A Whole Bottle of Montrachet: Finding Purpose

By Asifa Essop

Kelly Grant was a mana man who had acquired taste in wine and travel and women and cars and in dark expensive chocolate and in a lifestyle that had not been created by himKelly was a thief, a daylight robber who had to steal a standard of living from some 15th century aristocrat and inherit his worth in gold after his parents reached the end of their livestheir functions, their purposes. He was a farce, an unoriginal vagabond of his own soulhe may as well have been dead...Was it as simple as all that, his reason could not be only to reach the end? What would be the point of his existence, why was he more important than a wave in the ocean or the fungi in a pond? Because he could speak, eat, because he had rational thought?! Kelly heard the maniacal sound of his own laugh roaring in the distance... He was in a strange limbo, dancing on the platform of improbability. Perhaps he should have been the religious kind...Kelly had acquired everything but meaning to this existence...Why all of this divine intervention now? And how was his Indian Banshee going to help him search for true purpose?

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Jan 23, 2014
• ISBN: 9781491891186

Asifa Essop

South African born Asifa Essop, lived her childhood during a time of political revolution that steered her to embrace new found liberties of living in the now free land of what Nelson Mandela dubbed, ‘the rainbow nation.’ She has recently returned to her home after lecturing English in Saudi Arabia

Book preview

Chapter 1

Here’s to a long life and a merry one

A quick death and an easy one

A pretty girl and an honest one

A cold beer and another one!

Irish Saying

I could begin at the very beginning or at the very end, it would be of little importance for in the end, I will—no I must—in all eventuality arrive at that same crossroad… . the very same end that rooted from that fatalistic beginning.

How is it, I keep wondering, that all human beings wish to engrave themselves in some form or seal of immortality on this impermanent planet—is it not known to us all that we are to remain in this life till death?! Yet we squander lifetimes laying a foundation to allow our bloodlines to flow for newer generations. We leave legacies of gold and silver, pieces of the earth attached to bonds so that we may imprint our names for all eternity on a soil that in essence, can never belong to us. All this, so that in some life, somebody might sit on a bench in a park filled with benches that has your name engraved on it in bronze or some such metal. In all my years of living and to some it may not be too many, I have not lived long enough to hear of a man leaving behind a legacy of love, of happiness. Seemingly this is not possible in reality for how would one leave behind such a legacy—that cannot be touched or smelt. Indeed the only evidence of such a legacy is in the seeing and subjective feeling of its beneficiary. But to most such a legacy is useless.

Even a man stricken with the disease of poverty scrapes together the last of his silver pennies to save for after he is dead. In my short time on this earth I cannot know if I am destined to change anything significant—not even my own fate who has cared for me like a fairytale stepmother. I wonder like a scared thing, seeking refuge in the shade of an invisible tree planted underneath a broken rock. There are moments in time when I cannot breathe, despite all of the tainted air around me, moments when everyday feels like a walk over the bridge of sighs to my public hanging for a crime I cannot be guilty of. Something is suppressing the flow of my tears, perhaps I no longer care to hope to the point of tears, for it is my truth that I would never have enough tears to cry until the stitches of my soul are sewn back together once again. Somewhere deep inside this hollowness I am dying at this age of five and thirty. Fear roams about in the cobwebbed corridors of my mind, that someday soon the heat in my blood will grow cold and numb my soul and some outsider will mistaken my wounded spirit for an aged cynic or an insufferable bastard.

Kelly threw down his teal waterman and banged his yellow notepad shut… he frowned. What was he writing? A suicide note? A journal entry? Thoughts of a character in his script? The year had nearly been done with and Kelly felt as though he had done all he could and nothing at all, all at once. Kelly had, in vain, tried to stick back the pieces of the portrait of whatever life he was attempting to live, together again but it would seem that he had indeed glued them back in a rebellious fashion so the complete picture now stared back at him, distorted, incomprehensible . . .

