Excerpt, The Sound of Silence

Chapter 1

My Twin and I

The shriek from the heavy metal gate pains my ears and gives me goosebumps. I cross my fingers, hoping to be next so the never-ending wait will end. I’d already wasted two hours sitting for an appointment I had made weeks earlier to meet one of the inmates, hoping to explore the truth about her life story, and that would also alter her strange fate for the better.
A middle-aged, heavily built guard in a dark blue uniform appears and calls the next name on his paper list. He has difficulty pronouncing it. After a couple of tries, he eventually finishes with a weird sound in his thick accent, perhaps thinking he said it as he should. Since I am the only one left in the room, he pauses, gazing at me with a long face.

I glance at my watch. It is past one p.m. It’s about time, I whisper.
I take his mumble as my name and nod. He signals to follow him. I wrap up the research papers and notes I have spread across the bench while waiting to hear my name, counting every minute.

“Follow me,” he says.

I shove everything into my briefcase, pick up my coat and umbrella, and run to catch up to him.

“This way.”

I turn in the direction he points. We pass through a couple of reinforced glass doors before stopping in front of a small room with a tiny peekaboo window. Once the door opens, I see a small, slender woman curled on a gray plastic chair with her arms crossed over her folded knees. This must be Rahma, the inmate in her mid-forties, I am here to interview. She is barely recognizable from the prison mug shot, the only photograph of her in the files I’ve been given. I’d read somewhere that prison ages you.

I have endured the prison’s complicated bureaucracy devotedly to get myself to this point. Now here I am, standing only a few feet from her, feeling thrilled and celebrating my success in my heart.
I enter the room and greet her with a big smile. She stares back numbly as if she hasn’t heard me. I walk toward her, introduce myself, thank her for agreeing to my visit, and hold out my hand. She doesn’t speak a word, and her handshake is so limp that it feels like a dead fish in my hand. I don’t know what to make of it. It’s hard to read her feelings from her flat look, especially when most of her face is covered by her hair. I feel unwelcome, but here I am. I must make the best of all the effort that has gone into seeing her.
I hear the guard locking us in, and then the sound of his footsteps fading into the silence of the hallway. I place my umbrella in the little bucket by the entrance, hang my coat on the back of the chair across from Rahma, and sit down. Her eyes follow my every move through the strings of the long, dark blond hair hanging over her face. I wait to see if she will initiate the conversation as I set up my laptop on the small table between our chairs, but she doesn’t. She only takes a big breath and pushes her hair away. Deep scars on her face and the back of her hand grab my attention. I wonder how she got them.
Her silence forces me to try some small talk to break the ice. “It’s stormy and cold out there,” I say. “It’s been pouring since last week, but it’s not as cold for January as elsewhere in Canada.”

She shows no reaction.

“We’re still the luckiest, living in British Columbia,” I add. “Everywhere else, especially the north and east, is covered with a couple of feet of snow.”

Still, no response, not even when I follow up with a direct question about what kind of weather she prefers. She continues gazing at me mutely with the same lifeless look.

Oh, dear, I think to myself, how will I break through this wall? I have no choice but to keep talking.

“You know,” I say,” while the streets of Greater Vancouver are not expanding, the population has been growing beyond their capacity. The flow of enthusiasts who choose to live here is increasing. Many put new vehicles on the roads as they arrive, contributing to more traffic congestion.”

I pause to let her comment, but it doesn’t happen, so I keep talking. “Construction is going on everywhere. Skyscrapers house even more people. But there’s not much talk about widening the roads to accommodate all the extra commuting.”

She doesn’t even seem to be listening. She is still sitting there, looking flat, without body language or facial expression.

I realize that I’ve picked the stupidest topic for someone who not only hasn’t seen the outside world for over fourteen years but may never get another chance to see it.

