FIFTEEN
ANIJ CAN’T SLEEP AT ALL. This has been going on for a few days. He wakes up and looks around him. Everyone is sleeping. It is so weird and hard to find any reason for not being able to sleep. Then he spots someone else who is not sleeping. She is standing in front of the fence and smoking with lots of grudge on her back. It shows. Anij looks at her with sympathy — for her and for himself. Then she notices Anij. She turns around slowly and looks at him for a while then turns back and continues to smoke. She doesn’t want to share this moment with anyone else.
Each day, Anij is waiting for a ship to come by to see if his parents are on board. Not a single ship, so far. He has felt downhearted, unlike many other days of his past life on the island. Of course he has been down. But especially since he hasn’t been able to find his parents for so long, he has to be this down. There is no sense in measuring happiness anymore. It is just not worth it. Every night, he falls asleep with tears running down his face. As he knows very well, with other people around him, he needs to be quiet. Nobody wants to hear a baby crying all night long, especially when they also want to cry. When he cried the other night with the slightest moan, someone told him to shut up. He can’t express any of his emotion. That is just not allowed. It is almost considered taboo, here. He is biting the bullet really hard, like never before. He has to bite his pillow to soften his moaning.
Mornings are never like any morning that he used to have. The first thing that comes to his mind in the morning is his parents, and of course they are his last thought before he sleeps. To top things off, there are lots of people who grind their teeth, sleepwalk, scream, and do all sorts of crazy shit. It is a wonder that he is not locked up in a mental institution. He heard some snoring before from his dad, but nothing like this. He is scared and pissed off at the same time. There isn’t anything that he can offer for himself to think outside the box. Yes, these are thoughts from a seven-year-old boy. The only thing that matters here is how to live with one another without feeling too terrible.
Anij has found a new task. Since he has to go through so many nonsense-but-must-accept matters, he is looking for normal people or groups of people, so he would not get screwed over by those involuntary-but-malicious actions that no one seems to notice much.
There is a man who seems to be slightly out of balance lately. Anij asks some questions of a person next to him: why he has become like that.
“Do you think that he is a little crazier than before?”
“Yeah, I think so. I think he just became insane.”
“I am scared. What if he does something crazy at night?”
“No . . . He is a harmless guy. He used to be so calm and easygoing. Once he gets used to this place, he will get better, I hope.”
“Some people are becoming ill. I think this would come to everyone eventually.”
“Everyone knows. But they are hiding it from themselves.”
“Why?”
“Why? Well . . . They know that they could be just like him someday. But he is not totally out of bounds, yet. So don’t try to talk about it with anyone.”
“Okay . . .”
“And be careful. I feel sorry for you and your parents. They must be worried even more than you. There is no one to take care of you. It is all on you now. You know that.”
“Yeah . . .”
“You must be stronger. First, you need to be a real man. A real grown man in and out. Okay?”
“Okay . . .”
As these horrific days fly by, there are signs of mental morphs on people. It seems like a natural descending curve as people become edgier. There are no trivial or trifling matters anymore; people are paranoid and see just about anything as a problem. Every matter becomes bigger than it should be. And eventually they start saying it is one of many conspiracies of the soldiers. No matter how unrelated or insignificant it is, it just becomes something the soldiers are doing. They feel happy whenever they conclude a matter is a conspiracy. It is very hard to fathom what is the real motivation or rationale behind all that kind of logic.
Even when people are morphing into some kind of monsters, they still have basic human qualities. Those extreme antagonists against the Americans often try to distract the soldiers during their trainings. They often try to run across the marching lines of soldiers or do some other stupid things. Simple enough to be quite easily ignored, but because of all those imbecilic pests, now the islanders can’t even go outside the fences during the day. The compound gates used to be left open but now they are locked pretty much all the time. That really sucks. Many times, the islanders fight with those extremists.
“Guys, can you stop that?”
“Stop what?”
“What? You don’t know what I am talking about?”
“I don’t know. What are you trying to say?”
