EAST.

Have You Seen My Daddy?

The night was fast approaching as the people I saw on the streets in this sparse neighborhood seemed as though they were hurrying up for fear of something dangerous coming, rushing to go inside their houses where it was safe.

I kept up my slow jog as I stopped intermittent knocking from door to door, frantically asking if anyone had seen my father. My voice sounded smaller, and I felt younger as I asked every stranger that bothered turning a few seconds in my direction, “Have you seen my daddy?”

No one answered verbally. They only nodded their heads from side to side or looked at me as though they did not understand what I was saying until I stood in front of a black door and knocked. A man whose face I cannot describe except for lots of creases, lines, and wrinkles, adorned by a very dark mustache, glassy-small eyes, and a mischievous smile, opened the door and invited me in. I must have been so desperate because I followed him inside, and a couple of seconds later started to regret my decision. We walked up a flight of stairs that seemed to go on forever and came to a room at the top of the house. It was very dark, and I heard another man laugh when he asked them if they had seen my father. It was a very dark and sinister laugh that shot a cold fear down my spine, causing me to turn around and start to run down until I bolted out the door into the empty street. By this time, the night had fully grown. I was afraid. Very afraid! So I just kept up on running until I woke up drenched in a pool of sweat and tears.

I lay in the dark unsure of what to make of this strange place that I had been, and while I pondered on how to travel back to continue my search, I fell asleep again, determined not to return until I found daddy and used the chance to ask if and why he chose not to stay.

This time, I woke up in a room with earth-brown walls, and sitting across from me was my daddy. He was muttering a few words that I recognized to be from the Book of Psalms, but I could not identify which one it was he was reciting. He was looking straight ahead and did not appear to notice my presence. He looked twenty or so years younger and wore a silver-grey french suit I remember from my pre-teen years. A vacuum in the atmosphere made me sound to myself as though I were underwater, while I tried to talk to him. I made an attempt to hug him but he still didn’t acknowledge that I was there. In the end, I resigned to the possibility that maybe he really could not see or hear me. And then, out of nowhere, a door appeared right next to him. He stood up, opened it, and walked through it to the other side. And when I tried to follow him through it, I woke up again. The time was 3:48 am.

…

On the morning daddy died, I heard a knock on my door at 2 am but when I opened and checked to see who it was, there was nobody there.

I had been praying for him to get well and took it to be a sign that everything would be ok.

But when mummy called me at about 6 am crying and asked us to pray I knew he had gone.

Deflated and afraid, I spoke to him as gently as I could hoping he could hear me from across the bridge he had crossed. But deep in my heart, I knew the bridge had been cut just as my heart was with a knife.

I heard mummy praying and crying. Thousands of miles away at the other end of the phone, feeling useless I listened, numb until big brother took the phone from her and whispered,

"Daddy's gone".

That evening as I sat thinking about daddy unable to cry, I felt him sit beside me for a moment and felt my mind transport me to a place where I heard the most beautiful music and a party being held for him. It was the happiest I had ever seen him. At that moment, it was enough for him and me.

The days that followed were endless. Caught in limbo as to what to do until eventually, it was clear that I didn't have to power to make it in time for his internment so it was better for everyone that I stay watching from a distance through cameras online.

209 days later…

Every day I wonder how to cross the bridge between there and now. All I know is daddy is in a city underground that somehow has its own cardinal, maps, and special sounds. And in this city there is a door the whole world’s been looking for, to unlock the road to Heaven but like babel was razed to the ground. And, our minds being made to think upside down inevitably continue to look in the wrong direction as we keep building staircases going up instead of down.

And every time I fall asleep I go to that city and never quite know how to find my way around until I'm woken up by my body needing to have a wee, or by the sound of some other imaginary company.

One thing that is stuck in the middle of that plane and this one teaches me is that nothing lasts forever and this is why less is more even with the words that we say and the paths of life we choose to explore, and even more so there is always a door that opens the minute we close our eyes and go to sleep on either side of this curtain.