Dada 166

This was the worst period when you knew they could come. I once woke just after midnight and could swear I heard voices, I listened intently, ears cocked for any sound. If they are coming and you are going with them to die and you know that they will return to have their breakfast and you will be dead, it leaves a funny feeling inside you. It is like when you lose something and try to retrace your steps, and imagine being in the same place a moment earlier. What has changed, Approaching death is the same but you could not do that here. What would your step sound to them when they took you. Could you imagine a dead man’s footsteps returning to its same source like a never ending wave, just the thought would make you nauseous? Would they remember those steps when the guards returned to have an early bowls of noodles with beef a green leaf for decoration and orange gravy. Dada used to say that no matter how bad your condition there is always something to be thankful for. Each each morning when the sky brightened and you knew we would have some clear sunshine before the rain and the lightness invaded my cell, I knew that he was right. Even though the faintest rustle would have sent me to the door of the cell and pressed my ear to the to the rough, cold wood, listening so intently that I could hear my breathing pulse through me and grateful and thankful that no one was going to come now except the cook and the boy with my breakfast. I had another twenty four hours of freedom. Twenty four months my Dada spent in prison for sedition but the corrective stain lasted a lifetime. The Patriot game was not for him. He did not see the same borders as the rulers but he got the joke. Like everything in life around here the joke is never about what it is about. The stories of muddied blood seeped around him like those seaways around my heart; his punishment a deterant to others.