Six

Wow! My first comment on a post. I was thrilled. I read it again.

Eli Malouf June 1, at 9:40 AM

I didn’t know that! Thanks 4 sharing.

By no means was it the insightful dialogue I’d hoped my post on the horrors of an Asian Auschwitz would generate, but it was a start.

I glanced down at the time on my PC’s screen. I liked to arrive at school an hour before the first bell, but Eli had responded yesterday, I should get an answer off to him right away.

Elizabeth Bennet June 2, at 7:25 AM

Eli ... Unit 731 is rarely mentioned but it happened & will again if we don’t learn from history. To find out why you’ve never heard of the Asian Auschwitz click here: http://firsttoknow.com/unit-731-horrors-asian-auschwitz-you’ve-never-heard/

This article has more information about this atrocity than my post. I was horrified ... I’m guessing you will be too!

As I checked my reply for typos, I told Karim how excited I felt. In my head, of course, but even so it felt real. As always in my fantasies, he was supportive of my endeavours. Often when I get into these scenarios, I forget about real life. I sighed. If I didn’t stop having imaginary conversations with my ex, I’d never get over losing him. I pinged my wristband and clicked send.

* * *

I stayed behind after school to watch a hockey match between the junior schools’ first and second elevens. Today was Annie’s first day in goal. There was only a couple of minutes to the final whistle and it looked like a draw was coming up. My heart dropped as an opposing striker passed the ball to the first’s centre forward — a natural athlete who trained with the state team. A cheer went up from the smattering of spectators, as she whacked the ball into the net right on the final whistle. I lifted my binoculars but there was no trace of embarrassment on my sister’s face. Instead, she immediately congratulated the winners.

The school champ shook Annie’s hand and clapped her on the back. She was one of those sporty girls with a booming voice. From the sidelines, I clearly heard her say, “That was an awesome save you made in the first half. As good as any I can remember.”

Some of the parents and teachers walked over. I hesitated. I made a point of not singling my sister out for special attention in case the other girls teased her. Not that Annie wouldn’t give as good as she got. Wishing I’d had as much spirit at her age, I gave her a wave and headed home.

First off, I checked my letterbox. My heart leapt when I saw a postcard with a photo of Hagia Sophia, the most famous tourist attraction in Turkey on the front. Call it wishful thinking, but a small part of me refused to believe Karim had died in the raid that had flattened Suruç’s hospital. I told myself he could have been abducted and forced to use his medical skills to treat rebel soldiers. After all, terrorists have casualties too. It’s possible, I muttered, breathing heavily. His body was never identified.

My hand shook as I turned the card over. Straight off I recognised the loopy handwriting. I looked down at my wrist and snapped the rubber band hard enough to sting. Ordinarily I would have been thrilled to receive a postcard from my sisters currently backpacking their way around Asia. But the photo on the postcard awoke the melancholy monster that has made a home in my subconscious. Dormant most of the time, when it wakes I’m a complete wreck — all I want to do is curl up in a ball and sleep.

Sleeping was out of the question. I’d set my year-eleven students an essay on the danger of totalitarian governments with reference to “1984”, and though the assignment wasn’t due until tomorrow, half a dozen go-getters had already handed it in. The thought of their disappointed faces when they asked if I’ve marked their work was the best way to combat the inertia that in my case accompanied depression.

I tossed the postcard into the canvas hold-all I use for school. Right now I needed coffee ... oodles of it, one cup after another, lined up and ready to be gulped down. For my birthday I’d treated myself to a coffee machine, the kind that uses pods. The reservoir was still full from this morning, so I popped a pod in the top, placed my mug under the brew head and turned it on. Before I met Karim I drank lattes but now I drink coffee his way, strong, sharp and bitter, like my state of mind.

I carried the mug over to the table and fished Fanny’s postcard out of my bag. To say I was surprised that she and Emma were in Istanbul was an understatement. Only last week my sisters were backpacking through India. Fanny had phoned me from an ashram in the Punjab. I smiled when I read that she’d seen enough temples to last her a lifetime and felt the same about Turkey’s mosques. We’ve been told the Spanish know how to party, she wrote, and so we’re off to Barcelona. Mosques and cathedrals are Barcelona’s biggest tourist attractions. I smiled again. What I’d give to see their faces. Brought up on an isolated cattle station with no contact with other children, I’d forged an indestructible bond with Fanny and Emma.