Eventually, she turns her big honey-colored eyes toward me. They are empty, lifeless, even eerie. They look like they have never warmed to the reflection of a loved one, never gazed at someone she could be proud to love and delighted to see. When she sees me waiting for her to talk, she drops her head onto her chest, seemingly in deep thought. She must be scanning her memories, I think. She will start talking soon. That turns out to be wishful thinking.

She pulls a half-empty pack of cigarettes out of her sleeve and takes one out. Her hands are shivering slightly, and her lighter is not cooperating. She has to try it a few times to get it going. She takes a deep first puff on the cigarette, blows the smoke away from me, then drops her head on her chest again and closes her eyes. The room seems too small to allow smoking, but the ashtray on the table indicates otherwise. The air is already oppressive, but the air-conditioning vent in the ceiling seems to make more noise than it is supposed to.
We keep silent, each in our thoughts, but the clock is ticking, and we have a limited time. I follow the beautiful shapes of the rising smoke from the tip of her cigarette, twirling, dancing on their way to nothing.

Tick… tock…. The sound of the wall clock is getting on my nerves. I must do something to break this solid ice between us before it defeats me.

“Where are you rooted?” I ask.

She lifts her head and takes a quick look at me, then shuts her eyes again without answering. I watch her eyeballs moving around quickly under the eyelids, surfing through her memories. I may finally have hit the sweet spot.

I zoom in on what’s left of her beauty. Underneath the scars and sullenness, she has charming features. She must have been a stunning woman when she was younger, enjoying a natural life in her element. Being entrapped behind these cold iron bars for so long seems to have rubbed most of that splendor off.

She puts out her cigarette, rubs her face, and adjusts herself on her seat. Moments later, she pushes her hair behind her ears and takes a couple of deep breaths. She seems to be getting ready to begin. I can sense her struggling to say something, but her voice does not follow. She swallows her saliva as if apprehensive about something. Are her memories that painful?

I see her hands going for another cigarette. Not again, I think. She seems too nervous to talk. She takes another one out of the pack, but this time she just holds it between her fingers without lighting it for a few minutes. As if she cannot resist the temptation, she finally lights it. My attention goes to another long, narrow trail of bluish smoke gliding gracefully in the air, shifting into various shapes.

Suddenly, I hear a whisper.

Back in Persia, I used to have an identical twin sister. Mona.

There is a long pause before she continues.

Mona was sensitive. She had a gentle nature. We were each other’s halves, inseparable in the true spiritual sense of the word, one soul living in two bodies, breathing for and off each other. We were so entwined that we could hear each other’s thoughts, read each other’s minds, and feel each other’s pain and joy.
We had devoted parents who loved us, and of course, we loved them dearly. We didn’t have many relatives left to socialize with. Most of them had left for different countries over the years for whatever reasons and somehow disappeared into thin air. We never saw them or had a chance to get acquainted with their new kids born abroad. And I was never sure what happened to those who were still around; we never laid eyes on them either.

But we had friends of our own. We also had hopes and dreams that made us look forward to growing up. We were happy in our comfy little world, unaware that nothing would stay the same forever.
Things started to change when we were about ten. We began to hear our peaceful, loving parents arguing with each other, quietly at first, then louder and louder as their clashes got more frequent. Although at the beginning, they tried to keep us away from what was happening, it didn’t take a brainiac to figure out something had gone deeply wrong between them. They didn’t hug, talk, or make eye contact for days. As their tension worsened, they concentrated more on their own issues than ours. We began to wonder if they even cared about us anymore. We worried more every day.
Then we noticed that our dad wasn’t coming home as usual. He didn’t eat with us as often as he used to and never stayed around for long whenever he was home. Mom was full of vague answers about his whereabouts. Your father is too busy these days, she would say. Dad is on a business trip, or Dad is having a meeting and will eat at his office. She failed to understand that, though we were kids, we were not dumb.

