Rescued at Last

I leaned into my father as he led me along the corridor. His guard had dropped now. He was away from the soldiers and the brave face had gone and he was crying like a baby as he realised the sort of condition his daughter was in. He kept asking me what the monsters had done to me. I kept telling him I was fine and that I wanted to see Nani.

“She’s alive?” I kept asking.

“Yes.”

“You promise?”

I don’t know how many times I asked that question, at least a dozen times before we got to the end of the corridor but I asked the question because every time my father answered he smiled and gradually I began to believe him. When dad smiled I wanted to smile too. It had been that way since childhood but in that dreadfully long corridor I couldn’t manage one tiny smile. It was as if my face had forgotten what a smile was and it was the most frustrating feeling in the world not being able to smile back at my father.

At the end of the corridor was the door they’d first brought me through. It was ajar and Agi pushed it open with his foot as we stepped outside. I cried out in pain as a million nerve endings exploded in my brain.

“What is it locki?”

I’d fallen to my knees covering my eyes with my hands. The heat from the sun was glorious as it seemed to scorch my skin and soak into my bones. It was a beautiful moment and yet as soon as it had appeared in my peripheral vision it had blinded me and wracked me with pain.

“What is it Laura?”

My poor father, I’m sure he must have thought I’d been shot the way I fell to the ground clutching my head. I explained that I hadn’t seen the sun for six months and he couldn’t quite believe it, cursing and swearing, calling them animals and threatening to take his revenge.

He knelt down beside me and little by little I was gradually able to half open my eyes squinting at the scenery around me. It hurt so much but I wanted to see what outside looked like again. I guessed it was midday as the sun was high in the sky, almost directly overhead.

There was an explosion of colour as I looked over towards a mountain and studied the shape of the trees and bushes. It was like being able to see for the first time and it took some time for my brain to register any other colours apart from grey and black. For an instant I was back in my cell and there was only black. Outside the cell it was painted battle ship grey. That had been my entire colour spectrum for six months. Now I could see the green of the trees and the grass and bright reds and oranges of colourful bushes, the yellows of tiny clumps of flowers and of course the beautiful piercing blue of the sky. I still couldn’t look directly at the sun but I could feel it, see the powerful golden glow from the corner of my eye.

Agi lifted me up and supported me and I looked into his beautiful chestnut coloured eyes. They reminded me of the colour of a thoroughbred racehorse glistening with mild perspiration and I stood for some time staring intently at him taking it all in and then as if by magic a smile pulled across my face.

And Agi smiled too.

“Come, we must go,” he said.

We walked over to where the car was parked and he was obviously keen to get away as he opened the back door and told me to get in. We drove for some time and I lay in the back. I think I slept most of the way home and didn’t really have any idea how long we had been driving. I was half in a dream by the time we pulled up at the house. I still lay on the back seat but my eyes were open and I could hear my mother’s voice.

“Where is she?”

Was I dreaming?

“She’s dead, Nani is dead,” I whispered.

My father was looking in the car window.

“She’s not dead locki. I promised you. Your Nani is here.”

“Where is she?”

I had died, I was surely in heaven and I was happy because I could hear my mother’s and my father’s voices and I was with them both and that was all that mattered.

Father opened the car door.

“Come and see your mother locki, she is here.”

I crawled from the car somehow summoning up an inner strength and at last I could stand unaided. I held onto the car door but eventually let go as I picked out the shape of my dear mother standing in the garden twenty metres away. I shuffled towards her like an arthritic old woman.

Nani collapsed crying in a heap before I reached her.

“My god what have they done to you?”

“I’m fine Nani, really I am.”

I looked up at her and smiled.

“I remembered what you once said Nani, What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”

I knelt down on the dusty ground beside her.

“So here I am Nani and I’m not dead.”

We held onto each other as if our life depended on it. Father coaxed us to our feet and the three of us stood cuddling and hugging, Nani stroking at my hair and talking to me gently, telling me everything would be fine. Her voice was like a melody to me, the sweetest voice in the world for sure.

“I’m sorry Nani. I’m sorry for smelling so bad.”

It came to me that I hadn’t been showered for several days.

“I stink Nani. I’m sorry.”

