MATCHBOX

Dreams breach time. I dream of words dissolving in water. I see a lake. Beyond it, the ground fissures – supine lines waiting for the lake to water them.

Be careful with what you say, mother warns. Only listen. That will stop you from damaging yourself. In my dreams, mother stands taller than she did in life.

In my dream, water overflows from the lake, breaches the bund, and starts trickling into the cracks. I see all that we have spoken and heard through the day flow out of the red-floored hall and mingle with the water, dissolve and seep into the ground.

I have flown across two continents to arrive at this tree-fringed venue from where I see the lake that has flowed into my dream. It’s been many years since my last such engagement. I wanted to fly out of my own mind and enter those of others, those I don’t know, those who belong to geographies not my own, not familiar to me, not part of my stories. I have flung myself into this open space of conversation and cogitation among journalists, activists, migrants, refugees, seekers. Who doesn’t seek? It’s what we seek that changes, constantly, variously.

I have come armed to listen, not to speak. To collect and scatter seed pellets for the ground. Not to till the ground but to let it grow its own crops. To wait, to see what the ground yields.

Look! Saplings will sprout from those watered vents. In my dream, each trickle is a tongue and the tongues grow roots, spread under the ground, hold one another through the soil across gardens and forests and dug-up hillsides. Will these tongues forget all those roots and remember only their own?

In my dream, I hear the young journalist talk of her hometown caught in a vortex of violence. I see fires hissing through villages and houses. And I see women. Running naked across the fields. Who chases them? They are shouting, those women. Bleeding screams from their mouths, eyes, vaginas. And then, a lull that sinks, suddenly, into a hush – dense, heavy.

Where are those women running to? To whom?

Behind them, the land turns desolate, barren. The lake vaporises. From it, plumes of cotton- ball smoke rise into the air and mingle with black smoke from the fires.

Behind the women running into nowhere, the land cracks.

The words we had scattered have not borne fruit yet, have not spread roots, have not held hands with one another.

The women are in front of me. I can see their faces again, their eyes. They are saying something but silence sinks into my ears, unearthly, thick like mountain fog.

The fog lifts, gives way to sounds. I wake up to voices hurtling against one another outside the room.

I hold the door ajar and peep out.

In the corridor, somebody has left the television on. I watch, trying to make sense of the clamour.

On the screen, panellists argue about your rape and my rape, your violence and mine. I shut the door and my eyes.

The women’s naked screams spill out of my dream and seep into my skin. On my tongue, they lie heavy as augury.