Circle of Life

Her mother had always told her she was a lucky child.

‘Listen to your instincts, Sara. You’ll be just fine. Always trust in yourself.’

But of course, a mother's advice is often not heard by their children. But Sara was different. She listened. And now sixty-three years later if she listened hard, that inner voice, was still there. 

And right now it was busy nibbling at her equilibrium. Sara sat alone at a table close close to the door in one of the many coffee houses hidden down the ancient side streets of Jerusalem. She had discovered this spot the previous day and, because she liked to watch the bustle of life passing by, found it perfect.

Placing her pen on a still blank postcard to her grandchildren, she brushed her greying hair away from the droplets of moisture beading her forehead. Her thoughts drifted back to that day when her mother saved her life, but lost her own.

Sara shivered. The noise and heat of the Middle East wasn't entirely extinguished by the cafe's rattling air conditioning, each new customer brought a blast of heavy heat. But the shivering intensified. Once again she was immersed in the numbing grip of the Irish Sea, her mother desperately holding her head above the waves, telling her again and again that everything would be fine. Everything would be fine. But it was never going to be fine. Never again.

Sara pushed the memory away, drained her coffee and picking up her pen, began to write. Again the cafe door opened letting more hot air wash over her. Her chill grew colder as she looked up. A young man dressed in traditional Jewish attire had entered the shop. But there was something different about him. It was there in his eyes. Large and dark, they should have been beautiful and serene; instead they were dull, almost blank. As if time had run out.

Sara dropped her pen, stood and wrapped herself around him, her mouth close at his ear, whispering rapidly the few words and phrases of Arabic she had learned:  ‘Salam alaikum , La! La’  

He jolted back at her touch, trying to twist away. But she held him, repeating the phrase rapidly: ‘Peace be with you, Peace! No! No!’

His eyes went wide and the two of them, as if in a grotesque dance, began to spin. Chairs, tables fell to the floor as the stampede for safety began. Everyone understood at once. The boy’s hand - for he was no more than a boy in reality - began forcing its way between their bodies, searching. Sara felt the ugly lump of what must be explosives beneath his clothes. She clung even tighter. Anything to deny him his twisted and fatal ambition, for she saw in his eyes the belief that Heaven awaited him.

In a sense, Sara knew she'd been lucky; the café was now almost empty. She whispered again into his ear, pleading ‘La! (No!)'

He stopped struggling, looked at her with blank eyes and spoke:

‘ALLAHU AKBAR!’

*********

It was a timeless moment after her death, that Sara watched a newborn child cry against his exhausted mother's breast and she fell in love. There could be no other person, he was for her and she would remain devoted to this new-born babe throughout his life.

And then, in seemingly less than a heartbeat, he was suddenly no longer an infant - but a grown man. Yet still a child.

And right now, the child-man was struggling.

******

‘When will you be back home?’

‘Later’

‘WHEN later? Tonight, tomorrow … ’ 

Mike’s mother drew her hand through her hair in exasperation, ‘Your dad and I need to know, Mike.’

He snarled at his mother over his shoulder in frustration, refusing to meet her eyes, ‘I DUNNO when!  I’ll call ya. Gota go now, ok? See ya.’

“Mike!”

Slamming the front door behind him, he stalked off. The bike was waiting and he wasn’t listening.

‘Mike!’

Viciously twisting the throttle, he let he engine drown his mother's plea in a scream of defiance. Dropping the clutch and pulling on the bars, he let the front wheel lift. Then, leaning into the sudden acceleration with the front wheel high in the air, he powered away.

Sara quietly watched Mike’s mother shake her head as she moved back inside the house and closed the door. Then she was riding alongside him, whispering into his mind. Like the Sara of old, perhaps he listened. He slowed, reaching that first intersection a fraction later than he otherwise would.

The car of course had appeared from nowhere, as cars always do. Mike's quick reflexes saved his life: a touch of front brake, a push on the left bar and the bike answered enough for him to pass without contact. For the next few miles of road to his girlfriend’s house his heart was thumping and Mike rode that little more carefully. Sara smiled.

There was Janie, waiting. He could see those intense dark-brown eyes of hers fixed upon him as he pulled up alongside her. He’d barely removed his helmet before her lips found his own as the engine pinged and popped between them, the engine cooling even with the heat of their embrace.

