1001 Nights Cast

It’s not for me to point the finger, lay the blame, but things haven’t been the same, since the pair returned.

I’m the one who stayed, the one who didn’t run away. I’m the one who saw things through and waited for this day.

They ran away.

And now they’re back. Things haven’t been the same.

It’s not that I was happy with things the way they were. No-one could say that. Things were terrible. Many people ran away, not just them. It’s understandable. And it’s true, I sometimes thought about it too. Wouldn’t you? This place is like a prison. Or a void. How are we supposed to make a life here? And yet, it’s our home. To leave would be to abandon ship, to give up on all the hopes and promises of our parents. That’s the bind.

But they broke free. They saw the gap closing, they ran for it and they made it out. Was it brave, or cowardly? I could have gone too, I could have, but I didn’t. I couldn’t. I stayed. I thought about them, a lot, of course I did, every day I thought of them and wondered where they were, what they were doing.

Sometimes I imagined lush gardens by the sea, and saw them sitting at a white table with a basket of ripe fruit and glasses of wine. They talked of love, and art, and philosophy, and children, and their laughter floated across the sun-dappled bay. They were happy and free, they never thought of here, of me.

Other times I imagined them struggling through the filthy streets of a huge city, poor and downtrodden, eeking out a miserable existence alongside other refugees, criminals, mentally ill and forgotten people. Then I looked at my humble situation and felt proud, and free.

Of course neither is true.

Now they are back, and we are slowly exchanging little pieces of our separated lives—out there and in here; matching the pieces against the rumours and dreams, against what we gleaned from reading between the lines in the newspapers. There are little shocks of difference, and little shocks of sameness.

The sameness is more shocking.

I feel sorry for their son. Look at him, he doesn’t fit in here. Why should he? He’s never been here before. My children, who were born here, are almost grown and yes they’re curious about other places, but they know where they belong. He looks like he’s just unfolded himself from a suitcase and doesn’t know where he is. He speaks our language in an odd, limited way, and he’s always afraid. But I suspect he’s afraid wherever he is.

My children pester him with questions. They’re curious, hungry for knowledge. But he can’t answer their questions. Or won’t. He stutters and gives vague responses which frustrate my children. They want concrete details.

Like him, we adults are shy of the details. We know how difficult details can be. It’s much easier to talk in general terms: ‘Yes, it’s been hard, but it’s also been good.’ ‘We were there for some time, but now we are here.’ We’re prepared to play the game but my children are not. They demand to know, ‘What was it really like?’

And he can’t tell them.

Things are not the same any more. Perhaps the changes began before they returned. Perhaps that’s why they felt they could return. I wouldn’t say that one caused the other, it’s all part of a bigger pattern. Things are changing and people are returning. That’s hopeful, isn’t it? It used to be that things were changing and people were leaving.

But there are changes that those of us who stayed don’t like.

Where do you put them, for one thing? They return as if they expect their old houses to be waiting for them, but of course they’re not. Perhaps no-one wrote about the bulldozers in the newspapers out there, or perhaps they didn’t want to believe it. Tears rolled down their cheeks when I took them to see the piles of rubble that remain. But they are family and so they stay with us, filling the house with their strange smells and routines. At first my children loved it, the excitement of exotic visitors from out there; but soon it became tedious, crowded and difficult.

And what will they do here? They arrived fired up with ideas and enthusiasm—to rebuild the community, to introduce new and better ways of living, to shape the future, to fight for our independence and our rights. But then their enthusiasm hit the reality that those of us who stayed have grown accustomed to.

So here they are, back with their ideas and their suitcases and their strange son; and nowhere to live and no jobs, just like most of us who stayed. I wonder if they regret coming back, but I would never ask them that.

There’s something else. Now there’s nothing to wonder about. I know what they did, where they were, when they were away. I don’t have the pleasure of my romantic or bitter dreams any more, just banal facts given by their own mouths, under the roof we now share. That’s the greatest change, a change I didn’t expect, didn’t want. And I blame them for that.