Search Within My Silence

By Yiannos Lambis

...Skinny, trembling fingers, children seeking for a star to hold on to in the dark, a sun ray to warm them up.
Rania got scared and angry. How badly she wanted to shout, 'Enough is enough!
There's enough light and sky for everyone'. She bit her lips, until they started to bleed. She hesitated.
Who would listen to her, after all? She no longer ha d anything to expect from a society that laid everything waste...


Five children are each laden with a bag on the back, full of unfulfilled dreams and desires, left in the lurch in orphanages, like unasked-for commodity.

Their eyes well up with tears, as they are covered in the dusk, full of hands stretched begging
...short skirts...high heels
faces bereft of hope
and with a question always
hanging from their lips.

Where shall they turn their look?
What horizon may hide future's truth?

How much salt there is in a child's tear!!!

Elsi Christofia, First Lady of the Cypriot Democracy:
'A book which contributes to awareness-raising of people and society, at large.
It conveys the message that prostitution of children, drugs and all forms of violence and exploitation
are the results of lack of ideals and visions created by international consumerist system'.

Sotiroula Charalambous, Minister of Employment and Social Insurance:
'A torrent of emotion imparted in the author's eloquent style, with an artful and terse narrative,
which keeps the reader spiritually and emotionally alert'.


Aristos Tsiartas, Chief of Mission Authority against Discriminations:
'True, stirring story articulated by an author possessing undeniable writing skills'.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Feb 8, 2012
• ISBN: 9781467883009

Yiannos Lambis

Yiannos Lambis was born in Limassol, Cyprus, in 1962. His chronicles and poems have been published in newspapers and magazines. He has written theatrical plays, which have been put on by various theatrical groups. His Works 'IOKASTI' 'Anazitisis Publications' 2009

Book preview

SEARCH WITHIN MY SILENCE

YIANNOS LAMBIS

US%26UKLogoB%26Wnew.ai

AuthorHouse™ UK Ltd.

500 Avebury Boulevard

Central Milton Keynes, MK9 2BE

www.authorhouse.co.uk

Phone: [phone]

© 2012 Yiannos Lambis. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 2/2/2012

ISBN: 978-1-4678-8299-6 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4678-8300-9 (e)

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

IX

X

XI

XII

The End…

Yiannos Lambis was born in Limassol, Cyprus, in 1962.

His chronicles and poems have been published in newspapers and magazines.

He has written theatrical plays, which have been put on by various theatrical groups.

His Works

‘IOKASTI’

‘Anazitisis Publications’ 2009

I

The crimson flames were flickering. They wavered, then flared up again, intertwined with each other, like red snakes mingling erotically. From their seemingly storytelling aura would emerge shadowy figures. They resembled ill-formed, weird little beings with a fluid body, in a melody composed by witches holding the origins of seven different worlds.

Seated in front of the fireplace, Selim was trying to unwind, distractedly picking at the embers. He filled his lungs with scented smoke blended with dried apple leaves and mint flavour, which were being smoldering at the end of a tall, elaborate hookah handed down from his father. The sizzling wood in the fireplace kept him company, as it charred and was eaten away by the flames. They would sputter and utter incomprehensible words full of mystery and a smell of empty urn.

All around him, grey shadows emerged from the corners of the stone-built room and enveloped him, licking his body, while playing hide-and-seek with the glow of the fire. They slithered across the floor, climbed up the walls and then darted and hid behind the charred wooden rafters.

On the grey walls hung huge hand-made rugs—all of them oval, with extraordinarily long black fringes, like a woman’s strands of hair, and a figure woven in the middle. It was a mysterious, female figure emerging from jasmine flowers. One could make out her juvenile face on the first rug above the fireplace. On the right adjacent wall, the woman’s face was pale. It looked as if some kind of cloud or grey shadow had passed over it. The jasmine flowers were painted a colour much too weak and waxy. It was withering. On the left opposite wall, the figure cracked within the facial frame, the colours becoming darker, like discoloured black. The jasmine flowers were painted a weak, putrid greyish green colour. A discerning eye would see that there was an immutable detail in all of them. A crimson thread resembling a fabric fault would split her right black eyebrow in two. It can’t have been accidental. All the rugs had it. Even the incomplete one spread out over the loom had that red mark. It might even mark the starting point of the weaving. The spider webs glistening in the firelight showed that the loom had not been used for a long time. Probably, the weaver had tired or the figure occupying his mind had faded away.