“Stop all those stupid protests.”
“Why?”
“Since your group has been mucking with the soldiers so damn often, they shut the gates tight all the time.”
“It has been like that all along. What are you talking about?”
“Those gates were never closed like that the whole day. You see now? Closed? You took away our only freedom in this place.”
“Well . . . we always kind of stayed in the compound anyway. What is the complaint?”
“I can’t even go outside. Everybody is just stuck in this small compound and lying on their beds all day.”
“Do you have anything better to do?”
“What? Hm . . . Do you?”
“Yes. Many things.”
“I would not call what you are doing a good thing.”
“I did not ask you to judge us. I do what I have to do.”
“How did you come up with stupid shit like that?”
“Hm . . . Do you remember the last time we had a meeting with the chief?”
“Yeah.”
“What happened next?”
“Not much . . .”
“So?”
“What do you mean, ‘so’?”
“That is what I am talking about. We didn’t do shit. So they treated us like shit and they continued with their goddamn tests. Now look. Where are we? We don’t even know what this place is called. I have no idea what we should do here. What will happen tomorrow? What are they going to do to us? When is it going to happen? I don’t know.”
“Well, I don’t know anything about this place or what will happen. But this isn’t right . . . You know better.”
“Like I said, mind your own business! Because you are so busy doing nothing, we are dead in the water. And I would like things to change. I don’t want to get stuck here and finish my life with a bunch of soldiers. Do you understand?”
“But what has that got to do with your stupid actions against the soldiers? Screaming at them and mocking their training? I don’t think it will do anything constructive enough to help us to escape from this shit hole.”
“But it is a start. See? I just want them to know what we go through every day. Just look at us. We are like shit. What is the difference? I can’t see one. Well, can you?”
The argument finishes like that abruptly, with no conclusion. The man who started this argument lies down on his bed and keeps complaining to himself; and the man who was defending his actions keeps staring at all the islanders. It almost seems like he is trying to infuse his conduct with dignity.
For a situation like this, it is very hard to assess the most effective and smart way of going about making a positive change. Isolated, smothered in boredom, the islanders are living on a sort of crazy farm.
“You . . . rats! Come here!”
“Eat my dust, asshole!”
“Next time I see you, you all go to jail, right? You got that?”
“Whatever, man! Hahahaha . . .”
De Marco, who is a chef, is pissed off about food thieves. He knows who they are. But it is a wonder how those thieves get into the base. A big mystery to him. A soldier just walked by and saw what happened in the kitchen.
“Hey, De Marco! What the hell was that?”
“What? Those kids?”
“Yeah. How did they get in?”
“I have no idea . . . I just can’t figure it out.”
“So, what did they do?”
“Well . . . They took some food . . . not much.”
“Hm . . . You know them?”
“Yeah. They sometimes come here and take some. It is never too much. But I just hate those kids.”
“They seemed to be pretty young. Maybe around thirteen?”
“Maybe . . . But I just don’t know how they get in. And that is all I care about.”
“There must be a loophole somewhere.”
“But it is never just one or two kids. It is always around three or four. So how do they get in?”
“Don’t ask me. We are not in charge of that. You want me to report this to the lieutenant?”
“Yeah. I guess we’ll have to catch it before it gets even crazier, right?”
“Well . . . I guess.”
“Don’t tell him it has happened before. I don’t want to take any shit from him. You know that, right?”
“Okay, no problem. I will just tell him what I saw. That should be good enough. Okay?”
“Thanks. By the way, anything special you’d like to eat next week?”
“Maybe deep-fried chicken might be nice . . . Possible?”
“I will do my best. Thanks, anyway. Later.”
“Later.”
De Marco is whistling away his favourite tune and going out of the kitchen.
Anij is looking at the kitchen for no particular reason and watching the chef walking toward the port. De Marco’s whistling attracts Anij. It is not the same song that Anij knows. But somehow it has a strange attraction to it. Anij turns his head and stares at him.