What was he doing here? In this room, lying on this ridiculously expensive bed covered in green silk?! Why did it even matter in the grander scheme of things that he was in fact lying on silk? Was the floor not good enough or was it that it was terribly uncomfortable, if it had become a fashion to lie on floors, would he? He probably would. He had once spent an embarrassingly large sum of money on a retreat in Budapest, on the pretence of trying to ‘find’ himself just so that he could prove to Deacon Brodie that Angelina Cruise, the daughter of his accountant did in fact want to bed him! Kelly could now, only stand in awe of his own shortcomings and wonder why he had done the things he had, why he does the things he does… it was fascinating to him… this outer-body nonsense that made him feel penitent and hideous and polluted. And suddenly nothing seemed of dire importance any longer, he may as well have been yesterday’s newspaper blowing in the breeze or a dying rose in a lost garden. How had he become this person who suddenly did not know his purpose in this life? It was incredulous to him at this moment the sanity that came with Vintage wine in the summer… Did he have a purpose to begin with… does anybody? The room spun as he made a very drunk, very careless attempt to sit like a pot plant and light the end of a Marlboro… If he could not, at this point understand or know what his function was, how was he to properly fulfil it? He was a man… a man who had acquired taste in wine and travel and women and cars and in dark expensive chocolate and in a lifestyle that had not been created by him… Kelly was a thief, a daylight robber who had to steal a standard of living from some 15th centaury aristocrat and inherit his worth in gold after his parents reached the end of their lives… their functions, their purposes. He was a farce, an unoriginal vagabond of his own soul… he may as well have been dead. In retrospect death seemed to be the only answer to life… was that why he was alive, why there is life? It just cannot be as simple as all that, his reason could not be only to reach the end? Then what would be the point of his existence, why was he more important than a wave in the ocean or the fungi in a pond? Because he could speak, eat, because he had rational thought?! Kelly heard the maniacal sound of his own laugh roaring in the distance… he did not even have that anymore. He was in a strange limbo, dancing on the platform of improbability. Perhaps he should have been the religious kind, then he would not have been asking too many questions, then at least he could hold on to some imperceptible force for support, then he would not require any answers because then he would have blind devotion and would need no evidence from his Creator! Kelly had at the end of it all acquired everything but meaning to this existence and control was something that he no longer played around with like a ball of fire in the palm of his hand… Why now? Why now would providence,—divine intervention, kismet, destiny, karma-call it what you must, he called it LATE RESCUE, why now did it decide to bear its face to him? In an attempt to scare him?! Help him rectify his sinful ways? He could feel himself crawling toward a pathway of destruction as if he was being drawn to it like a magnet… so he could not understand… why all of this intervention now… was he going to be placed on a different path now that he was having this epiphany, perhaps a whole bottle of Montrachet 1978 made a man go places inside himself that he had long forgotten about, making him disregard the fact that a 1978 Montrachet was not to be drunk on an empty stomach or was it that it was only to be drunk on occasion… He was too drunk and too dramatically forlorn to heed the consequences of how he might feel should the morning bring any sanity… although something inside him whispered that this may very well be the only moment of sanity he had ever had! Clearly, he should have drunk this stuff before he lost his virginity to Hansel Sotheby’s Swedish wedding planner when he was fifteen!

Kelly Grant burped silently and hiccupped his way into a sound soft slumber, an empty blue Venetian glass rolling from his limp hand onto tomorrows script before it shattered into a thousand pieces so that when he stumbled like a drunkard out of bed the next morning, it was only to receive a few cuts under the naked bits of his feet and swear profusely at the unfinished script! Kelly had life but he needed somebody… something to breathe a raison d’être into him, otherwise there was no bona fide point in his living. The night had never seen so many hours.

So this was what it came to… this was his life… his very own self-destructive world. He stared unwillingly at the dark circles underneath the blue of his eyes as his oily… or was it filthy… . strands of hair fell over his forehead in disarray and opted not to shave off the shadow that had invaded his face overnight… . or was it over many nights?

Bugger! Kelly’s sense of irritation increased a thousand fold as he heard the door to his apartment slam shut and the foam from the toothpaste splattered from the insides of his mouth onto a heavily framed tarnished silver mirror.

Dammit! Deacon cursed as cold droplets of liquor ran over the pink of his nose to his mouth. Kelly frowned momentarily at the chaos echoing through his apartment, his mind urgently trying to search for a feasible reason why he should not get onto the next flight to the French Riviera.

You’re sweating like a pig Brodie! Kelly’s fractious voice taunted from the already opened door to the bathroom as he leaned against the door frame smugly. Deacon Brodie snorted as he ran a hand through cropped red curls.

