Noise Of Silence

- Chapter 1 -

      Noise of Silence by Asma Benmansour

       

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         " You are a monster", Roared the voice inside my head. I believed it while struggling to mute those stings squeezing my heart. That voice never stops talking to me. It never stops scaring me.  It is as witty as an artist playing the role of a tough executioner.

    I listen to the voice  either forced or willingly. I do not remember when did it get to my head,  or when did it settle there for years until we started sharing the same breaths? It became the companion of my loneliness whenever the night arrives though it utters nothing but intimidations that break my heart into pieces.

    Despite all it used to do, however; the night of my departure it did not roar for too long.  It whispered twice or maybe thrice and then it vanished.

     The night, when my parents decided to leave to Seoul, I saw the Han Kang River swallowing me; it was besieging me with its cold waves whispering monotonously: “Finally you came to me, Leila.”

    In my funeral in that dream, there were merely two faces. They seemed to be far though they were close. The first was the face of my father MR  Joung Hoon with his Asian features. He is a pug-nosed man with small eyes and a black straight heavy hair, mixed with some gray. He has a light mustache. The second was the face of my Arab mother. She was sobbing with neither a voice nor features on her face.

    I was still fighting that voice inside of my head and those cold storms dwelling the Han’s water with heavy breaths. Cold was flowing in a rush through my mouth filling me in with a deadly frost. I was trying, in vain, to push it away. I felt it extending inside of me. I started struggling to catch my breaths, then I died slowly without any words or hopes.

     Then, I woke up panicked and totally drowned in my sweat wondering about the unknown   future getting knitted for me there in that civilized town; Seoul.

   I remained frightened in bed for about quarter an hour staring at the moon light streaming through my room’s window. I felt that fear getting deep in me,  the fear of death.  Sinking in the Han Kang river.

    With me leaving to Seoul, I would gather all my childhood memories and put them in a box. The box that I have no idea yet where to cast away exactly. Am I going to keep it deep in my secrets or in my vast chest opened up to the sky of the mountainous village where I was born?

        I would  bid my uncle Sang Jonk , his wife that I never loved and their four sons ( Mee Jee, Meen Jon , Je Hoon and Hyoun Woo) farwell,  and so I would do with my grandparents.
Probably, I would have the chance to get rid of Jee Hoon and Mee Jee’s harassment. The former used to beat me in my childhood , but now he enjoyed  calling me the ‘owl eyes’ making fun of my wide eyes .  I did  not really know why did he choose the eyes of an owl in particular?
Despite the fact that my eyes had always attracted the attention of anyone facing me  wherever I went.
Even more, they drove them to stare at my face at least for some moments before say6 :’ Oh! You are stunning, girl!!!’.  To ask me afterwards about the secret behind my facial features that differ from the Korean ones in everything but their   bright soft skin. I reply that I was born to a Korean father and an Arab mother .It always makes them keep up praising the so called my beauty till I start feeling shy and disturbed. At those moments,  the voice inside my head interferes to treat my shyness that shows up due to people flatters, screaming roughly: ‘Liars…they are lying to you.’ I believe it and I calm down.

       The latter, Jee Hoon, used to beat me too. He used to relish tearing my notebooks and breaking my pens as well, happily.

     Leaving the village means that I was  finally going to live with my biological parents,  the ones I knew few about except the truth that they were exotic and dominating creatures. They spent all the time they had with me on weekends dictating their orders on me. In spite of the fact that my father was a simple man, he was so energetic, practical and unbearably disciplined. He was truly passionate about discipline…wait a second; well,  let’s say he was as disciplined as a soldier. Everything was well planned in advance including meals times.  When to wake up and so on.  According to him,  I had  to wake up at dawn to pray El-Fadjer and I was  not supposed to go back to sleep. Then, I had my breakfast at seven in the morning. He could  not help but ordering me. He even obliged my grandmother to keep on the same discipline when he was away.