Broken City

“What are you doing up here anyway Deeta?”

I laugh and shrug my shoulders gesturing towards the skyline.

“Obviously I came up to look at our lovely view.”

He raises his left eyebrow, the one with scar above it.

“Has Keya been difficult again?”

When we refer to Keya being difficult, we mean bad tempered. I could use a more fitting adjective but I am too much of a lady. However on this occasion it was not Keya’s sharp tongue that had sent me scampering to the rooftop.

Tom takes out his knife and begins to sharpen it.

“You’re an odd sort of a girl aren’t you Deeta?” his eyes are concentrated on his work but I know better than to think that this means he’s in any way preoccupied.

Tom has a way of putting things so you’re unsure if he regards what he’s just remarked on as good or bad. Lots of people don’t like it, it makes them nervous of him but I think it’s cool. No matter how hard I try though, my attempts at emulating it have only been met with laughter, much to my embarrassment.

We sit awhile not speaking, in silence but for the scrape of the knife against metal and in the distance, the sound of gunshot and explosion. Bitterly, I reflect that even sitting together peacefully we cannot forget the need to fight.

“When do you go out next?” I ask idly.

“When we need to.”

At this stage most people would think that Tom was being offish with them, I am not most people. You see, Tom really believes that he has answered my question, it simply hasn’t occurred to him that something more is required of him.

I sit quietly watching him fold his knife away.

“What’s it like?” I have asked this question many times before and I guess I’m asking the wrong person as the inevitable answer comes yet again.

“More of the same,” he stands and surveys the scene before us. “Believe me Deeta you’ve got the best of it.”

That’s exactly what Dad says but I want to know they’re right, not just believe.

Of course you don’t know what I’m talking about do you? We live in a tower block in the city, I suppose you could say it is our village and we only leave it when we have to, that is, when we need something from outside. Then our army goes ‘out’ to get it.

I will never go ‘out’. The fifty-eight floors of this building are, to all intents and purposes, my world. I will never leave it. I was born here, I will marry here, I will have my children here and I will die here. My life from beginning to end will have no impact on anyone outside; to them I might never have existed. I sigh gustily.

“I wish I could see it Tom, just the once.”

“It would do you more harm than good Deeta.”

Tom is looking down at me where I sprawl and in his eyes I can see a sympathy of sorts.

Those who join the army are selected specially for their durability. Only those who have suffered a significant loss in their lives or have in some way endured hardships difficult to bear, and those like Tom who’ve spent some of their lives on the streets may join.

Those who have not experienced anything like that are protected, against themselves and against what they would see out there, against the brutality and horror. This is why I’m deemed unsuitable; because it is thought that I’ve not had the necessary conditioning.