Caged Nightingale

Part 7- Saara

I cant sleep. even in this room I feel like a prisoner with my thoughts.No passport means no going home. People are after me, a lot of people, everyone wants me dead. All night my mind whirls and spins and there is no way out. No way to escape this situation.. Hadnt Asim in a passing comment once said that the police were corrupt. you had to be careful. No shit.

How could life change so much, so suddenly? Less than a week ago I knew who I was, what I was doing. I was moving on with my life and now? I seemed to live the life of a ghost. This hiraeth fluctuates. Sometimes I am alarmed and other times calm.  I havent showered in the three days. I couldnt get the warm water to work. I've stayed in this one room. slept fitfully. when I eventually gathered enough strength to get to the bathroom, I stared at the woman in the mirror in shock horror.

My face was torn to shreds. Peppered with scabs and scratches. My eyes hollow with shadows under them. My cheeks turned sallow. Green and yellow hues all along my neck, shoulders and limbs where they had bruised. One of my eyes turned completely red, where some vessels had broken. how unnerving I must look, Like the living dead.
I washed my face and tried to brush my teeth but there was a cut on my lip that split and bled painfully when the skin stretched even slightly. My roots hurt from not having washed my hair in days. I felt and looked like road kill.

Food had been left on my bed side table. During those first few days, when I was in and out of my fatigued state, i couldn't remember much. I think this must have been more to do with the pain killers I was taking. Other than Ali and Atif on that one day, I saw no one. I lost my sense of time. I didnt even know what day it was. I gathered as much engery as I could and began to pace the length of the room, slowly at first as my legs were stiff and aching. But after a couple of days I seemed more steady on my feet.

It must have been on the third or fourth day after I had spoken with Ali and Atif, that I saw a woman enter my room with a food tray. She was middle aged and plump and had a distinctly motherly look to her face. she smiled as soon as she noticed I was awake and came over to check on me, taking my face in her dry wrinkled hands. I signalled for her to follow me into the bathroom and gestured to the shower. she left and returned with an older man in his 50s. He left to check the boiler- clearly perplexed as to why someone would need warm water to bath in summer. What could I say it was habit.

Washed and refreshed a little, in clean pajamas (because this was all that i could find in the drawers). I left the bedroom for the first time. The room opened to a long corrider on the upper floor landing, which seemed to be set out in an L shape. There were other rooms on this side of the building too; All bedrooms like mine. from this angle, i could see there was a whole other wing on the other side. carefully, i made my way down the stair case, which opened up to a grand lobby. Grey and white shiny marble tiles lined the huge expanse, guilded frames decorated the walls and huge bouquets of flowers in painted varses stood to attention around the room.

I explored the rest of the house, which continued to amaze me. To my surprise there was a library, an entertainment room with a huge screen, a rustic den with plush leather sofas and huge marble fire place. A dinning room with full length  French windows that opened up to a veranda where there was an out door seating area. Lush green manicured lawns with the most beautifully scented roses of every hue sat at the back of the house. All this time I had been stuck upstairs in that room and there was a whole world to explore here. An oval drive swept in front of the house with a ornate fountain sitting in the middle of the front lawn. Huge trees lined the lawns. I felt like I was finally able to breath a little.

food was bought into what ever room I was in, if i was reading in the library, tucked up in a window seat in the lounge, under a tree in the garden. Discretly it would arrive and when I was done, the plates would silently be carried away. Workers smiled at me politely, but with the exception of the housekeeper no one made eye contact with me. Perhaps they had been instructed to do so. Bizarrely, it made me feel more isolated than when I had been in my room.

Strangely, I walked around in my pajamas with no shoes on, till i found a pair of flip flops outside and just began to wear them. How strange i must have appeared to the staff. looking so ferral and lost.

Then one evening, I heard the engine of a car- a sound which i hadnt heard for a long time. I rushed out of my room onto the landing and walked to the balcony that opened out to the front of the house.
Two men, dressed in jeans and t shirts are loading up a 4x4. Even from this distance i could see they are wearing holsters and are armed. One had some sort of rifle slung over a shoulder and was loading it into the vehical. I hadnt seen them on the property before and the thought made my breath quicken in fear. One of the men must have seen me because they both turned in my direction. Instantly, i ducked to hide. Shit. I ran back into my room and looked with unsettled horror at the door as I realised there was no lock on it...

As calmly as possible, I forced myself to sit down on the bed and try to steady my racing heartbeat .
They were already on the property, I reasoned with myself, that most likely meant they were workers. perhaps I just hadn't seen them before. They were loading up the jeep, so clearly they were leaving, not arriving.
Mohsin and Zain - Ali had said, perhaps that was them. I hadn't met them yet, but had been told they would be here. One of them had looked vaguely familiar. Perhaps..... could one of them have been the man in the car who had bought me here? There had definiately been someone in the car, who had tried to reassure me when i had awoken- reaching over the back of the front seat,  with  a patting gesture -had tried to stop me from sitting up. The memory had faded from my mind and I couldn't quite picture him. Despite my initial alarm, it was most likely that the men downstairs were security.
I forced myself to get back into bed and tried to read. It was ok I told myself. Being on my own had made me paranoid. Ali had said I would be safe, Atif had promised it. But they weren't here now. . .
Never the less, my eyes kept wandering to the door.