The Sea of Sadness

[alidiabin]

Title: The Sea of Sadness
Summary: Five characters all struggling with loneliness or responsibility walk along a main road in the morning
Warnings: Mentions of child abuse, sexual abuse, adultery.

The Sea of Sadness

 

Prologue

Black shoe clad feet cross the road and walk toward the main road. A schoolbag hits the lamppost. The winter eight o’clock sun bathes the street. Black shoe clad feet trample across the sea of sadness

 

Mai

Mai had found her name sounded like the English word ‘mine’.

Every morning she dreamed of all the people she cared for pulling her in different directions shouting ‘mine’. For everyone else owned Mai.

A man owned her and he gave her out every night. Every night a man would pull her into his violent embrace and cry.
“Mine” he would cry. Like the seagulls in the fish movie she took her dear brother Xi to see all those years ago.

She thinks often of Xi especially when she sees the little boy rushing across the street to get to the bakery. Xi was the much wanted son. The much loved son. Who in their parents eyes couldn’t do a thing wrong.

Mai leans on the door of her apartment. She tries to recall if she has called her mother lately. Though those calls were difficult. Keeping track of all the lies she told were difficult to keep track of.

Though Xi was hardly innocent on the lie front. For as far as Aiko Ng was concerned her and her late husbands children were perfect. Mai was climbing the corporate ladder in the capitalist western world she was also funding Xi’s medical education. And according to Aiko Xi was a good medical student who was too busy to find a girlfriend. Mai knew however that Xi had a long line of casual boyfriends.

Mai opens the door of her cramped apartment next to the dental surgery. She presses the answer machine.
“Mai” A shrill voice cries. ‘Mine’ echoes in her head.

Mai had found her name sounded like the English word mine.

 

 

Jamal

Jamal was a natural runner.

He sprinted across the road. He ran not because he feared the on coming early morning traffic.

No, he sprinted because the quicker he got the daily bread the quicker he got home. The quicker he got to see what damage his father had inflicted on his mother and sister.

Jamal hated his father. It was not the usual teenage hate either. As far as Jamal was concerned his father was the devil in human father. Every time Rasheed Rassal raised his belt. Jamal only saw the red skin and gapping horns of the devil.

Most of the time Jamal was spared of these savage beatings. He after all was the desired son. Jamals mother and sister were not so lucky. Every night, Jamal heard the screams of Soraya and Aziza Rassal. Every morning Rasheed would force Jamal to leave them for ten minutes. For ten minutes Jamal had no idea of what torture was inflicted on his mother and sister.

Jamal collected the bread. Then ran up the hill towards their tiny unit. He watched as his fathers’ car roared up the hill heading towards the city.

Jamal was a natural runner. And everyday he wondered why he ran home. Why he ran into the fire. Then he saw the look of relief on his mothers and sisters face when he came home.

Jamal was a natural runner. One day he would run away dragging Soroya and Aziza with him.

 

Mara

Mara was once told her name meant sea of bitterness.

She as a teenager had always wondered if that sea was her mothers. Of course Mara had no one to ask. Her father and extended family were simply figments in Mara’s overactive imagination that were brought to life when Livi Bellenski drunk.

Mara had never understood her mother. Who wore long sleeves everyday and never had a male friend or many friends of any kind for that matter. It was not until Mara’s small country school begun teaching about the holocaust that Mara understood her mother a little bit.

Mara also finally received an explanation for her blonde hair that was a stark contrast to her mothers black curly locks. It appeared there were only a few variations of Hitler’s SS officers. In her teen years Mara imagined a pair of star crossed lovers and a father who died trying to save his lover.

Like everything, Mara eventually learnt the truth. As always she learnt it the hard way. She learnt it at her high school graduation party. Two boys one was even the ministers son pushed her against the weatherboard barn. She didn’t scream.

She screamed nine months later. As she lay in her childhood bed and her mother pulled her son from her. The second Mara had seen him. She had fallen in love with him. He was the only good thing that came from her life. She named him David which meant beloved.

And beloved he was. Mara left the quiet country town in search of a better life for David. She worked multiple jobs to get him into the grammar school. The years he was in university she functioned on ten hours sleep a week to pay the extortionate fees.  She had smiled at her little lawyer at his graduation when he graduated second of his class.

