Leaving

Photograph by Anamitra Ray

This story is published in collaboration with Fleabane Lit ( https://www.fleabanelit.com/ ), who represent Lian Dousel.

She was riding pillion, and I was aware of her knees brushing against the sides of my thighs at every bump and every turn. She was holding onto my shirt; I told her to circle them all the way around my waist. The road to safety was long and rocky, and it felt like there could be an ambush at every turn, either by her kindred or mine. We were only sixteen, but we were in love, and we were above the divide—Kuki, Zomi; none of that mattered to us.

My father’s RX 100 groaned and sputtered underneath our weight and the few belongings we could scramble the night before. It didn’t matter what we took or left behind; we had all we needed in each other. And as we rode out of Lamka before the break of dawn, with the hills to the east and west still alight with fires razing down livelihoods, we didn’t know where we would end up, only that we couldn’t stay.

I tried to focus on the road, keep my eyes on the shadows where the morning sun couldn’t reach, but my mind kept drifting to the warmth of her embrace. And in the spaces between the groan of the engine and the rushing wind, I heard the shaky breaths of her stifled sobs.

Wherever the road was kind, I held her arms around my waist with my free hand.

It was strange to think that we had only known each other for a year, that we had been in love for half that time, and that this was the closest we had ever been. I knew she was entering my life the moment she entered our classroom and I spent most of the day falling in love with the back of her head, with the way the strands of her hair would dance in the breeze, and how her head would tilt slightly whenever she was paying close attention. The sight of her fingertips disappearing into her thick, black hair and momentarily revealing the white of her scalp, like chalk lines on the blackboard I was ignoring, before she gathered her hair up into a ponytail made my palms sweat and my heart flutter. The first puzzles of my life fell into place when I heard the smoothness of her voice, the music of her laughter, and I felt her gaze on me like a warm sun on a cold winter morning. The first time we held hands, I fell in love.

There had already been reports by then, of little skirmishes in the outlands, too far away from Lamka to be troubled by, and too opposite to our kindling romance to tear our gazes away from each other. We had all heard cautionary tales of who her people were—and no doubt she had heard stories about mine—but in her I saw nothing but a kind heart, a clever mind, and a pretty face. In the months we spent falling for each other, we never spoke of the raids and the killings; they had nothing to add but everything to take away. And when the troubles finally arrived at our doorsteps, when I took a leap of faith and asked her to run away with me, I stripped myself bare of my self-consciousness, foregoing all the years usually spent learning to habituate to displays of affection, and I told her, the first time I ever told anyone, “I love you.” She told me she loved me too, and without wasting another day, we set off into the unknown, where we hoped would be peace, away from the rains of bullets and winds of flames.

The exhilaration her hands carried as they ran up and down my chest after we passed the kilometres of uneasy rebellion made me feel like the characters we’d snuck away to see in the cinema, like we were completely separate from the troubles of our world, unsullied by the narcissism of minor differences, and we could be as in love as wanted to be. And we were. In the hours we spent riding before our first stop, before our whispers laden with infatuation turned to affirmations, we were convinced our love far exceeded anything our parents ever felt, or at least expressed. We were committed to love and nothing else.

By midday, we had covered enough distance that not a wisp of black smoke from the consuming fires were visible any longer. Having to take a lot of backroads to avoid roadblocks and checkpoints, we were making little headway. It would be close to next dawn before we crossed over into Mizoram, that was, if the fuel lasted.

We stopped to rest a little farther up a slip road so we wouldn’t be visible from the highway. We were silent as we ate our stale bread and washed it down with lukewarm water.

I topped up the tank. The jerrican I stole from home was already half empty. I poured it all in, careful not to spill. Unless we found help by some miracle, we’d be crossing the border on foot.

I turned to tell her. She had her head buried in her arms.

In the scurrying hours between the day before when I asked her to run away and this moment, I had never once considered the possibility that we were going down the wrong path. The reality that she wanted to run away with me masked the likelihood that we would never make it. Even as I had held her hands, my back soaked by her tears, the mask had stayed in place—those were tears common to all leavings. But in the hush of nowhere, interrupted by the rustling breeze and the chirping of birds whose decisions to leave were only ruled by the change of seasons, that mask fell away and revealed something ugly.

