Seeking The Truth

By : Saeed Ali Salem Al Mehairi

I have always lived next to a graveyard. It is not that I fancy death or the stench of blood, After all I am not a vampire.  In fact, there is nothing I like less than watching a body being buried every hour, every minute, and every prayer. I do not live my life lurking in the shadows waiting for someone to find me as at this point, I know I will never be found.

I am lost in my mind, in between thoughts. And that’s a place no one can find me in, not even myself. I have always lived such a simple and abnormal life in relation to my peers, I rarely had the need for luxury, food and other necessities, all I ever needed was to be noticed, love. I think it’s because I grew up without a mother and an absent father.

But all of this is going to change now, I am looking for a partner in crime, a lover, my very own significant other. Someone to cry over me. I have decided that I will not live in the darkness anymore, I am coming out to the sunlight and I will catch a tan, one of those that the foreigners come to Dubai to get. That lovely hue of beige mixed with patches of sunburns, and the beautiful thing is that I never hear them complain, I never even hear them moaning as if they come to Dubai to get burnt, I have never been burnt before, but I will certainly not get burned living next to a graveyard where the only people that speak to me are passersby that come out only in the dark, it is only in the night that I feel social, happy and free. I need to be out in the sun where I can feel, something, anything. I am not a vampire.

I go around the graveyard everyday looking for clues, some sort of idea to grasp the truth, the reality of the situation at hand. The thing is, I am always lost in this place although I have lived here my whole life I still can’t find my way around it, there is always a new grave, a new headstone and I need to draw a map all over again, so I go out in the dark of the night trying to find something to make my head feel right.

My father says, in the rare occasions that I see him, that I need to be careful to not step outside the grounds of where I can’t see graves outside my window. I only used to call him whenever I needed him, sometimes he wouldn’t show, but I am sure maybe he is busy helping people in more need of him that I am, he once told me about Quasimodo, the Hunchback of Notre Dame, and that all he wanted to do was to step into the outside of a church, feel the wind across his face and have a taste of France, I feel a lot like Quasimodo, except all I want to feel is to get burned by the Dubai sun. Catch a tan; feel beautiful like a foreigner does in Dubai. Walk outside the land of graves.

It is now 2021, I am ten years old in this life, watching people come and bury their loved ones from my window overlooking the graveyard doesn’t seem good enough to me anymore, I have done it for ten years and what is a life good for if not living. I am going to do it tonight, right when my father is sleeping I will sneak out and experience the world out there, I will stay out till dawn and maybe find out how it feels like to have a taste of the Dubai sun, I want to get burned, I do not want to be overprotected by my father, I want to feel like how it is like to be burned by the sun, catch a tan, not feel colorless. I wonder why my father makes me live this life of the night, why can’t I just be normal like the other people around me, the foreigners that come and go, feel the sun, feel free and loved. I put myself to bed early that night, right after the last prayer of the day, the last grave. I waited till I felt the noises coming out from my father’s room stopped.

I slowly walked out into the open space; the open grounds were just fields and fields filled with graves, stones, pebbles, and buckets of mud. I didn’t know where to go the whole world was so bright! the lights of the streets were like I never saw before I thought to myself of how different they without the glass, I have never experienced the night outside my room before, the world looks different if not behind a window, in fact, it looks even way  more beautiful than I expected. I felt the wind blow over my face, I did not like the smell, but I like the fact that I was able to experience it, maybe find a step closer to how Dubai feels like if I was not behind a window. Maybe find out the truth about how these foreigners are always so happy even when they are crying over a grave.

I walked out in the streets opposite to the graveyard where I found lines of houses, and it must be where all the foreigners live, the houses looked very beautiful, and they were certainly better than the one my father and I cramp up in, I did not dare to walk towards them I was too scared and frightened by the fact that they might see me, I wanted to observe, feel them live. From afar.

I had plenty of time to get noticed by them during the daylight sun, I think I am more scared of them than they might be scared of me. And it would be better if I could see them in the bright sun light, although I never experienced it; it just felt right, from my years of observation I have discovered that they looked happier during the day. Less frightened.

So I waited for the sun to come out, it took longer than expected, and I heard it, the prayer, the first prayer of the day, the breaking of dawn prayer. I heard my heart beat faster, I wasn’t scared but there was an incredible power over me, and suddenly, a call from my father, a thundering, raging, angry call from my father commanding me to come back, I ran so quickly and swiftly back to my room, it took me a few minutes.  And as I was approaching closer and closer to my room I could see the gates of the graveyard, the light was coming out and I saw it, I saw my name written in stone as I ran into my room, and for the first time it was lit enough for me to read it, and I know now that the truth is, I am nothing but a ghost. I have been observing people in Dubai go on by their life, happy not knowing that they will be trapped like me, someday by the dark.

With no one to be with but a father, that they call god.