Meanwhile

 I have no words to write.

My heart has left me beside myself.

I live in perpetual moments of unreality - as if this other world along the Eastern Mountains is another dimension.  I cannot wrap my mind around the possibilities.  How do you stop your soul long enough for the choice?  What of the edict that prevents us from going forward?  How will I survive under the pressure of worthlessness and the commercial disdain breathing down on me?  

Sorrow, confusion, hesitation, regret.

Grief throws us all off, as it should, but we have no answers and are cut off from communication.  Precious communication.

There is none here.  No real communication.  There are millions and millions of people talking at each other, hoping that the other will bend.  There is no crowd at the airport, as in my favourite city, but an elusive smog that seems to be everywhere and nowhere all at once.  

We were picked up and driven to the outskirts of the city… five hours in the car, overwhelmed by grief and a driver who was knowledgeable, but had nothing to say.  I could not keep my eyes open, my body broken from sickness; awakened each hour to walk around a startlingly new mausoleum… spending the day in sunshine, yet in death.

The palace took me by surprise, shocked into a world of two-dimensionality. I expected, in these walls like Escher’s, some sense of steadfastness. A love that brought a kingdom to its knees. But there was nothing. Only the heavy shroud of a burial place and locks that keep hope imprisoned in a shrine.

Tiny ladies gossip and giggle at the curious eyes behind my veil… I sweep away my thoughts like dust from the road.  Bodies clamour for everything, crowding me out until I feel frustration rather than compassion, and as such, I have become as faceless as they.

We enter as children to the courtyard of the Pir.  The gardens block together in red and green, colouring the wrinkling face of mud flats.  A maze spreads out to the left, beautiful tunnels carved from darkness and teak.  One day, we will live in these rooms, thinking nothing of it.  We chase each other; hide and seek echoing through the grandeur of the silence.  Rising in the East, reflecting off the flooded river, carved marble walls crying out to the wider world.

She is still there.  The doors to the haveli close behind us… our racing footsteps do not echo down the hall. There is a whisper of fabric - colour escapes the room as soon as you enter.  You think you heard her pass into the shadows… but no.  All is stillness.  

Stand beside the well, turn around and find you are alone.