moved around me protectively as I turned my back to the desk and shuffled a few feet from the red carpet, trying to keep the handcuffs out of view. But with a police escort and the escalated voices of the check in girls, we were already a spectacle for the other passengers lining up to get on our flight.

“You lucky girl huh? Afraj. First class. Your papa look after you.” The Shotia was smiling, trying to make light. I just looked at her and the handcuffs and had to stop myself slipping my wrists out and launching the metal at her. Stay calm Heidi. We’re almost there.

We started the slow march to the customs desk, the Shotias hanging back a little. It was a gesture that didn’t go unnoticed. My dad’s hand gently steered me from the small of my back. We stopped about four metres from the desk and then it was real. We all started talking at once. This little family, just the three of us, suddenly overwhelmed. My body started heaving with sobs as both their arms went around me. Dad rubbed my back. The customs guy looked worried.

“It’s over Hyde. Come on, you’ll be fine my girl. You’ll get on that plane with your mum, sit back, have a glass of champagne and it will be a new beginning.” He eyes were full of tears. Mum was already crying. And then dad looked at the Shotia with fire in his eyes and said “Enough. Take these things off her now.”

And for the first time ever, they actually did.

You were there
then you weren't there
hot
then cold
don'r think i didn't notice
in fact i've done everything to not notice
and yet i notice
again
and again
and again
who are you and why?
why now i said
why then and why now
it pains me I can't tell you everything
yet  you tell me nothing
and everything
now.

Assignment Five - Scenes

Jason strode over to the window and pulled the drapes shut, but not before he checked out the sand parking lot that bordered one side of their hotel. It looked like a typical day out there. Sun blazing in its dusty, cloudless sky, while Indians, Filipinos, and Arabs were going about their afternoon business. There were a few fairer heads too, but in this part of town, where it was all 3 star hotels and late nights souks, the former-USSR ‘business ladies’ didn’t come out until much later on.

“I don’t know how you could even tell a narc in this place.” He said to Alex.
She was sprawled diagonally across the bed on her stomach, feet crossed at the ankles behind her. She looked up from the magazine and propped her chin on her hand. “Don’t they look the same everywhere? Like an ugly scum who is trying too hard to look bored?” The bit of fringe that had fallen across her eye was flicked away and she went back to the magazine.

“Alex, don’t you get it? What you did last night was amateur. Why won’t you ever bloody learn to
keep your mouth shut?”

“I kept my mouth shut for two whole shitty years in that hell hole in Delhi. And what? You think now I don’t know who is kosher and who is not? I talked to her all night. We cried together. She knows the score—and she’s connected.”

He rubbed his eyes and took a long pull on the joint. “That’s exactly why you shouldn’t have said anything. How do you know—no—how do I know that they’re not still watching her? Or that she’s not working for them? She told you she got out in record time—it just stinks of rat if you ask me.” As he said that he slammed his fist down into the sofa cushion beside him. “Damn Alex!”

Alex got up now and stood in front of the dressing table, her barely covered bum cheeks brown and round in front of him. She talked to his reflection in the mirror while she added more eyeliner to the fading smudges around her eyes. “You’re paranoid. And that doesn’t help,” she said, nodding at the stash on the table.

Two years of fighting for her freedom had taken its toll on Jason; they had to be more careful than ever now. He watched as she pulled an envelope of tissue paper out of the Christian Dior shopping bag and unwrapped the delicate black lace bra. She looked like a child. And acted like one most of the time. He had bought her the bra so they could get out of the shopping centre, and because he knew she would parade around the room in it and little else.

“Ok,” he said, call her.