Outside, the wind was howling in the night, like a lonely wolf ensnared in a trap. The snowflakes abstractedly lay on the wind’s gusts and travelled. The sizzling solitude was suddenly shattered by repeated knocks on the door, which put an end to his thoughts.

* * * * *

He stood up in wonder. He opened the door. The figure of a woman appeared. Prematurely old, seemingly eaten away and spat out by vicious Time. He tried to fumble quickly inside his dusty memory drawers. The faded images were of little help. Before he actually remembered, a bolt of lightning tore the black sky, illuminating for a second the unexpected visitor’s face. That was enough to give away the scar over her right eye. It split her thick, black eyebrow in two, making her marble face look uncannily charming and mysterious. He had an excruciating headache. His mind throbbed and shuddered at the creaking sound of the key, as it turned inside the rusty lock of his chest of memories.

He opened the door wide and grabbed her by the hand. The freezing cold wind rushed into the long room, stirring the rugs. It was a breath of fresh air for them.

—It’s me, she whispered, her words coming out slowly, torturously, ringing in Selim’s ears like a snarl. Perhaps, she didn’t even speak. She may have placed the words on her glance which, weary as it was, slid across the floor so he just heard the sound of a crawling snake.

He didn’t say a word. He just took her dripping wet coat and seated her on the hand-made rug in front of the fireplace. He stood there, looking at her. Their eyes locked and plunged into each other. It was as if two lost souls were meeting again completely by chance, on a secret path of the vast world. And now, they were wading hand-in-hand through the mysterious riddles of the spirits, in unknown, unchartered directions.

Inside the closed space of the warm room, Time began to abound and expand. The air was filled with two mysterious, weird beings, coming from another world, another dimensions. The senses, charged as they were, began to turn into thoughts. Thoughts became images carrying familiar scents of wet soil and rotten jasmine leaves. Only a familiar taste was missing…

—Welcome. I’ve been expecting you, as though you never went away, Selim said in a trembling, deep voice, while he kept hugging and stroking her with a warm look, salvaged from the deepest brooks of his soul.

—I came back, even though it’s late. Time passed by me. I feel aged, as my memories outnumber my dreams.

Her voice shook like an old, decrepit gramophone, which is barely audible, except for the scratch of its needle.

* * * * *

Rania put her hand deep into her wet hair, which came down on her shoulders like a fierce torrent. Then, she slowly let it traverse her face, as if in search of a familiar, dim and distant caress somewhere in her hair and face. The fingers stopped at her right eyebrow, at the scar that exuded melancholic sensuality and unsurpassed charm. She felt the sweet and sour taste of blood on her lips. It was the very same taste she had shared with Selim, when they felt the blood trickling from the gash on her eyebrow, after his inadvertent push. Without a second thought, they had made vows of love and then sealed them by licking a drop of blood that had stained her hand.

Selim stood still, looking at her. He was more than certain that in front of him stood the figure that had made him talk to himself and dream. Before him was the girl he had been pining for. The thought of her had held him hostage for so long. She was the girl he had been trying to capture inside the silk fibres tightly woven into his oval rugs. She was the one who had shaken his heart, filling him with anticipation and loneliness. She was the one who made waves of sorrow and disillusionment that would come and go, perched on huge horses and dark shadows.

That unknown but still familiar figure burdened him with anger, grievances, disillusionment and a void. Now he had her next to him! He could hear her breath and heartbeat. He could smell and touch her. She was no longer a dream. She was real, and this filled him with a feeling larger than life.