Mara’s love was never returned. David now lived in London. He never called or wrote. He never even emailed despite demanding Mara set up an account. He had abandoned her. After everything she had done, her own flesh and blood had abandoned her.

Mara walked back to her granny flat. She had once been told her name meant sea of bitterness. She had never thought that sea would be her own.

 

 

Tariq

He cleaned the bonnet of his cab.
“You work to hard” his heavily pregnant and much younger wife Zoyah said leaning on the doorway rubbing her belly. Tariq put the cloth on the bonnet and walked toward her. He placed a kiss on her belly and on her lips.
“I do it all for you” he whispered in the direction of her belly. Zoyah smiled and went inside. Tariq headed to the cab.

What he had said was the truth. Tariq did everything for his unborn child. He had moved from his native Pakistan to the Western world for his unborn child. Since the second Zoyah informed him she was pregnant. Tariq’s whole life had become that child.

He had gone from a literature professor at Pakistan’s finest university to a taxi driver. He had gone from the lecturer who slept with every female student to a married man. Though he had given it all up he often dreamed of it. He remembered marking papers on great works of literature. He remembered Zoyah giggling as he locked the door.

Tariq also remembered the violence in his homeland. Every time Zoyah turned on the news he was confronted with bulletins of bomb blasts and the number of casualties. Zoyah was young and ignorant to the beauty of their country. Tariq felt a part of his die every time he saw such sad bulletins.

Though even in a supposedly peaceful country Tariq could not escape violence. Taxi drivers were the targets of alcohol fuelled young men who were determined to prove their masculinity by killing an innocent. Just the week before Tariq had visited the widow of a fellow Pakistani driver. Everyday Tariq faced the threat of being the victim of a violent stabbing or simply a mugging gone wrong.

Tariq fingered the illegal gun in the shelf of the dashboard. Just in case he thought. He hid the gun deeper in the shelf. For if he was caught in possession of such an item. It would be he who would be in trouble. As he tried to cover it a sonogram picture fell out.

“I do it all for you” he repeated to the picture of his unborn child.

 

Georgia

Georgia was quite frankly gorgeous.

She hobbled slowly to the bus stop in ridiculously high healed shoes that her late German immigrant mother Rita would call ‘hooker shoes’. She stood in front of the glass of the bus stop examining her reflection. Her bleached blonde hair was perfect. She hoped it would remain so. After all she had spent three hours perfecting it. She carefully examines her doll like make up.

She shivers as a gust of wind hits her exposed legs. More of her mother’s words echo in her head ‘that skirts to short’. Georgia had never listened to Rita.

Yet she hung onto every word her father Leo uttered. She had been distraught when the policeman stood at their door informing them that Leo had been hit by a drunk driver. She had been ten. She had never fully recovered.

She had gone on to study psychology at university. She got a third of the way through when he mother informed her she had cancer. Even though the only feelings Georgia could muster for Rita were that of hate. Her fathers wise words echoed in her head ‘she brought you into this world you have a duty to her’.

By her twentieth year, Georgia was an orphan and in debt. University was no longer an option but in the paradox that was life the lack of university qualifications meant Georgia couldn’t get a practically well paying job.

She worked as a sectary. She undid forty years of feminist struggles by allowing her boss Michael to stare at her in short skirts and low cut blouses.

She also undid her moral code by allowing herself to become the other woman. Everyday she allowed Michael to meet her in a hotel room. She spent her pay check getting clothes to impress him. To make him stay.

She often wondered what it would be like if Michael left his wife. She imagined them living in his large house together with his son Reid by that evil Stephanie visiting every so often. She pictured them having a daughter together. She pictured a shot gun wedding and Michael holding her hand in the delivery room. Telling her she was doing great. Georgia had even picked out the name. Brooke. Brooke would have everything Georgia never did.

It would never happen. Even though Michael hated Stephanie Georgia still heard him professing his love over the phone. Even if he claimed it was a lie. It tore Georgia up inside. She planned to break off the affair. She planned it many times but it never happened. Michael had her trapped in his web of deceit.

Georgia was quite frankly gorgeous. So why was she selling herself short.

 

 

Epilogue

Black shoe clad feet bounce along the pavement bathed in the early morning sun. The cross over from the sea of sadness and into oblivion