Something Else

You are tired. You wake up at 6am every day and spend the morning trying to get as much food as possible to be ready for this afternoon’s work. No matter how you figure it, you cannot make sense of the amount of labor being done on the little food being eaten by the people around you. Perhaps, you think, you will find out something new once you have been here longer. Everything you do is mandated by the guards. It is hard to live your life in here under supervision, but it is harder to live your life in here without it. For the first two weeks you manage to keep a low profile- finding few friends, making no enemies. But one day, you are caught, and you finally understand it is not about being someone’s enemy at all. Things rarely ever are. You are in the infirmary and the doctor has given up on asking you questions. As he tries to make the blood stop, you let your mind leave this place. It is the only escape you will have for the next twenty years to life. You ask yourself why this is the way life must be, and you try to place yourself in a simpler time.

You are thirsty. You travel three miles each way to the local well to fill your pot of water and bring it back to your four younger siblings and grandmother every day. They are too young to be thankful for your journey; she is too old to help you. As you look out to the horizon, you see a cloud of dust swelling from the earth. From it, visitors approach. They have light skin and light hair, and they dress in many clothes. You have heard of them- they come with supplies. Once, when you were little, you asked your grandmother why these people come and bring things. Your grandmother said it is because at one time, they would come and only take. You take the pack they hand you- full of items they tell you are for your teeth and feet, or sleeping- knowing you will only use the food and water. This is how you always remember things to be, and how you always expect them to be. But one day your sister asks you to tell her why mother is not around, so you tell her a story that your mom once told you, asking her to imagine the way things once were.

You are sick. You have tried for a while to ignore the signs, rising every morning to go into the market and sell your jams. But two days ago, you found your fingers no longer strong enough to make them, so you stayed in. You have run out of cloths to wipe the blood from your nose and the color of your toes no longer resemble life. Before your sister passed, just two weeks ago, she looked better than you do now. The child that rests in your lap gets heavier every day and you know that once you are gone, she only has so much time without you. If your neighbors had not already fled, you would ask the wife to take her with them. No matter what you do, the air seems to get colder as time passes. But you don’t mind because it means you can still feel the air. You wonder if tonight you will have to stop her pain or your own. Instead of answering your mind’s question, you sing to comfort yourself. What comes instead is the thought of another place.

You are happy. You have had everything given to you and do not want. If you can think of it, you can have it. You spend your days wandering in the gardens, greeting the endless rows of flowers and learning their names. You walk among the lion and antelope families which play together in the open fields. At some point, you wonder what it means to live. Upon thinking this, a being appears. He sits with you and speaks to you about such things. As the thoughts occur to your mind, but before you ask them, the answers flow from his mouth. Perhaps, you think, he is the creator, not one of the creator’s heavenly beings. You tell your husband such things and he laughs- the creator could not appear to you. One day, you gaze at yourself in a stream, wondering at the difference between you and this other creature. As you are wishing you could also see God, a serpent comes up to you. He speaks of, and you imagine, a time in which you were once something else.