A feeling of enthusiasm and inconceivable excitement blew away the torpor that had been plaguing him before the knocks on the door. Rania, the neighbour, his first and only childhood love, had come back. She was thirteen, two years his junior, when social services removed her from home. At the time, both her parents were deemed incapable of raising her, as they were both drug-addicts and misery reigned in the home. Three entire years had passed, but still Selim never forgot about her. Their vows of love had him bound. During the first months, he couldn’t sleep at night. Misery wouldn’t let him. Rania’s departure had left him with a feeling of loss and absolute loneliness. Yet, she was always present in his thoughts.

Now, she was sitting next to him! Her aura enveloped him, filling him with a sweet sensation that reached down to his guts and warmed the cockles of his heart. He looked at her. A childlike innocence stalled for ever in time was floating inside her big, almond eyes. His gaze embraced her and night turned into a river. The words were a tangle. They wouldn’t flow. They hovered, filling the place with deep, intoxicating, psychotropic fairy-tales.

Rania was staring at the flames casting grey shadows over her face. Silent. Her look was frozen, blank, as if she were desperately trying to hold on to a God-forsaken leaf, a twig or a tree stump. It was obvious that her soul was going up to the sky and down again. She would descend to get some toy, a cloth doll she had left on earth, and then ascend and vanish into the black expanse of the sky.

He extended his hand to touch hers. He held it tight, feeling his own hand familiar. She didn’t turn to look at him. A tear was stranded in the corner of her eyes. It trickled down her cheek.

He stroked her hair and, taking a small tuft, wiped it away. He then bent to smell and kiss it. He felt awkward, confused. He stepped back. He was burning and plunging and was still in love with her, maybe because he hadn’t really conquered her.

—I want to go to sleep, her voice was heard, like a gentle drizzle.

She didn’t beg. Her voice was simply broken, tainted with the colours of disillusionment. Torturously slowly, she put her hand into her pocket. She swallowed a blue pill. Then, she lay wearily on the colourful rug.

She nodded off, as if plucked away by the full winter moon.

Pain lingered inside him, like a dark shadow putting down roots. He was certain nothing could ever uproot it. Bowed, Hope passed by. She had no eyes for him. He saw his dreams changing skin like snakes.

He stood still, looking at her. He diffused into her ambience.

All of a sudden, he felt dizzy, as a strong hand tore at him, plunging him back into the past…

II

Selim had never cried. Not even back then, three years ago. At least, not in front of others, as he had learnt that men didn’t cry in his country. But Rania’s departure had broken his heart, drowning it in black tears. They were bitter, like oleander essence, and dripped inside his guts, since they couldn’t flow outside to relieve him. He cried and his tears filled his guts with bitterness, despair and anticipation. His soul couldn’t stand it at nights. It escaped and, joining the nocturnal rodents, along with the bats, it strolled around its yard. The flowers that once bloomed and thrived on her fragrant breath had withered and become thorny. Blood gushed from each broken twig. It was red, crimson, like the blood from the heart. Every now and then, his soul would dare to climb through the window into her house. He wanted to surreptitiously enter the abandoned bedroom and hear her crystal clear laughter reverberate all around, filling his lungs with her fragrance, which wouldn’t fade away. He went berserk, was in pain, cried in her absence and felt relieved for a while. It was very little relief for him, but enough to drive him back to his body. The thought of her, heavy or light, accompanied him on his way back with a scent of courtyard soil and the sweet and sour smell of her blood.

He never sought another woman. He lived with the memory of a lost childhood love. He was hurt, immersed and rooted in the past, in wasted time. He was loyal to the vows of love, the pledges he had made to Rania. Those were vows which took the form of a dark shadow lying in ambush in a corner, at the back of his heart. That’s why he was scared to close his eyes. When he did close them, he saw inside himself, torn by pain and despair.

It was something of a mystery, like madness and magic, that bound them together. It girdled and gripped them, like a mystery drowned in blood. Her figure followed him like a shadow. He didn’t want to escape. He only wanted to keep her in his heart and soul for ever. Only the dead forget; the living remember, he thought to himself, always keeping her reflected in his eyes, tethered by his silence.

He could never forget their first, innocent kiss. It