In parts

It was not him when he woke up and started dreaming again. The same thoughts he used to have when he had a bath came back. It was his mind which was always dictating them. He felt guilty and tried to dismiss them with all his power but they persisted. It was in the early afternoon when they came back. “Thanks God", he said "there is nobody in the house”. He then went to the living room but this time everything was different. He started speaking not whispering. Everybody could have heard him if they had been in the room when he paced from one end to the other. He looked at the three pictures on the wall. The picture on the top was in fact not a picture but God written in big letters. Under it there were two pictures. One was his father’s and the other a picture of the president.

He opened his mouth but refused to speak. A second look at God started a barrage of curses and insults. He then turned to his father and the president in most obscene language. His pace increased and his breath became heavier. All of a sudden he stopped and left the room. He knew there was a pool of heavy waste water with lots of vermin next to their house under a big tree because there was no sewage disposal. He stretched his head and cupped his hands to drink some. He then got up, squelched through the dirty water, dug his hands deep, collected some sticky mud and caked his face with it. He came out to dry his shoes but sat motionless gazing at the blue sky. But now it was time for him to go back home to clean his face. He went into the living room and slept on the floor under the three pictures. His dirty thoughts stopped but part of him crumbled.

When they departed he was different. The part he lost left its mark on him. He avoided even his family. He went to bed as early as possible and found his solace there. He feared and loved eyes more than anything else. He didn’t know how to protect himself from their brutal, loving, piercing and evaluating looks. He took long winding ways and thought the best way would be if he were blind or went about masked. Sometimes he thought of people’s faces as heads of cabbage. But he was fascinated by female face. The brows were the bows which shot arrows of lids at him.It was best for him to be a painter or a photographer. He could then look and look as long as he wanted. But he was hit and took everything seriously. He was not only a prisoner of his own face but also of the others especially the faces he knew. This made him more sensitive and conferred on him unusual capability to read other people’s faces. But nobody not even the so-called experts could understand the symptoms. He wondered how could anybody understand anything without knowing the symptoms. He focussed those on his face. Finally, when he gave up his face muscles tensed until a big part of him fell to pieces and he degenerated into shambles.

This time it was him who departed and hoped he could collect his broken parts at his new place without knowing that in the world of human life entropy ruled. All his life was now on the move doing his parts and this was closer to what was left in him for he had never been long-established. But this way he lost his last part and was thus depersonalized. He didn’t know why his soul left his body and came back. He started touching his remaining part to make sure he was not dreaming and felt like giving out a shout to relieve himself. But what all those present would do or say if they saw this change in him and heard him shout. He thought, “they would be shocked and think I had gone crazy”. When driving a car he was afraid of losing touch and stopped somewhere for a while to regain himself. For his part, he knew he couldn’t go on like that if he didn’t exist as one part anymore. He went on living in parts.

Jamshid
Bremen, 22 June 2008

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