Glow

I could hear the glow across the room. The luminescence caressed my ears and drew me in. There was a warmth, a gentle crackle that invited me to search, to look. I knew she was here. Somewhere.

The crowded room was a hub-bub of noise, a gaggle of words and movement. It was hard to see her. She was just a waif, a will-o-wisp that melted into the cacophony. I had seen her once before, but like so many others she was just a faceless name, a nameless face. In a place where the days blended into one long nightmare, it was hard to distinguish just one soul.

“Number 342987,” I called. The line in front of me shuffled forward en masse, a human caterpillar that never seemed to run out of legs. No response. Louder this time. “Number 342987.” The desert of faces stared back at me blankly. I held up a sign with the numbers clearly displayed. Worried brows compared their page to mine, until finally, an old man appeared. He was hunched and wrinkled from a thousand days in the sun.

I motioned for him to approach. “Number 342987?” He nodded and handed me his grey card, crumpled from the long journey. I examined him and his card closely. There was no date of birth. And so I bestowed upon him the first gift he would receive from my country – a birthday. April 16. I studied him more closely. Age was hard to determine when a life had been marred by this much tragedy, this much pain. 1945. That would do. “You’re 63,” I said with a smile. He nodded, clearly not understanding.

He watched nervously as I reached for my stamp. Side by side, they were the determinants of destiny. One signified freedom, or at least the chance of freedom. The other was a death warrant. We never said as such, but we knew. His English was non-existent, but every traveller in this room knew the difference between life and death, the red stamp and the green one. I emblazoned ACCEPTED across his card and returned it to him. His toothless smile emerged from its hiding place as he ran his fingers over his precious card. The green ink smudged proudly on his fingers.

I motioned him away from my desk. The human caterpillar shuffled forward once more. “Number 342988.”

The next day continued as did the last, with little to bring to my attention except the depth of need, the depth of sorrow, the depth of desperation experienced by the numbers in front of me. Immersed in the mechanics of stamping red, green, green red, red, red, green, I was suddenly jolted. She was here again.

It took me a few seconds to find her. She was small and gangly. Her face was not dissimilar to the thousand other faces I saw everyday. She was an urchin, a waif. Nobody’s child. In the weeks I had been here I had never seen her with anyone. No adult had caressed her, no child had played with her. She had simply appeared each day, then disappeared back to the camp in the evening.
I placed a sign on my desk and stood up to stretch. Break time. It was a little earlier than usual but I was compelled to find out more about her. Snaking my way through the quagmire of people, I reached the point where I had last seen her just a few moments before. But she was gone. The glow was testament to her presence, but she herself had vanished. I ran my fingers through the remaining particles, their soft timbre welcomed by my ears. I thought I caught a glimpse of her ragged dress and strained to look, but she was gone.

The processing continued unabated. The line was never shorter than it was on that first day. The decisions became mechanical, detached, unimportant. The pleading eyes of those who presented themselves did not need interpretation. The eyes shouted, screamed for mercy. “Please!” they all begged. “Please let me stay.” But there were quotas, there were numbers, there were rules. Occasionally I wasn’t sure and would call over the uniformed superintendent for clarification. One mother attempted to stifle the wracking cough of her small child, but I had heard enough. DENIED. Drops of blood dripped from the page, tears mingled with red ink. A small part of me winced, knowing what their combined fate would be, but it was out of my hands. I was just doing my job.

I took to eating my lunch in the windowed room above the gallery. I wanted to see her again. Sure enough, my vantage point offered a commanding view. And I did see her. She glided amongst her fellow refugees with a grace and gentleness I had rarely seen. No-one spoke to her, no-one claimed her. I don’t think anyone even saw her. She was just another lost child. There were so many, they themselves were unable to differentiate one from the other.

Her pitiful dress grew more ragged each day. She moved with her hands in her pockets and through the rotting strands of material I could see her fists were clenched tight. She was holding on to something tight. The glow. It wasn’t always present. Sometimes I had to look twice just to make sure it was her – without the glow I was uncertain. But then I would see it. The glow. Just a glimmer sometimes, at other times a bright burning flame. I appeared to be the only one surprised – perhaps I was the only one who noticed.

I came across her once, on my walk from the lunchroom to my desk. For the briefest of moments she was there, in front of me. Involuntarily, I drew breath. My gasp caught her attention and for a split second, I held her gaze. She didn’t smile, she didn’t speak. But in her eyes I it was unmistakeable. The glow. And then she was gone. It happened so quickly I began to wonder if I had dreamed the whole thing.

But then the lines began to diminish. The ships stopped appearing. The people stopped coming. Word had spread that red was as common as the blood that had been spilled. Pirates captained their ships to other ports, in hope of finding a pasture of lush green. They wouldn’t find that here.

The human caterpillar shrunk, and shrivelled until at last there were just a few stragglers left. The processors were sent home, one by one, until it was just I who remained. In the end, it was me…and her.

I had run out of numbers. She was not on my list. But still she stood in front of me, eyes defiant. In the weeks, no months, that I had been here I had never seen her stand still. But there was nowhere to go, nowhere to hide. She was exposed, she was raw. And she was in front of me.
I motioned for her to come forward. Her tight fists bulged in her threadbare pockets. The luminescent dust decorated her skirt.

I motioned again. “What is your name?” I whispered as she came close. She took a deep breath and drew herself up to her full, unimpressive height. Shoulders back, those eyes flamed at me once more.

“El ayami per Tala,” she said. I had learned enough not to need an interpreter. Tala. My name is Hope.