Stone Walls and Metal Gates

What keeps us alive, what allows us to endure?
I think it is the hope of loving
or being loved.

We weep when light does not reach our hearts. We wither
like fields if someone close
does not rain their
kindness
upon
us.

---Meister Eckhart




Huma hid in the shadows and waited for the noise to die down. The fever that surged through her body seemed to sink her into panic: and at the same time, propel her into a state of agitated resolve. She closed her eyes and drifted back to her first day at the boarding school.

Her mother had wept openly and her father had talked with misty eyes in an overly polite manner to the matron. In his wide obliging smile and in the slight bend of his neck, was a silent plea for mercy, kindness and trust. Huma could already sense that her stay away from home was not going to be the fun filled adventure that everyone had hoped it would be. Her parents repeated the same advice to reassure themselves. Advice about discipline, obedience, faith, courage: and then they left.

At first the days seemed like a blur and Huma floated through them without registering much. Slowly she stopped squinting into oblivion at every given moment and started to observe the peculiarity around her. The first thing that caught her interest were her fellow boarders. Ranging in age from five to eighteen, they seemed to be at constant odds with each other.

The ones who had joined recently swapped embellished stories of home and family, while the ‘veterans’ never spoke of any. They all seemed to walk, talk and move in a similar fashion. But strangely enough, each one saw herself as being separate from everyone else. Some behaved with a deliberateness that comes from anticipating some fantastic event, and some just drifted languorously, as if defeated by life at a much too early age. To Huma they were all princesses in their minds, trapped in a castle; praying to be rescued.

The boarding home with its stone walls and metal gates was less oppressive to Huma than what ran through it. The collective melancholy and disenchantment of the dwellers within was like a swamp that swirled and sucked at their ankles. She saw all the princesses muddied in this morass, one hand on their chest and the other balled into a fist. Their faces turned heavenward and their eyes wide shut. If each had searched her heart for just a little bit of mercy and help to extend, then maybe no one would need to be rescued and Huma would not have been pushed to the brink.

A day in the boarding home consisted of several rituals separated by shrill bells. A bell to wake up to--brush teeth, get dressed. Another bell--file neatly into dining room, another bell--eat, bell--stop eating, bell--file out, bell--vacate dormitories, bell--school begins. And this was just what kicked off the day. There were more bells until the final one when all the lights got turned off.

Huma mused that they could well insert another bell in the middle of the night when certain long time boarders would moan and call out for their mothers in their sleep. On the whole, it was one long roller coaster ride without the thrills. Just the jarring momentum of organized and continuous activity.

With all the bells and roll calls, each day was very much like the next. Except for one activity. After dinner the boarders were somberly marched off to the little chapel which was another stone building. Here there was some singing and each day a new prayer would be read. The first time Huma set foot in there, she stared at the large crucifix that adorned the wall behind a long table. Brass ornaments and pictures of Jesus on the cross added to the overall grim and dramatic effect.

As she bowed her head along with everyone else to a foreign God, Huma shut her eyes and tried to remember the pattern on her gaudy red prayer rug back home. She tried to recall the prayers that had once rolled off her tongue and left her soul untouched. She gritted her teeth and in her mind repeated the only prayer that made sense to her then.

“Take me home, now.
I want to go home, now.
I want to go back...now!"

The matron who reigned over the boarding home was ‘Ma’am’ to all the children, their parents and employees. She was a short, pear shaped woman in her 70’s and was always dressed like she were attending a tea party. The younger children crowded around her at a respectable distance and loved her almost as much as they learned to hate themselves. Ma’am, though fickle with her affections, was far more human than her subordinates.

Some days Ma’am held several boarders captive for hours in a circle around her as she would reminisce about her youth spent in Ireland, the eleven children she had borne and the death of ten of them. Huma wondered why Ma’am would choose to work in the back waters of a dark continent rather than joining her sole surviving child in Spain, who sporadically sent her letters in expensive envelopes.

Upon receiving one such letter, Ma’am would strut around waving it like a miniature flag and showing it up close to those she favored. Huma had once caught a fleeting glance of the handwriting which swooped and curled exactly like Ma’am’s. That’s when she realized that Ma’am was one of them; one of the boarders. Just another princess.