Get out of my apartment! Kelly’s voice was dry as he threw a leather satchel on the Italian montage tiled floors.

Bad day at the office dearest? The voice followed him inside, its figure roaming lethargically around the four walls of the living room.

Its morning Brodie, I am yet to step foot on the stage they call life, doubt I will at all today!

Morning… You say? And he leaned over to peep out of the lightly tinted French curtains only to be accosted by multiple beams of sunlight. Kelly stared at him strangely… and wondered how he could not have noticed the morning sun on his way up here… he had just come from outside! He tried his best to ignore Deacon’s outlandish behaviour and wondered how the board at St Marks would feel after seeing their head of neurology lost to the world at 10am on a Wednesday morning?! Kelly sighed momentarily in anguish at the company he kept… a few zeros off his bank balance and his lifestyle would be described as dysfunctional and cheap… he would just be another drunk, another pathetic pitiable excuse of a man, who had no ambition and no reason to live. Kelly watched as Deacon flung himself on a green sued sofa and wondered what it was that he really wanted from this life, not what he needed… what he wanted… And then the words flew from his mouth like early morning-hangover-vomit, I feel like I should be standing up and fighting!

Well you’re half way there old chap, the voice plopped a grape into its vulgar looking mouth… the kind of mouth that did more than curse and tell dark lies.

How so? Kelly enquired.

And it just now occurred to Deacon Brodie that this might be the start of a ridiculously useless conversation or the initiation of one of the most life altering conversations he would ever have and that was not the type of conversation he was looking to have at this particular moment, not with this particular drink, so he smiled the smile of a drunk and said stupidly, Well, you’re standing aren’t you? The sting of the grape pinched the mouth’s face into the shape he should have been born with. Kelly stared at the tall figure clad in a silk navy robe and thought twice about whether this conversation might in fact change his kismet. The second of the two thoughts seemed more likely, now tie me to a steak and burn me like a medieval witch, but I must ask… what in the name of all things sacred and sinful will you—can you possibly fight for?

Oh! I don’t know! Something worthwhile I suppose!

Such as?

Such as… equal rights for men and women or little girls and boys or free candy sticks for English orphans! Kelly’s frown deepened into his thin, wide forehead.

Those things have already been done, enlightened Deacon. A circle replaced Kelly’s closed mouth as he skewed his eyes in suspicion, "Somebody gave free candy sticks to orphans in London?!" The absurdity of the thought dried the plants in the sitting room and this in light of the fact that the plants in the sitting room where aloes and cactus.

Fine! Deacon flicked his bored eyes to his companion. "Why would you possibly do it?"

Well, so that people would remember me for generations, you know? Kelly paused, "like some sort of milestone in candy-orphan-Oliver Twist History and then when I am dead some school going sod . . ."

You mean adolescent?

Don’t we mean ‘child?’ Kelly thought out loud and then made up his mind that it was ‘child.’  . . . child would elect to choose me as the decisive point of a… sequential thesis He concluded victoriously satisfied as if he had just now finished making a speech to the world via satellite.

Exactly what would all this achieve?

My immortality! Kelly touched his chin stubble.

Are we having this tête-à-tête for some kind… of… reason? Disgust splattered across Deacon’s ill-humoured but handsome face.

Ah! A reason! Kelly called upon his wine or was it whiskey—sodden brain, he couldn’t remember now, except that he did pride himself on getting drunk with wine, so it must have been the Montrachet.

I should like very much to have one of those in my life—like a reason to live, to breathe… to die not to die… He rambled as the insane often do, but Kelly was not insane, not officially anyhow, he was drunk! Deacon quirked an eyebrow and shook himself off the sofa, Then you should have one—a reason that is.

I think I should like very much to marry! Declared Kelly, his voice clear and bold like the Queen of England declaring colonization on some unsuspecting African land, claiming to save their souls from eternal damnation and all that! A fascinating, unavoidable silence echoed through the whites and reds of the four walled room. Kelly’s drunken announcement bouncing daunting humour off the fake Mona Lisa hanging over the fireplace. As if there was a real one! Mona taunted with that globally celebrated simper… or was it actually a smile… alas Michael Angelo died with that knowledge but Deacon Brodie had always suspected a certain somebody’s hand creeping up a certain ladies thigh that had lifted the corners of that wicked, wicked mouth. Somebody cleared their throat to fill the silence or was it, Bollocks! Deacon opened his mouth, This damned grape’s lodged itself in my throat! He guzzled down half a glass of sparkling lemon water.

