Robin Wrigley
Ringwood best bitter
Maryam lay wide awake; it
was one thirty in the morning. She had that dream again. The dream about that
encounter in her early childhood while on a family holiday at the end of the
war, at their house by the Caspian Sea.
She was
only eight years old free to roam in the early mornings. She had gone down to
the sea-shore while the family stayed sleeping. It was so refreshing, wading in
the sea after their stuffy house. Spotting a bright blue dinghy pulled up on the
beach she climbed inside. Sitting at the bow like a boatman, she pretended she
was at sea placing her hand above her eye-line scanning the
horizon.
A dog
barking nearby startled her and instinctively she crouched down and peered over
the rim. She saw the dog alongside a shepherd-boy, who was starting to undress
only a few metres away, unaware of her presence.
The
whiteness of his body, contrasted with his sunburnt arms and face as he stripped
completely. Maryam had never seen a naked boy. She marvelled at how different
his body was to hers. Once undressed, he ran and dived into the surf; Maryam
clambered out of the boat and ran for home.
It was the only time she was to see a live
male form. The Ayatollah’s obsession with the war against Saddam Hussein, had
taken her brothers along with thousands of young men and boys she might have
known, perhaps married.
Now she
had only the dream.
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