Rmkadem@yahoo.com                                 Action Adventure/Drama/Thriller

                                                  CHAPTER 1

“Please fasten your seat belts, we’re experiencing some turbulence.” Those were the words she heard, as she stopped, and turned her eyes away from the magazine rested in her lap. No longer paying mind to the media frenzy, escapism, or painted language on the page that would steal her away from that world she was dreading to return to, the world she knew was waiting for her on the other side, the world she thought she escaped, that she would no longer confront.

She knew about turbulence. She knew more about turbulence than the beggars in the streets, or the jail bates on the run, more than any modern day, fantastical, living on the edge, hoo-ah, of parents that once left, lovers that once beat them, violence that came and went, and that swear to a democracy of We the People. She knew no people. She knew no we. And she certainly, most definitely, knew no democracy. Nothing compared to the real torture she knew, the daily fear she lived with, the constant paranoia that they were coming, one day, any day, and perhaps, it would all be over. For the worse, or for the better.

Lost in her thoughts, she grabbed her tea cup, a form of tradition she could still grasp as familiar, as routine, as she placed her softened but slightly worn fingers on the handle. She lifted the cup to her naturally rose touched lips, slightly chapped, still at her middle age, appearing as though they were drawn by the higher being, specifically for her, stenciled perfectly in alignment with her nose, pointed but with class, her chin, rounded, but just enough, and her cheek bones, high, but still grounded with a sense of humility.

Her mouth touched the warmth of the liquid now simmering through each cell, putting her at ease, knowing at this moment, she could rest, she could feel serenity. She permitted it. In a time where she had the right to permit, where she could control not just her own flesh and bone, but the world around her, she succumbed to it, surrendering with entirety.

As the tea flowed through her body, it eased her, like the calm of the Tigris river. A memory overcame her mind. Overpowering her every being. She could remember it. Like it was yesterday. The sun kissed warmth of the water, swimming through it with a jubilant freedom, the laughter echoing in her mind, her eyes closed, as she lost herself a moment, the sweet smell of the humidity, the fresh odor of grass and wet dirt surrounded her. Her younger brother splashing away, big dark eyes, signature long hair to his ears, a connection between siblings was evident, smiles exchanged, playful splashes returned, cousins and friends, and faces she may or may not have known, but it was a moment of utter innocence, of safety, in a land that seemed so far, far, away.

A smile crept in, as the recollection of this memory became more and more like a visceral trance, she was there, like a fish in water, the sun beaming down on her young nine year old soul, untainted, untouched, it seemed as though she could stay in this memory forever, never to be broken from it, when suddenly, as if awakening from a coma, she heard, in a present day voice, “It’s going to be a long trip”. The crisp, yet alluring tone of an elderly woman, snapped her into reality.

She opened her eyes, reversed from her trance, and now forced back into the present. She turned to the elderly Caucasian woman, with a smile, and a definitive silence of separation, of culture, of a past she did not know of. She nodded at the stranger, politely, then gently turned toward the window, as the moving plane flew ahead, with no conscience of where it was going or why, but she held a conscience so deep, a historically filled ocean so wide, that she knew why, and as if the weight of her words were responsible for lifting the plane higher into the sky and on its way, she whispered quietly to herself, “It has been a long trip.”

The woman stared solemnly through the plastic covered glass window. She thought deeply to herself, in a way, she hadn’t, for as long as she could recall. She spent so much time working to forget, working to mask the truth, the feelings left unresolved, the closure never received, the torture that would haunt her for thousands of nightmares ahead. She kept no room for reminiscing, for fear that any positive pastime would be broken by the invasiveness of a tarnishing, catastrophic, gruesome memory, that would overshadow, anything good, anything light, or hopeful, that it was better to forget altogether. But she knew she couldn’t. She remembered it all. She remembered every detail. Her mind was her friend, but her greatest enemy. It was her plague. Her vivid recollection of every encounter, of every horrific happening, unfolding before her very eyes, the voices crawling back from the dead, beckoning for her to return.

Could it be too soon? She thought. To take refuge in those memories, of a third world time and country that now seemed like an adopted child she left bruised and battered, that she left, for a life not lived for granted, but certainly, for a life less fruitful, nonetheless.

She would summon the courage, when a sigh would overtake her once more, this time, offering the strength to stare past the plastic covered window, pierce through the clouds, and into the tinted baby blue sky, representing to her only one thing that was clear... freedom.

But then she molded herself into a frame of mind, that would retract her from any world of freedom, or any possibility of escape, her eyes further away than they ever were before, she now became one with the time, and the time one with her. That time was 1979, and like a wave slowly rising, like a brigade of soldiers carefully ascending upon a hill, she heard, the bellowing, echoing, chanting sound, of a massive, ferocious crowd, the hot dirt road, scattered with what seemed  to be an army of civilians, some with hijabs, others in jalabiyas. The force and the passion of this crowd, filled with exuberance, yet carried a deceiving a tone, a misleading intention, for what we thought was a joyous event, was quite, on the contrary, a catastrophic one.