**Shadows Have No Eyes**
– Who are you?
– I told you to come.
– Where is this? How did I get here?
– It’s your world, and you’ve always been here.
– My world is full of colors, full of strangers and acquaintances, people I know and talk to. Here, it’s all darkness, and there’s no one.
– It’s the same world, you’re just seeing it differently. You’re seeing it with your eyes.
– I always see with my eyes. Is there another way to see?
– Yes, you’re used to seeing everything with your mind. You see what you want to see, and realities, if they are pleasant!
– Is this the reality of our world?
– Not all reality; the reality you don’t see and that grows bigger every day. You are creating a world of shadows, where shadows don’t interact or see each other.
– Who are you?
– You!
The voice stopped, and there was no one around. I had no limbs to move, or if I did, I had no strength to move them. It was as if I had become a dense mass in the dark sky of a city smelling of burning and death. Like a thick, black cloud resembling a human, with eyes staring down at the city from above. Shadows were seen on the walls, on the ground, among cars, and even behind windows. Time seemed to have stopped, and everyone had turned into motionless, silent shadows.
I lay in my bed as if I had returned from a great transformation, staring at the ceiling. I moved my limbs tentatively; everything was in its place. The ticking of the clock beside my bed merged with the rhythm of a spoon stirring tea to sweeten it. My brother had a habit of drinking sweet tea in the mornings.
The television was almost loud, and as usual, the onslaught of news from wars and conflicts to rising gold prices and plans for 25 square meter housing shattered our brains; my father’s futile decades-long effort to wake us up for a collective breakfast. My body was buried in the bed, as if I had slept a thousand years ago and now woken up a stranger to the world with a dizzy, directionless mind. But I had to get up, had to have breakfast, had to go. A world full of repetitive obligations, full of aimless compulsions we’ve created out of habit.
It seemed to take a thousand hours to cover the three-meter distance from my bed to the door handle. Dad, neatly ironed and tidy with his belt buckled in the last hole as if ready for battle, stood in the middle of the living room following military news. In the bathroom, I wondered where a father like mine fit into my last night’s dream. Was he listening to the news so he’d have something to talk about with his colleague at work? I had never thought about why he buckled his belt so tight. As I flushed the toilet, I remembered that during the coronavirus era, the only sign of life from the lonely neighbor upstairs was the sound of his toilet. While having breakfast, my sister waved her hand and left the house; her way of saying goodbye until evening. I thought of the shadows in my dream.
Waiting at the corner for my Snapp ride, a man sat under a no-parking sign with several cigarette packs in front of him. A girl leaned against the wall, playing with her phone, and a short man yawned as he bit into a piece of bread. Lately, when I ordered a Snapp, I chose the option for a deaf driver. I had no patience for scattered conversations and various news.
At the dinner table, I shared my dream. Dad said:
“Eat less so you can sleep better at night.”
Mom, who couldn’t bear the thought of any discomfort for her children and saw a bad dream as a bullet in their hearts, with no desire to discuss them, said:
“May God make the end good for everyone.”
My sister hadn’t come home yet. My brother was out late for work and, as he put it, hadn’t seen the nights at home for years.
That night, unlike before, after dinner, I didn’t go straight to my room but sat with Mom and Dad. I wanted my presence to add a log to the warm hearth of the family. We had tea with the evening news. I learned that the name of the Defense Minister of Albania is Niko Peleshi. Besides housework, Mom left the rest to God, and Dad didn’t know why the upstairs neighbor hadn’t gone to the bathroom for a year.
I thought about my dream. About the world we’ve built. About the shadows that, though together, are separate, striving to get through the drawn-out days of life. About the rush every day to reach tomorrow, and a tomorrow that holds only more shadows and greater loneliness for us.
No comment