My mother was wiping away my tears with her fingers as she laughed and said that whatever daughters smelled like it was never unpleasant. She said I was her creation, her flesh and blood and then she led me into the house. It was exactly the same as I remembered it and I was surprised how warm it felt. I asked my mother what month it was and she said it was the end of July. The sun had baked into the stone for a couple of months now and it felt so comfortable. She led me through the lounge and towards the stairs. She said she was taking me to the bathroom and would wash me. Agi followed behind.

We stood in the bathroom as she started to fill the bath. When she began to undress me Agi made some excuse and went to leave the room. I asked him not to go, what did I care if my father saw me naked after everything I’d been through? But Agi was Agi and he just wouldn’t do it and he left. My mother stripped me and helped me into the hot water.

She took an age to bathe me, soaping me all over and then rinsing the bubbles off with the showerhead. She repeated the exercise at least four or five times kissing me all over and telling me how much she’d missed me and that I would always be the most important person in the world to her, no matter what happened.

At last she lifted me out and towelled me dry with a big soft fluffy towel. And as I stood motionless like a three year old child she dressed me in clean clothes. My clean clothes, even though they were now two or three sizes too big. And still I shivered and I didn’t know why because I had the sun on my bones and the water in the bath and the shower had been hot, almost too hot and my parents were with me and I couldn’t understand it.

“I’m cold Nani.”

“It’s normal locki, you’re tired and you’re hungry, that’s why you tremble. Your Nani will make it all right.”

She left the bathroom and came back a couple of minutes later. She wrapped a big blanket around me and led me back downstairs. She made me lie on the sofa and sat down there with me smiling. She reached for the remote control to the TV and switched it on. She was flicking through the channels clearly looking for something specific. And then she found it. A Tom and Jerry cartoon and she stoked my hair as she said.

“Your favourite. Everything’s alright now.”

It had been many years since I had watched Tom and Jerry but she was right, it was my favourite and for several blissful minutes I forgot about everything I had been through as the little mouse tormented the cat and every now and again poor Tom got his come-uppance from the big bull dog. Tom and Jerry, if only life was that simple.

Mum was inspecting my bruises and muttering to herself, cursing under her breath and when she saw the scar on my calf muscle she started to cry again.

“Please don’t cry Nani,” I said, “it’s nothing. I have only a few hours with you so please don’t cry, we haven’t time for that sort of thing.”

She cradled my head in her arms and told me to sleep for a while, told me that when I woke there would be a feast waiting for me like I’d never seen before. With the beautiful bouquet of my dear Nani all around I fell asleep almost immediately.

I dreamt, but I dreamt I was back in the cell. It had prayed on my mind the deal that I’d heard the guards discuss with my father. It was just for one night they’d said and my father had agreed. It’s a deal, he’d said but I didn’t want to go back there again. The two guards were chasing me along the corridor and the corridor went on forever. It was never ending and I ran and ran and yet they couldn’t catch me no matter how hard they tried. I ran to the point where I collapsed through exhaustion. It seemed so vivid, so real.

When I awoke I was still half asleep and didn’t know where I was. It felt different and instinctively I stretched my legs. Something was strange, there was no contact with any wall. For six months I had slept twisted, unable to stretch out fully. My head was resting against something soft. Where was I? I opened my eyes wide and looked into my mother’s tear stained eyes. She sat in the same position she had been sitting in when I fell asleep and she continued to stroke my hair.

“I’m home?” I asked puzzled.

“You’re home ciki.” she replied.

It was beginning to turn dark outside, the sun was slowly disappearing and I was angry with myself because I knew I only had one night with my parents and I had surely wasted many hours.

“How long have I slept?” I asked.

My mother ignored the question and asked if I was hungry.

“Yes. I am starving.”

“Is she up?” my father called from the kitchen.

She eased herself from the chair at the same time calling for my father who replaced her on the sofa as she made her way to the kitchen. It was Agi’s turn to hold and caress me as mother busied herself in the kitchen.

My father was laughing as he spoke.

“You’ve no idea how much food she has prepared in there.”

