CHAPTER THREE (GRIEF)

There is a problem. The same driver who picked us up to take us to our house did not do so. In fact he looked terrified. Suddenly, the front passenger door opened. Sellah's mother slipped in, threw a small bag at the back without caring who it hit.

Everything was turning from confusing to tense and from tense to a disaster. She was explaining something, that she loved us - she does love us - so much. That we had to get away from Athens as fast as we could. Everything we had to know was written in letters in the bag.

"May God protect you, may God keep you.....may He make his face to shine on you and make......you....," she cried, "have peace."

"Go my lovelies......don't look back. When you go to the airport am sure you are clever enough to know where you'll go. … Oh God..... Go," she sniffed and cried.

We were hysteric. We did not know what was happening but at least we had a hint. We were not crying because she was ordering us to leave Athens but because we don't know what would happen to our mothers and our father.

Her words of God's protection did not make sense at all. How would she pray for our protection yet she was in a lot of danger than us?

I cant see her grief. I must get of the vehicle, but no, my sisters thought it much better for us to get away.

Her grief was quickly infected in me. I was the most upset of the three of us. The confidence I had in McCreed's mansion had dissipated and dissolved into my two sisters who walked with me into the airport after applying tons and tons of mascara to hide my teary eyes.

The tickets read; Valencia, Spain.

With our names - new names - on them. With fake ID's.

It is really easy to use fake identities, especially when you have money, I tell you, you wont be bothered. My parents had the money, and I lived in a manor with my mother. The manor will no longer be my home ever.

No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. The sensation of being afraid has taken over, but I am not afraid. The endless fluttering in the stomach, the same restlessness. I keep on swallowing. I feel........concussed. There's sort of an invisible blanket between the world and me.

Our mothers, our father, all in one furnace. Like a vortex of flames; an unending flame that eats you up until it reaches your core and wildly draws you out until you are completely done.

I wonder how my sisters are braver than me. They had not shrunk in their blankets like I was. But their grief was evident. We had sat in separate seats because they said we were not supposed to be found together. If we did, we would be a centre of attraction and by the time we get to our destination we would be assassinated in the plane's washrooms.

Meanwhile, where is God? This is one of the most disquieting symptoms. When you are so happy, so happy that you have no sense of needing Him, so happy that you are tempted to feel His claims upon you as an interruption, if you remember yourself and turn to Him with gratitude and praise, you will be - or so it feels- welcomed with open arms.

But to go to him when your need is desperate, when all other help is vain, and what do you find? A door slammed in your face, and a sound of bolting and double bolting on the inside. After that, silence, the longer you wait, the more emphatic the silence will become.

Why is He so present a commander in our time of prosperity and very absent a help in time of trouble?

I think Oscar Wilde's words are making sense now; to live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all. Those are his words and I am very sure - maybe - I exist, I just exist, no purpose of even existing, like a rock that stays at one place to be dug up and buried, and the process repeats itself.

How nourishing I talked to my mother just the other night. And yet, not quite together. Unless you assume that some other means of communication - utterly different, yet doing the same work - would be immediately substituted. Like the psychic kind of level of communication. At least I would know when she'd been thrown in the darkest depths, where I would never dig her out. But then, what point could there be in serving the old ones? Oh God. My mother...….

"Are you ok?" The man sitting next to me said, "you are destroying your face."

I was crying, but why did he bother? He took out a white handkerchief and wiped my tears. I did not stop him. It felt like my cheeks were being caressed with fluffy feathers. I have never felt this from a handkerchief's touch ever, just the smell of sewn cotton. This one felt so nice, my words cant describe it better.

"I am so sorry," I apologised after I saw the colour of the mascara soiling on his white handkerchief.

"Its ok, it will wash away," he said.

I took another quick glance at the handkerchief, and I think I saw words sewn in gold or yellow thread. They read; the change that happens with God being involved is that the change always produces PERFECT results.

"My name is Rehoboth Fanaka," he introduced himself. A fine gentleman.

"Ezna Lynd."

He took about a minute to sigh and put a smile across his face. Maybe he was thinking. He wanted to speak but shut his mouth.

"I have seen people go through a lot of things, but well, not like you. What I know is that you are strong and you have a lot of courage. You are another person's aura of living, they will lean on your shoulder, feel comfortable in your hug. And there's only one place to get that strength and power." He said.

I found myself listening to him when I have an overwhelming feeling to poke my fingers in my ears and shut out every kind of voice. His voice was the most comforting, it could not be compared to my sisters' and my mother's voices during pep talks.

I smiled. My heart was calmed. My worries were buried. The grief was burned into chaff, that the wind did not carry away. So disconcerting, right?

"Head up, stay strong, fake a smile, move on," he continued. That sounded like a pep talk, a nasty one. But still encouraging.

He cracked a joke, and I laughed. At that moment I forgot my troubles. We talked more and more until there was nothing to talk about.

"So how is your family?" He suddenly asked. And I wish he never had.

"I don't want to talk about it. I cant," I said, "I am so tired I need some sleep."

"I will wake you up when we get to England," he said, "Good night."

Don't worry I will tell you why we are on our way to England. I will explain. Calm down.