Mike’s heart was still racing from the near miss, or from meeting Janie, he wasn’t sure.

He let her brush a single matted hair from his forehead. ‘Mike, you’re sweating like a pig!’

‘Yeah, I was pushing it a bit, nearly lost it back there …’

Janie’s dark eyes narrowed.

‘What do you mean?’

Mike twisted his head away, ‘Jesus, don’t start …’

‘Why the shit shouldn’t I start! You know how you scare me sometimes riding like that.’

‘For Christ’s sake Janie, you’re beginning to sound like me Mum …’

‘Mike, if you don’t take it easy on that thing, I just know you’re going to get killed!’

He couldn't defeat her, so instead pulled her to him. She rested her forehead against his chest.

‘No, no I won’t,’ he reassured her, ‘I always know when to ease up – it’s my “sixth sense.” ’

'Sixth sense my arse... you’re trembling,’ she said, looking up into his face. 

Mike checked his hand. ‘Oh Yeah... So I am. Shit.’

Janie stood on tiptoe and kissed him again.

‘I want you fully functioning Mike, not injured or even worse. In fact, I want you right now.”

‘I thought you wanted to go for a ride?” Mike laughed.

‘Oh, I do,’ Janie giggled. ‘But the bike ride can wait – this one can’t. You do know my parents aren't in, don’t you?’ she said, her smile  radiating more warmth than the summer’s evening.

‘Oh, well, that’s much more interesting,’ he said, smiling. ‘I guess the bike can wait …’    

Later, in the evening dusk, they walked to a nearby pub. Mike felt more content at that moment than he’d ever been in his young life. But, just as he thought that awkward question wouldn’t be asked by Janie, it was.

‘So, any news about the job then?’

Mike rolled his eyes as his heart sank.

‘Janie, you know this job is my ticket out of here …’

‘Yeah, and away from me.’

Traffic rumbled past them unheard and unnoticed.

‘That’s not true,’ sighed Mike. ‘It’s only a couple of hundred miles away, we can still see each other.’

‘You’ll find someone else, I know you will …’

‘Look, we’ll see each other at weekends or you could move down with me, why not?’

‘You know why not – I’m not yet eighteen, my folks would never let me go and I’ve got Uni and … oh, why can’t you just stay?’

‘Because, well, because …’ He said, unable to find any words she would understand.   ‘It’s the opportunity of a lifetime …’ he finished off lamely.

‘It’s the opportunity of a lifetime …’ she mimicked. Folding her arms and pouting.

Janie stared into the sky as the silence between them deepened. Finally she spoke,  ‘Fine, it doesn’t matter, I don’t care, you just go, don’t think about me, just do what you want …’

‘Janie, look, you’re being silly …’ Mike bit his tongue as he spoke that last fatal word.

‘Silly?’ Janie growled. ‘Oh, I’m being ‘silly,’ am I? Well screw you, Mike!’

Mike stood stock still, hands balled into fists as he watched her march away across the road. He was furious with her and himself. He turned away, determined to leave her to her tantrum, yet something stopped him walking. As he paused, the sudden and deafening sound from a truck air-horn rent the air. He swivelled and saw a huge truck, on the wrong side of the road, and bearing down upon his beloved Janie.

Janie saw the truck at the same instant, but froze. Mike reacted instantly.

'JANIE!'

Her eyes met his for just an instant as he launched himself across the road, knocking her sprawling and out of harms way. A brief blowtorch of indescribable pain seared into his brain as he hit the tarmac, hard. The breath knocked from his lungs, Mike tried to scream, but there nothing. Nothing except the huge truck bearing down upon him, horn bellowing and tyres screeching as it skidded towards him. A fraction of a second later, Mike's pain was instantly erased as the truck crushed his life away.

 

*******

Sara had, as always, been watching. Even as he gave his life to save another.

It was the hardest thing knowing that all her whispered insistences, her murmurings deep into his mind, for him to wait, to not simply walk away. All of those things, she knew, would eventually lead to his death because she knew where his heart lay. She couldn't have been prouder.

*******

A timeless moment later, Mike watched a newborn baby girl take her first breath.

He knew - as Sara had known before him - there could be no other for him.

She, this tiny child, was his to guard. To advise. To protect. And to love.

 

{Seasons greetings to all at ABC Tales and thanks for reading!)