Читать книгу All Inclusive - Farzana Doctor - Страница 19

∞

Three hundred and twenty-nine of us hovered over the ocean, watching the briny water swallow what remained of our bodies. We waited. I still had no physical sensations, but my mind glowed awake like a sunrise.

I think the others were also experiencing a growing awareness. Some of the adults distracted the children so they wouldn’t view the gruesome drama below, but Meena told me it wasn’t necessary.

“We’re spirits. Children no more. Just like you’re a man no more.” She said this matter-of-factly, as though our demise was a simple and acceptable fact. Why wasn’t she bawling her eyes out, having a fit, shaking in fear?

I looked down at my body, realizing that it was an illusion, a placeholder. I really was a man no more. But what else was I? Meena blinked and light glittered through her, a hundred stars filling her. We were still holding hands, but I was the one clinging to her now.

Time passed. Meena’s mother made her way through the crowd, bewildered, and we huddled around her. Together we stared at the chunks of metal, bits of fabric, and floating bodies in the churning water below. There was less of it than before, the ocean slowly swallowing the evidence of our existence.

I wondered if my family knew of the crash yet. Would it be on the news? I hoped they’d learn of my death in the comfort of their sitting room rather than within the chaos of the airport’s arrivals hall. I couldn’t bear the thought of Mummy, Daddy, Nadeem, or Ameera facing that horror in public.

I wanted to go to them but was immobilized by invisible chains. Time and again, I willed myself to travel eastward, but I was rooted, weighed down, the substance of me like a marble statue. The others confirmed that it was happening to them, too. An older lady in our gathering said we were required to stay to the end, to witness everything. Which end? Witness what? I wanted to ask. But I remained quiet.

Helicopters and boats arrived. A fleeting and impossible notion cheered me: we were going to be rescued! Perhaps some of us were alive? But no. It was only our flesh and bone containers that were raised up, recovered. Carried away to safety, too late.

“Look,” Meena said calmly, “There. They found me. I mean, the me that I was before.”

A sobbing man in uniform dangled from a helicopter. He held Meena’s corpse to his chest tightly yet gently, as though she were a living child, his own beloved daughter. He was lifted up and a pair of arms pulled him and his precious cargo inside the chopper. Meena’s body was laid down beside others and covered in a blanket, as if being tucked in for the night. The uniformed man wiped his eyes, stepped toward the metal bird’s open doors, and leapt out into thin air to continue his work.

I followed the drift of my own body down down down. It was faraway now, miles away, resting at the sandy bottom of the icy sea. I knew it would never be recovered. The deepest despair clutched at me then, and I knew that my family would suffer as a result of never seeing my corpse. It would be more difficult for them to say goodbye, to let go. Meena read my thoughts, and stretched her shape until she was six feet tall and broad like a quarterback. She held me in a long embrace, her form blending into mine, her light becoming my own.