They spent less and less quality time with us and were no longer patient with our questions and concerns. Finally, Mom became too depressed to care for herself and spent most of her time behind her closed bedroom door, escaping from her depression with the help of medications. We heard her crying many times, but she denied it when we asked her why. She lost interest in everything she used to do. She stopped taking us to school or helping us do our homework. We were despondent, especially since we couldn’t see an end to it. We were desperate to get back to what we used to enjoy.
No one explained what was happening, so we decided it must be our fault. We must have done something wrong that made them stop loving us, a feeling that brought us many sleepless nights loaded with nightmares. We couldn’t concentrate at school and stopped socializing with our friends to avoid answering their endless questions about what was wrong.

Divorce was what we were most afraid of. We’d seen it happen in the movies to parents who didn’t get along. We’d even seen it happen to a couple of our friends’ parents, and how it had devastated their lives. But we had never believed it could happen to us. We researched “divorce” on the Internet and social media to see how it affected the kids who experienced it. The results always seemed to be horrible.

Mona suffered the most. She was more sensitive than I and far less able to tolerate anxiety. She became paranoid about every little thing to do with our parents and watched their every move as if through a humongous magnifying glass. She would come to me, crying out of fear, and fussing for hours whenever she heard them arguing. I had to put on a strong face to comfort her and help her settle down. I had nobody to relieve my fears, but I didn’t mind. I loved my sister to my core.

Since Mom had quit doing whatever she used to do for us and around the house, we had to take over. We had to get up early every morning on our own, get dressed, make our lunch boxes, and, rain or shine, take the bus to school hand in hand. But we were not as pleased doing any of this anymore, or even looking forward to another school day. None of our friends seemed to care about boundaries anymore or how their incessant curiosity about what was wrong with us hurt our feelings.
Almost without realizing it, we were driven into uncanny isolation. Gradually, we built an alternative imaginary world for ourselves. In this world, we were unafraid of being ourselves, free from stupid questions or any concerns about losing things dear to our hearts. We loved everyone there, and in return, everyone loved us and respected our feelings. No one embarrassed us with their rude prying and judging. Our imaginary world was ecstatic, full of laughter. I don’t remember what we laughed about, but I remember how it made us feel.
Rahma goes quiet. Her face brightens with a smile for the first time, but it soon fades away.

* * *

We knew our dad’s frequent disappearances must have something to do with Mom’s suffering, but we couldn’t figure out how or why. Then, early one morning around the end of January, Mona and I went to the kitchen, dressed for school, to get our breakfast going, and found our dad already sitting at the table, alone, all wrapped up in a stylish new outfit. He smiled as soon as he laid eyes on us.

“Good morning, beautiful girls,” he said with an ear-to-ear smile. Then he walked up, pulled us both into his arms, and held us there, squeezed tight to his fast-pounding chest. He kissed us on the head several times, then knelt, holding our hands, and looked into our eyes.

“I love you so much, my stunning girls. You know that, don’t you?” he said with a kind of confidence. His voice sounded sad. Had he started loving us again? We glanced at each other, almost in disbelief.

“We love you too, Dad,” we said simultaneously. “We’ve missed you so much.”

“Are you having dinner with us tonight?” Mona asked excitedly.

He went quiet, let go of us, and got on his feet.

“No,” he said, “I have to go away for a while.”

Our hearts sank. “Not again!” shouted Mona as she ran to the living room and dropped onto the couch face down, crying. I followed her with my eyes. I knew how she was feeling. I was no better. I could hear my heartbeat in my temples.

Dad didn’t respond to Mona’s tears or my wide-eyed stare. He just put his jacket on, checked the inside pocket for his wallet, picked up his phone, and walked to the front door. There was a pile of luggage there. He didn’t even look at us as he picked them up and called out goodbye behind him! Mona’s sobs got louder when she heard the door open. Dad paused, looked back, and walked over to her to comfort her, but she slapped him on the arm and pushed him away. I didn’t know what to do. I was numb, nailed to my spot, watching everything as if it were a movie, but I forced myself to ask a question I was afraid to hear the answer to.

“How long are you going to be away, Dad?” I asked in a flat tone.

“I don’t know,” he said. “It might be for a long time.”

