Deep Sea

Prologue

Bare mountains swept by the wind.

Ocher colored houses, bricks corroded by the elements.

Sand.

Rustling white sheets hanging from limp ropes, gusts raise the edges which fall against each other. Intermittent squeaks coming from ajar door jambs.

The street listens.

In the distance, the roar of an engine approaches.

Rhuma sits with the doll on his lap. It's rag, half unstitched. He looks at it and turns it over. The doll smiles, Rhuma smiles back. There is nothing that is missing in that nothing that has always been immobile.

Rhuma saw nothing but house butts, car wrecks and desert. His country devastated, his brothers disappeared one after the other.

His mother is in the kitchen mixing flour and water for dinner. The wooden basin under the table is half full, the well is emptying.

In the center of the village an old woman with a dark veil trudges with a bucket on her shoulders. Yellow water, to drink with wooden spoons, to mix, being careful not to spill even a drop.

A jeep approaches.

It is dark green, like the color of the shrubs behind the house.

Rhuma widens his black eyes. The car stops. Rhuma stands and holds her doll's hand, the wind making her hair dance in front of her face. A sun-burnt oval with dark eyebrows and a small pink mouth cracked by the heat, white and irregular teeth that open into a bright smile.

A gust tears a sheet from the rope which floats in the air and falls a few meters away. The woman inside the house rushes outside to retrieve it from the ground. Rhuma is lifted by two strong arms. The doll falls into the sand. The mother calls but receives no answer. The sheet has been hung up again, the woman moves it aside, then moves a second one aside, then a third and reaches the street.

The green jeep drives away towards the desert. The street is empty. "Rhuma... Rhuma!"... he doesn't answer.

On the ground the doll smiles.

The mother picks it up. A premonition paralyzes her.

Silence.

Time no longer passes. The sky froze above a trail of dust. The woman screams and her voice breaks in her throat.

The car moves away, jolting on rough roads. In the rear-view mirror a man can see a figure bending down on his knees and raising his hands to his face, a shape that becomes smaller and smaller and disappears behind the peeling wall of a house.