I could smell it. The delicious aroma drifting in from the kitchen took me back in time, to my childhood, to a time where the world was at peace, where we didn’t have a care in the world. I dozed on and off on my father’s knee until mother announced the first dish was ready. She walked towards me with three small bowls on a tray as the steam rose towards the ceiling.

“Here you are locki,” she said.

“What is it Nani?”

“Bean broth.”

I burst out laughing and by the look of disappointment on my face my mother sensed something was wrong.

“What is it?”

“Oh Nani, you don’t know how much bean broth I have had forced down me in the last six months. Every day they brought me bean broth, sometimes I ate it for breakfast and supper too and if I didn’t see another bowl of bean broth for the rest of my life it wouldn’t worry me.”

My mother started to protest, instinctively defending her cooking and saying how much better her bean broth was than the bean broth from a Serbian soldiers kitchen.

Father would have none of it.

“Take the bean broth away and bring the girl something else. You have enough food to feed ten armies.”

Father wasn’t wrong. My mother brought me a tray and I sat up on the sofa while they brought in the food. We started with a plate of Suxhuk, those delicious Turkish style sausages. I swear they were the nicest things that had ever passed my lips as the spicy flavours danced around my mouth. My mother and father sat on the floor watching me eat as they nibbled on a plate of Suxhuk between them. I hadn’t even finished before Nani was on her feet and back in the kitchen. My father brought a small coffee table and placed it in front of the sofa and in came the meat and potato pastry pie, the Pite. It looked like the size of a car wheel. I couldn’t help laughing and then as soon as she had placed the plate on the table she was back in the kitchen and returned with a dish of Sarma and another dish of rice and chicken.

“Nani,” I said, “how much do you think I can eat?

She shrugged her shoulders and frowned.

“You tell me you haven’t eaten for six months and I can see that from the way the flesh hangs from your bones that it’s probably true.”

It was true. I looked like something from Auschwitz in those black and white news footage videos from Nazi Germany but the harsh reality was that my stomach had shrunk and after eating the Suxhuk I was starting to struggle and the sight of so much food was even making me slightly nauseous. But Agi brought me some tea and I sipped at it and it helped to wash things down and I made sure I had a little something of everything. They had brought in a plate of sliced tomatoes, lightly salted. I had forgotten what fresh fruit and vegetables tasted like. The simple but exquisite taste of the tomatoes exploded onto my taste buds at the back of my mouth. I felt alive again. I bit gently into the flesh and the waterfall of flavour surged around my mouth. I was truly mesmerised and remember looking down at my parents who had appreciated my reaction to something so simple.

We sat like that for hours, a forkful of Sarma then a tiny slice of tomato, a piece of Pite and some rice and chicken. I ate until I felt my stomach would surely burst, I ate until my stomach begged me to stop feeding it. We drank a little tea outside and watched as the sun disappeared completely behind the mountain. It was so peaceful as I sat on my father’s knee. I listened to the sounds of the night creatures as they began to stir and Nani sat behind me stroking my hair, every now and again kissing me.

I began thinking what it would be like to sleep in a normal bed, on a soft mattress - my mattress and the fact that I would have to go back with the Serbian soldiers the following day didn’t particularly bother me because I knew this was a significant development and I dared to hope. Things can change I told myself, don’t worry, put your trust in God. I tried to think of the good people in the world, my parents, Uncle Demir for example and convinced myself that the evil men like Kupi and my Serbian tormentors would always be outnumbered, always ultimately be defeated. They might win an odd skirmish or a battle but they would never win the war. I would always believe in good over evil and sitting there looking up at the backdrop of our beautiful silhouetted mountain with the greatest parents anyone could ever hope for reinforced my determination and I almost began to believe it.

We went back inside and my mother served up a sweet plate of Baklava. I managed to eat half of it then she brought a plate of tatuas, thick biscuits soaked and cooked in syrup. How I ate two I’ll never know.

“No more Nani,” I pleaded, “just let me go to my room I have missed it so much. I want to lie on my mattress and sleep forever, I want the rays of the sun to wake me tomorrow morning and I want to wake up free even if it’s just for one day.”

My father was back sitting on the floor staring up at me and I noticed that his bottom lip was trembling.

Something was wrong. Suddenly the warmth I had enjoyed for so many hours turned to ice.