He looked like he was about to say something else, possibly to advise us to be good to each other and take care of our mom and all that rubbish that he wouldn’t do himself, but I didn’t give him a chance. He was still talking when I rushed to my sister, grabbed her hand, ran upstairs to our room with her, and slammed the door so hard that the walls and windows shook.
It’s impossible to describe how awful it felt. We didn’t know why he was leaving and couldn’t understand what it meant or what would happen to Mom and us now. It was way beyond our comprehension. We couldn’t make sense of “a long time.” We were puzzled by how long that could be. A week or a month? Years? We just knew we were helpless to stop it. It couldn’t be more heartbreaking.

The sound of the cab pulling up to our door a few minutes later brought us dashing to the window. When we saw him loading his numerous suitcases and bags into the trunk, we realized that this goodbye was different from all the other times he had left the house. Our gut hinted that we had just witnessed our dad driving away forever, just as our recent nightmares had been picturing. It felt like we’d been abandoned, and worse, that our father no longer loved us, and we didn’t know why! What had we done that was so wrong to deserve such punishment?
From that day on, Mona and I knelt by our beds to pray before sleeping every night. Holding hands, we pleaded from the bottom of our hearts for Dad’s love and his return. We even started marking our calendar with the days and then the weeks he had been absent, desperately looking forward to the day our wish would come true.
With every passing day, Mona’s nightmares become more severe, and her state of mind more fragile. Although I wasn’t feeling any better myself, I needed to support her just to keep her on her feet and functioning. She was wrecked emotionally. She had difficulty sleeping, and when she did, she would wake up in no time, wet with sweat, screaming, and crying her heart out.

She rarely remembered her dreams, but the fear they caused stayed with her. She could hardly shut her eyes to rest, even when she was in my bed, holding my hands all through the night. She kept me so occupied with her pain that I had no time for my grieving.
Occasionally, we heard people chattering about what was happening under our roof. It was all about our father and that he was gone forever. So devastating, not to mention humiliating! How stupid and ignorant gossiping people could be not to care that their prying into other people’s lives and spreading idiotic comments could hurt others and make them suffer to their cores.
We questioned our mother. It took a long time for her to express herself, but she couldn’t get out of the burden of our questions. Finally, she confirmed the people’s statements with a sad voice, which made our jaws drop, even though she refused to explain the reason, pretending she did not know.

Our father’s absence, now confirmed as permanent, created an instant, everlasting gap in our hearts and lives. We were saturated with fears and insecurities. We were lost. We didn’t even know how to feel anymore. Our confidence in grown-ups and what they were capable of doing vanished. Nothing about them was reliable, nothing. We wondered if love was something only kids could understand and stay loyal to.

Dad had not just left us. He had also taken away our self-worth by making us feel we didn’t deserve his love and support. As the shame he created grew in our hearts, we found it more and more challenging to face anyone we knew. It made us withdraw even further. It was our first bitter taste of real loneliness in the true sense of the word.

Rahma lights another cigarette, but she takes only one deep drag of it and then lets it burn. She seems to be browsing her memories. I watch the hanging ashes at the tip of the cigarette. As they get longer and longer, the anticipation of seeing them drop off at any minute seems to nail my eyes on them. Eventually, they fall and shrink as they roll over her uniform, leaving a gray trail until they disappear into one of its folds. She extinguishes the butt in the ashtray, blows the ashes off her uniform, and shifts to a more comfortable position as she gets ready to continue.
Now we could finally understand the depth of Mom’s pain and the reason for carrying herself so passively. Our hearts went out to her. She didn’t deserve it by any means. The shame and humiliation of Dad’s brutal, selfish move had destroyed her pride and self-esteem.
But it made her far more precious to us. From then on, Mona and I watched her like a hawk, terrified to lose her too. We held our hands tight whenever we heard her crying and prayed to the universe to bring Dad home and restore our mom’s smile. Little did we know how much worse it would soon get. …

To Order the Book, Click Here.