Ambiflextrous : Write... Edit... Publish... April 2017

Hello folks!

My A-Z post is at P is for… just in case you're here from the A-Z Challenge.

WEPers! I tried to combine the A-Z and WEP into one post, but totally didn’t manage to – massive fail! But this post does fit into my overall A-Z theme  - Arabiana, and it's a response to both "Peace and Love" and "Despair and hope may meet within one heart" - at least to the idea that two completely opposite elements can be present simultaneously within the same thing.

So...I'm back with the last part of Heba’s story, an epilogue really. Her story starts sometime after 2011 March and ends on the morning of November 9th, 2016. This final excerpt opens eight years down the line, and Heba is on the move again, but this time it's a happy move, not traumatic.  

(For those who'd like to refresh the background, the earlier parts can be found here and here)

The Last Post...Write...Edit...Publish...

It’s time to head back to Write...Edit...Publish… for the last post of 2016.  This month the prompt is Utopian dreams, as enticing as all the others I’ve written to throughout this year.  A special year-end vote of thanks to Denise and Yolanda for creating and hosting this very special bloghop! Incidentally, this is my 500th post (yay! and....phew!) - it feels entirely appropriate to celebrate this milestone in the company of WEP-ers. 

I started off writing something quite different in tone. But there were some dire news reports coming out around the time, so my story kind of went off track into something completely different.  At first I had thought I’d wrap up the whole thing in a thousand words and be done, but Heba the MC has other ideas….this story is now more than 5000 and no end in sight….so I am presenting an excerpt which adheres to the word limit. 

This is the story of Heba the refugee, the Utopian dream in this case is Saeed’s, Heba’s eldest son’s, which remains unrealised in the story as he has already been killed by the time it opens.  Heba and the family have found asylum in USA where Saeed had dreamt of going. The resettlement becomes an ordeal for Heba through a series of circumstances, her insecurity and confusion rising with the campaign rhetoric and climaxing with the election results.  Saeed’s Utopian dream thus morphs into a nightmare reality in Heba’s life. 

Asylum

Officer, scrutinise

my papers and date of birth

with half-truths and unkind eyes.

Pinpoint if you can

where this life began

where it weaved into earth

and casually out again

honestly in precise

circumstances and coordinates.

You’ll soon understand dates

and stamps on a watermarked page

leave the bulk untold

whichever may be the language

used to slice lives open

behind bullet-proof, cubby-holed

existence across the ocean.