It was different with Annie. She was born after I left Katoomba. Of course I went home during the breaks when I was at school and later university, but a lot less often at Hagadery. Added up, it wasn’t enough to make an impression on a toddler. As a consequence, the baby of the family grew up without ever getting to know her eldest sister. Now that Mum has passed away, I’m trying to make up for those years of neglect. I took a sip of coffee. It had gone cold. I pulled a face and returned to the kitchen for a refill.

The next two hours were intensely busy. But finally, I wrote the last comment, on the last essay. Though I was impressed by the A student’s industry, with another eighteen essays due in tomorrow, I prayed no one else would present me with twenty pages; single spaced and typed in a size 10 font!

It was still only seven-fifteen. I’d finished marking and my lesson preparation was up to date. Some like it Hot was showing at the Art House. A group of teachers from the English faculty were off to see it tonight and meeting up beforehand for drinks at Alexander’s. If I got a wriggle on, they’d still be there.

As I was changing into something more suitable for a night out with the girls than the tailored suit I wore to school I recalled the poetry unit my year-eight class was working on. I was introducing them to various poetic forms. This morning I’d read them Edward Lear’s Alphabet poem: A was once an apple pie etcetera. It’d crossed my mind that an A- Z of biological weapons was an interesting format for a blog post. Once the girls were working away on their poems, I made a start. By the time the bell announced the end of the lesson, I was up to S as in Sarin.

Sarin was the nerve gas that had been used in attacks on Turkish and Syrian towns as well as in the Tokyo Underground, way back in 1995. The agonizing deaths of the victims from asphyxiation had been the impetus that motivated Karim and I to sign up for work at an under-staffed field hospital in Suruç. I shuddered. But for the phone call from my father, I’d have been there when the hospital was bombed.

A black cloud descended, and so instead of changing for a night at the flicks, I pulled on my pjs, powered up my PC and waited — and waited some more. I was looking through the local service directory for a computer technician when the Google search page finally appeared. I typed biocide.com into the browser.

Eli’s reply to my earlier comment put a smile back on my face.

Eli Malouf June 3, at: 5.40 PM

Hi Elizabeth

Great post! Thanks for sending me the link. Can’t understand why we didn’t learn about this stuff in school. But hey, our politicians like to keep us in the dark. Not so easy now there’s the internet, is it? The government has Assange and Snowden down as traitors, but in my book they’re heroes.

It seems like we are interested in the same stuff. If you’d like to take a look at my blog this is the address: http://www.can’tletthispass.blogspot.com

Cheers,

Eli.

I immediately clicked the link. Eli’s blog looked professional and, unlike mine, included a photo of him. Physically I thought he looked a lot like Karim apart from the beard which gave Eli the look of a devil-may-care pirate. After reading through the blogger’s latest post, in which he defended Assange and Snowden I realised we had something in common. I too believed whistle-blowers should be praised rather than persecuted.

Nevertheless, I felt he was courting trouble. For though in the West we play lip service to freedom of speech, he was taking a risk espousing politically unacceptable sentiments online, particularly as his name and photo identified him as an Arab—probably a Muslim and therefore suspect. Not fair. In fact, Karim had often complained that when an Islamic committed an act of terrorism, not only the perpetrator, but everyone of Middle-Eastern extraction was held to account.

I admired Eli’s courage in speaking out. And I wasn’t alone. His post had generated hundreds of comments from readers. All were pro-Assange. No one had shown the least bit of interest in my blog. Why? Was it that boring?

I opened up biocide.com, read through my posts and then read through his. Mine were expressed formally, in the balanced academic way I’d learnt at Uni while he had a conversational style of writing, almost like a chat between friends. As for his controversial beliefs, they were expressed with passion. I felt just as strongly as Eli did about the ethics of germ warfare but no one would guess from my dispassionate posts.

According to the time display at the bottom of the screen it was 1:20AM. I had to be at school in six hours. Bed beckoned but I’d got to that over-tired stage where I couldn’t stop. I dashed off a reply to Eli, and then I clicked new post and began typing the anti-germ warfare poem I’d begun in class. At 2:55AM I clicked publish. I should have gone to sleep the moment my head hit the pillow but too much was going on in my mind.

What would Eli make of my zealous poem? Would he get back to me?