Place

There’s that music again. I know I’m drifting in and out of consciousness but it seems like every time I start to come back, I hear that same mournful organ music. I don’t know how long I’ve been here. Hours? Days? All I know is this music is like a soundtrack to my pain. I crack open my eyes and start to find some focus. I’m lying on my side, looking through the bars at the wall straight ahead. It’s pale grey. A nothing shade of grey. Its only feature is a slice of windows high up, with more bars. I can see it’s dark outside. The wall stretches to the left and right of a corridor lit by a single dull fluorescent tube. I push myself up on the bunk and my arms shake. I have to squeeze my eyes shut to stop the dizzying galaxy of stars that fill my head. After a few breaths I try again, this time making it down the ladder to place my feet shakily on the concrete floor. I see that there is no one on the bottom bunk. It’s little wonder, I’ve probably been moaning and writhing around on that top bunk since I arrived. But I can’t be sure of anything because I feel removed from myself now, just a shell. I turn left towards the huge iron door at the end of the corridor and as I walk, a sea of faces seem to float past me, behind those rows and rows of bars.

Characters part 1 - Sasha

Alexandra strides over to the iron door and bangs on it with the full force of each hand. There is a brief lull before she starts banging again. “Eh! Ehhh! Someone come!” She looks down at her red hands and sinks a little into her skin. “Piz deet!” The Russian curse slips out of her mouth, quieter now, and in one liquid movement she turns and slides down the door until she connects in defeat with the concrete floor. The other girls in the room look up from their card game, and when they realize her eyes are closed, a couple of them stare. It is a rare opportunity to study her. To avoid the eye contact that could set her off again. She is young. Way too young to be in this place

Watching

Under the sea foam

twirling shadows find their feet

Aqua blasts them deep

The image is one of Andrew McIlroy's beautiful paintings. 

heidihaiku

My Romance

Stretching it out
Gently goes the summer leaf
Crumbs in my fingers

That Knight

Lemon dressed bed
a summer scene, serene
Fitful tossing dream

The Game

Too much to bear
or else I bare my heart
Stand up and stay cool

Watching

Under the sea foam
twirling shadows find their feet
Aqua blasts them deep

Writing Exercises - Senses

Smell
You could almost see the stink lingering in puddles outside the main dorm in RAK.
The khaki bubbles popped and spread like craters on cooking pancakes as they released their eye watering fumes of pee. "I guess they didn't unlock for the toilet again last night..."

Taste
The taste of your tattoo against my tongue on that long summer morning, not so long ago

Sound
Metal against metal; the sound of the iron skeleton key rapping against the aluminium table with speed and force. Thwak thwak thwak thwak thwak!

Touch
The feel of the prison issue blanket against my skin. It was heavy with the grease of hundreds of bodies that had used it before me. I itched. After a week I could feel the irritation growing under the skin of my back. After two weeks my back had exploded in a mess of angry red pus filled spots. A Sri Lankan girl squeezed and bathed it for me.

Sight
The vision of Derek standing calm, almost nonchalant in the visiting courtyard, while to each side of him it was chaos. His stance almost an inversion of all those around him. They shouted, waved, gesticulated, jostled to be seen and heard by their visitors on the other side of the bars, many of whom were wilting and crying in the afternoon heat. He just stood still and stared into my eyes, searching out my heart, as I wilted and cried too.

Taste
The tiny salty black bubbles popped between my teeth and I looked over at mum with eyes that didn’t know whether to cry or laugh. The caviar was first class. I sipped from my glass of Dom and started to notice long forgotten senses waking up. The Champagne bubbles tickled my mouth and nose and washed the salty eggs down in one exquisite swallow. I had eaten prison food for two years. The only alcohol I'd drunk was a couple of capfuls of baby cologne. This was my very first taste of freedom.

Writing Exercises - Emotions

Love
There’s a lightness that comes with love. People talk about butterflies tickling their skin from the inside out, but doesn’t it all start in the head? It’s the brain that suddenly bursts with these long dormant hormones. It’s the neurones firing off with pleasure that create space where once there was longing. For me, the lightness means I can relax when he meets me at Schiphol Airport. Relaxing means a feverish afternoon of lovemaking in the tiny White House hotel in Amsterdam. The feverish afternoon becomes an affair born in security, surety and complete physical surrender. I had melted into my man and he into me. He said I love you Hyde. And I finally said I love you back.

