CLARITY AND REDEMPTION

Standing in the earlier stages of that intricate, yet so smoothed operational masterpiece, Jezebel felt like an alien from outer space; relating to not a thing that transpired around her body, rejecting the fierce manner, albeit sedated, and outwardly tamed, of that jungle revving to be fed at all costs. Their silent aggression depressed her subtle energies; she went about reading, reading their negative auras of mind chattering and empty dreaming on those other levels that mattered. They checked her out silently, taking in the Middle Eastern features and colouring, turned to her daughter and checked her out; hovering longer at the full stomach, to smile and nod as though to wish her a safe delivery. Pieces of same touched shoulders, touched auras, clashed to merge their energies, to not recognize themselves in that other who was them, saddened Jezebel’s soul that knew each and every one of their beloved entities intimately.

The women were handed a number as they were courteously asked to wait the expected ten minutes by the pretty, blond Texan hostess whose tender age had disdainfully thrown innocent purity to the wind so as to take hardened features that made her look prematurely aged. Arya clutched at the metal strip with the number 12 carved inside it, gathering it to her heart, to come and stand by her mother. She talked about how she played music to her daughter in the womb, spurred by a research conducted by some pioneering paediatrician. As Jezebel listened, she watched Arya shift her weight from one leg to the other for relief. After what seemed a very long while, with Arya’s eyes darting this way and that to follow the progress of the people ahead of them, and the noise growing deafeningly uncomfortable, their number got called by a soft voice in the loud speaker.

Community life, one thriving during Jezebel’s arrival to the New World, prevalent in neighbourhoods’ welcome wagons, remnants of that not-so-long ago moving society, the oneness of aim and destination that had made the country great, distinguishing it from other societies, had dwindled magically through the arrival of the television. By the time Jezebel had packed her home to ship it to the Middle-East of her birth in search of people, it had altogether disappeared, she saw with sadness. Young women, disheartened by disassociation with the humane element of support, dressed their newborns to flee their homes in search for that internal sanity, possible only through that connection the spirit needed with other humans for normalcy. Failing to find it, they roamed the malls where other young women like them floated around fountains, sitting on benches lurking to make a contact so as to hear their own voices reverberate into their own ears, affirming their being alive and shooing madness away. The body needs support and affirmation. Scores of identical prams floated surreally in hooded navy-blueness through these empty spaces. Hardly economically able to spend the money, these young mothers simply floated within shops, waiting the cooing of some old dowager to ask about their newborn offspring.