I rubbed her back and rocked her. ‘Tell me what’s in your heart,’ I said.
‘I want Nisha, Mum,’ she said into my neck, with shaky breath and tears. ‘I want Nisha to come back. I want to sit in our boat. I want her to tell me stories and get me ready for school and . . . and . . .’
‘And?’
‘And do the stupid times tables with me and . . . and . . . and . . .’
‘And?’
‘And I wake up at night and I’m so scared because Nisha is not there. Sometimes I wake up and knock on her door and wait for her to open it, but she never opens it. She never opens it anymore.’
My chest burned and my eyes burned until I too was crying, crying and rocking Aliki.
‘I want Nisha to come back so much.’
‘I know baby, so do I.’
Slowly she ceased crying. Now and then she whimpered and then her breathing slowed. We remained there in silence. I stroked her hair and watched the cat jump down, glancing at us one last time before it skulked off into the dark.
28
Yiannis
I
T WAS DAWN WHEN I finally slept, haunted by images of the red lake and memories of Nisha. When I finally woke up, late in the afternoon, there was a cacophony in the street below. I went out onto the balcony as hundreds of protestors filled every inch of the road, and flowed along it like a river. People marched with banners, passing the trees where Nisha’s flyers hung, away from the border and into the city, to find the root of the problem and stand before it, defiant and strong.
Here we are, they were saying. We do not simply appear from nowhere in a taxi with a suitcase and disappear once more to nowhere.
We are human.
We love.
We hate.
We have pasts.
We have futures.
We are citizens of countries, in our own right.
We have voices.
We have families.
Here we are.
The little bird was on the table beside me and it fluttered up to the nearest tree and watched the crowd below with black eyes. Then it flicked its head back to me. Something came over me. I felt such a sadness. Such a painful despair.
‘Go,’ I said to it, though I wanted to hold onto the bird and all that it meant, forever. ‘Go. Go fly. Go.’
In that moment, as if it understood, it opened its wings and took off into the sky.
Watching the bird leave, knowing it would probably never come back, suddenly woke me up. I dressed myself with purpose and went out onto the street. I caught a glimpse of Mrs Hadjikyriacou at her front door, watching with those observant but cloudy eyes.
I allowed myself to be taken by the current. I could hardly see for tears. I allowed myself to be taken until eventually we reached the presidential palace and I sat down on a bench, unable to stand any more. I had no strength in my legs.
I sat there and watched the women, their faces lit up by the candles they held in their hands. There was pain in those faces, and real fear, and, in the light, an anger that allowed them to stand straight and say Here we are.
There was a reporter beside me, and a cameraman. They were interviewing one of the women. She was probably in her twenties, with a round milky face and a French plait that hung over her right shoulder. She stood there looking straight into the camera and because she was so close, I heard her voice above the crowd: ‘I am one of lucky ones,’ she said. ‘I have a great employer, a good woman, she treats me well. My sister, she was sexually abused by her sir. She went to the police and they did nothing to help so she left her job. Now she has just three more months to find work or she will have to return to Nepal. We need to send money to my parents, they are very sick. But when I think about the women in the lake, and the children . . .’ She paused and took a deep breath.
‘Where does it end?’ A taller, darker woman standing beside her said. ‘Are we the “lucky ones” because we have not been killed?’
A strong wind blew and some of the candles went out. I saw Ruba amongst the crowd, and the two maids from Theo’s without their rice hats, their hair long and dark. Ruba relit her candle from the flame of a woman standing beside her. She then passed her flame to a child. The sun set further into the earth.
Where was Nisha to tell her story? What would I do without her? What would Kumari do without her mother? And Aliki?
I could barely breathe. I felt like I was in the middle of a burning world. But in this moment, I imagined that it burned with gold.
It was certain. Nisha had vanished and turned to gold.
She turned to gold in the setting of this winter sun. Now, for a brief moment, I caught a glimpse of her, and I think I heard her, in the burning faces and voices of the women that surrounded me.