Once a week the boarders were expected to write home. Huma’s letters were of appropriate length. Neat lines, with correct spelling and grammar, and forced cheerfulness. And there were other letters, she wrote everyday. Scrawling words trying to leap out of the paper, with ink splatters and smudges; bleeding words that Huma showed no one. Everyday more and more of her clarity and belief seeped out of her and onto these letters. All the while, the bells kept ringing.

In a moment of invigilance Huma had slipped some truth, wrapped in humor, in one of her letters home. Her mother wrote back telling of how her father had stopped eating proper meals, thinking of Huma and her hardships. Huma wept for the first time since she had arrived. She felt that she had failed to protect her father. Her father with his towering height, soft hands and gentle heart. Her next letter was full of such wild imaginings that were so good that the fact that they were lies didn’t matter.

Sometimes on weekends when the bells stayed silent for longer periods of time, Huma would sit under a tree and look at the gate which mostly remained locked. She would close her eyes just enough so the gate would turn blurry. She imagined it swing open and her father walking in…………

Huma would run to him; her feet barely touching the ground and her hair flapping behind her, like the frantic flutter of bird wings trying to catch a wind.

Some nights she dreamt of flying through the darkness, over lands and seas until she stood in the balcony of her home. She would hear muted sounds of her family from behind the glass doors and heavy curtains. She would pause to take one deep breath before sliding the door open and at that moment when she could step back in time; she would awaken.

In her last days at the boarding home, one morning upon awakening, Huma found long tresses of her hair on the floor next to her bed. It was meant to be a prank. Some way of provoking the stoical and aloof “freshie”. Huma got up, brushed her teeth, cleaned her bed and got dressed for breakfast. No questions were asked and no one got into trouble. Nobody was aware of the storm raging within a fragile soul.

The dark smudges around Huma’s eyes got darker and her meals were barely eaten. Her prayer echoed incessantly in her mind and thoughts of home, light and warmth spun a silky web. Through the haze, an escape plan was slowly formulating. She knew she had to get out. All she had to do was wait for the right time, climb a few walls and she could be free. Once she was out, the details of where she would go and who she would go to, were still unclear. But that didn’t bother her. She was burning up……..and all she wanted to do was blaze across the desert, like a falling star.

She didn’t know how long she had waited but when she opened her eyes the lights were out and everything was still. She crept out from behind the bushes and headed toward the school . There were two low gates on her route before she would reach the wall. The wall was about seven feet high and would be challenging but she would find a way to climb over it. In her single mindedness she forgot all about the night watchman who happened to be on his last round before settling down for the night. He saw a moving form at a distance and immediately switched on his flashlight.

Huma saw the weak beam of light and halted in her tracks. The sound of the shrill whistle whipped her about and she bolted back toward the boarding home. She could hear heavy boots beating the gravel behind her and she ran around the back of the stone building. There was a ladder propped against a ledge that separated the ground floor from the upper level. She quietly climbed up and saw metal rungs all the way to the top of the building. The whistling, now louder, was accompanied by shouts. Huma let out a faint whimper and gingerly made her way up to the roof.

Once on the roof, fear kept her running, away from the cacophony. Huma stopped short of the edge and teetered for a moment, trying to regain her balance. Just then the moon revealed itself like a ghost from behind dark clouds and she looked up at it. Sweat poured down her face, her heart beat wildly and her head was spinning. Images of her parents, her brother, her sister; and then Ma’am, the boarders; churned in her mind.

There was a roaring in her ears; sounds of bells, moans, prayers. And the flapping of bird wings. A sharp yet mournful cry of an eagle, circling majestically before the moon, seemed to beckon Huma. As if it were saying, “come; here is the way….” A cold wind wrapped around her, tugging at her, lifting her; inviting her to soar with this regal guide.
The clouds once again shrouded the moon and Huma swayed in the dark, along with her thoughts. Her foot slipped on some loose tiles. Trying to regain her balance she lurched forward and the ground leaped up to grab her.

Huma soared up into a brilliant sky.
Her hair floated behind her in unending waves.
She smiled an answer.
She had understood.
And she was on her way: home