I sat down beside her. I wanted to ask if she wanted to go back.

I put an arm around her. I remained silent.

Her family moved into Lamka just a year ago, barely long enough to grow roots, not nearly long enough for neighbours to open their door to let them in and hide them if their house was set on fire. She had a little sister and brother who went to the same school. Walking home with them after school, I had gotten to know them and grown an affection. She had loving parents. She had a good life. She had a future.

“Let’s move on,” I said.

She looked at me and tried to force a smile that crumbled into a grimace.

I leaned in, but she turned and my lips grazed her cheek. A moment later, after a deep breath, she turned back to me with a smile small enough to be convincing, and planted a light kiss on my lips. I could almost hear her thoughts, and they were the same thoughts I had, but she said nothing, and I said nothing. Instead, she stood up and we brushed the dust off her.

Before the troubles began, before I summoned the courage to speak to her for the very first time, I used to fantasise the two of us riding all the way to foreign lands on this motorbike, smiles on our faces and hair swimming in the winds, riding off into the sunset. Now, as we got back on the bike and continued our way south, we had no smile on our faces, and our minds were on all we had left behind. Her family had come to Lamka, to the heart of the enemy, with hope for a better life; mine was swimming in blood and tears and my brothers were plotting vengeance. To leave was the only way. To leave was the only way. To leave was the only way.

But her commiserating kiss lingered on my mind, and on my lips, all I could taste was dirt and nothing of the sweetness of our first kiss.

Nothing but dirt lay before us.

We had to go back.

My unbidden tears kept me from seeing the road in front of me, seeing the cavity that ran across our path like a trench. The front tyre folded underneath us, and the rear shot up and threw us high into the air. In a blink, I was pinned down to the dirt by the hunk of metal I had put my faith and our fate on.

She was face down just beyond my reach.

I called to her. She wasn’t moving; she wasn’t making a sound.

Before the heat of the adrenaline cooled and I could feel my own pain, I freed myself from my entrapment and scrambled towards her.

There was no blood at first. And then it wouldn’t stop flowing.

*

Perhaps I had a dream I didn’t remember, or perhaps the decades of silenced penitence finally demanded release, but I felt an undeniable urge to go back home and visit her grave as I awoke this morning. I couldn’t go to the funeral, or visit the grave for a year and three months after. I hadn’t been to see her since October 1998 when I snuck away to the cemetery alone, the world around me wary of the peace still in its infancy.

I had left shortly after to hide away in a city where I could become a stranger, where my name would be spoken without the weight it carried in Lamka. I was angry at myself, at the circumstances that led us to run away, at the senselessness of her death, blaming everyone but myself. And I carried on like that for a long time without anyone knowing, without anyone to share my story with, refusing to share even when there could be someone. I hid from the people that came to the city from Lamka. For a long time, I resented the fact I still called Lamka home, and I resented its people for their relentless penchant for antagonism, despite the occasional intense moments of longing. Many times I had to force myself to stay hidden, to stay in pain.

I hadn’t been home since I left all those years ago. My memory of the place has changed into something dreamlike, like some half-remembered scene from childhood. Home…where there’s a completely different kind of peace now, precarious and discontented, born out of another kind of trouble, forcing brothers to reconcile, for all the stones and words they hurl at each other. I could call it “going home” as much as I wanted, but an uncertainty never escaped me—would “home” welcome me as a son that grew up in it or as the stranger I had become? In my desperation to escape my past, I lost a part of me and what it meant to belong. I hadn’t spoken Paite in a long time. I hadn’t had mehbai or sathu in ages, I’ve even forgotten what they tasted like. And all I got after almost three decades of solitude and the many desperate attempts to circumvent the pain of loss, of remorse, of guilt, was more pain.

I’ve packed my bags; there wasn’t much to pack—I left most of me behind on that road. I have nothing to remember her by. Not a photograph or a letter. All I have of her are sour memories.

I’m leaving for home shortly. I don’t know what I expect to find there. I’m much too old now to be hoping for anything new, but I know the stone will still be there, a little weathered, but there, with her name etched in it. Perhaps, this time, she’ll tell me to move on.