Fear
It’s like a game of tetris. The ball of fire is suspended around my heart and drops down into my flaming belly pit. The moment it drops another forms, and drops, then another and another... There’s a tightness that runs from deep inside my brain and fingers its way through my body. It hurts. It’s like my soul is trying to tear through - to get away. But I need it here. I need to be alert, I’m straining to pick up a hint in their fast flowing Arabic, a hint that I’ll be ok, that it will all be over soon. But deeper down in the pit of fire is an emptiness that tells me it’s useless. A knowing that tells me the only place I'm going is back to jail.

Self loathing
You can tell the girls who actually have some legitimate reason for being in prison. The ‘what ifs’ and ‘what have I dones’ hang unspoken, like a weight slung across their shoulders as they move through the hours of each and every day. This ghostly appendage to the soul balances two buckets - one on either side - overflowing with regret and sadness. When you’re carrying the buckets, it usually means you’re going to be here a while. You’ll watch girls come, some with buckets, some just in transit; and you’ll watch girls go. That’s when your own buckets get heavier. How can you go? How can you even just make it ok? Sorry, I screwed up is not a currency accepted here. You are powerless to change events. In the end, you can only change yourself.

Joy
I look at the new text message and can’t help but smile. It felt like the roof opened up to the sun right there in Sexy Nails salon. A burst of pink spread across my cheeks then leaked all the way to my fingers and toes. I looked up, not looking anywhere because my eyes were glazed, just recalling his hands gently laying me back onto the bed. I see the sun tattooed on his solar plexis. Maybe that’s where the warmth is coming from. I want to reply but know now it’s ok. I don’t have to rush. He’s still there. And I’m still smiling.

So I craft my response while the Vietnamese lady paints hot pink wax between my legs.

The Passport

The sun was peeping over the dunes behind us, its low glow making dazzling halos on the sea grass dotted on the horizon.

There was laughter from somewhere up the beach and I watched as a trail of pixels caught up with the direction of my stare. The acid had settled in nicely; much like our cavorting posse of partygoers.

Thanks to the Fender Passport system the sand was bumping. Bass vibration shimmied up my legs and raised the hairs on my arms. It felt like every pore opened a little wider to take the music in - straight to the nerve endings. The perfect outdoor audio kit, the Passport comprised two speakers and an amp that clip together into one solid 20 kilo suitcase. All you need is your music source and a generator and you’ve got yourself a party. We had the speakers on tripod stands facing in towards the barasti hut. The psychedelic fabric fastened to two sides of the bamboo frame gave us walls of fractals within which to dance, while Ganesha made a dexterous salute to the sea from behind the DJ desk.

The boys were just wrapping up a two hour back to back set, mixing and mashing minidisc, DAT and vinyl into a journey through the darker corridors of psy-trance. Most of the tunes were fresh from India and Germany, heavy with layers of complicated beats and vocal samples over the traditional pounding four-four bassline. It was stomping music. It was twirling and contorting make-your-body-elastic music. It was not for the faint hearted music.

Evidently, because only the hard core remained. The rest of the party goers had come and gone in the night. Half the excitement is actually finding the party, negotiating sand dunes in the wilderness of a 10km stretch of beach. If you don’t have a four wheel drive, you better have a pre-arranged pick up plan. Quite often there was no phone signal, and even if there was, no one at the party is going to hear your call. There was lots of driving through the dunes with the windows down and constantly cutting the engine to listen out for the thud thud thud thud of the bass. >>>>

The laughter that had stirred me came from Aslam and Emil. A moment ago you could only see their outlines on the horizon, then it lifted its veil and illuminated their faces. They were speaking in Hindi, the sing-song timbre exaggerated by the twilight.

I don’t think I’d actually spoken a word for the last couple of hours.