Marriage, you say? His voice recovered from the lodged grape or was it from Kelly’s confession?! He was too hung-over to recognize which it was, Well, I for one advise against it, but admittedly it does have its perks!

Such as? Kelly sat his thin arse on the coffee table opposite Deacon.

"With a wife you’re bound to get a mistress after a reasonable waiting period… . you’re practically imposed upon to get one seeing as you are unnecessarily wealthy and in the movie industry. He stopped, looked up into a painting of the Taj Mahal on the ceiling thoughtfully, that isn’t true… you don’t need to get married for that… so you see old chap now that we’ve weighed the pros and cons we can safely say that marriage is nothing but a celebration of sex and that too only for the first 5 years… or so they say, if you’re lucky that is!" Deacon’s full mouth stretched across his face as a thunder of ludicrous laughter left his quivering body.

Oh! I see this humours you, does it? Anger rushed into Kelly’s face, turning his pale white skin a scarlet red or was it embarrassment that caused this reaction. One could never quite tell with Kelly.

Marriage gives a man a reason to live . . .

And a reason to die! Deacon reasoned dryly.

:It gives a man a chance to fight . . ."

Or perhaps a chance to simply fight!

To leave behind a legacy . . .

Or to leave altogether!

"It gives a man a will to want to live!"

And if or when the potential bride falls to her death before you do, will you no longer possess the will to want to live? Deacon said like a soothsayer from the East.

She should have left enough valour in her love for me to survive my days on earth without her; because death simply is the next stage to another life… it’s a word DEATH… And Kelly breathed in, flaring his nostrils open, It does not mean that life is over… its more like a crossing over… to a new dimension if you will… the catch is that we have no consent about the time and place and whether or not we in fact do want to leave this world for an unknown territory… Kelly thought for a while, Then again we had no consent in our very own births! We were born into unknown territory and so we die only to return to unknown territory! And he thought, how that was the primary factor that gave humans a fright, the uncertainty of death, of what might happen when you are beneath the soil of the earth… then we should all be afraid to live… the summation of the uncertainty in living is possibly greater than the uncertainty of death, since only one of three things could seemingly occur; there is the possibility of hell, heaven or being trapped in purgatory! Indeed he had reached a pinnacle of some sort… A man only knows a few things for sure… Kelly knew that this was his life, he was standing at the tip of a hill that he himself had not only climbed but built… and he was alone, regretful, he had become this unholy thing, possessed by the luxuries of this world, he had forgotten how to smile with his heart, he had forgotten how to laugh with his soul… he had forgotten God, forgotten that there was a more profound force responsible for creation… he had forgotten himself… and so his life amounted to over-priced cars, fancy clothes, an empty mansion and a very, very loyal butler… . he used to own a very expensive bottle of vintage wine, until last night… And he wondered now… how many people would surround him if he had none of these, how many people have been honest with him, how many people would have cared for him with a purity untainted by his worldly status, how many people have made him feel his life in all its glory and of all these people who will remember him when he would no longer breath… . why had all of this suddenly become so important to him? Kelly wanted answers about himself… what was he doing here? Why was he feeling this way? Was this it? Was this his life now? He could have laughed and cried all at once, and Kelly had never cried… not even at funerals. He was starting to feel his temporary existence, the initial high of supremacy and power and control and money were fading away as he began to understand the meaning of his life… and he felt he would sooner die than continue living this charade he believed was his life! When next Kelly lifted his head from the inside of a water glass, it was to find Deacon Brodie sprawled across his suede sofa in a most disturbing fashion, he grunted as a hand slid further down the crotch of his very firm navy denims. Why did he keep him as a friend? Kelly smiled sadly at Deacon and he knew he was the only candid thing about his life… but it was not enough… he supposed nothing ever was… . even when you believe that you have everything anybody else could possibly want, except… what do you want?! What did he want?!

Kelly wanted things that he understood now, could never be bought, not if you wanted them in the way that was true and real and sincere. He also knew that this was no longer possible in the world he had come to live in, not in this world that prided itself on lust and greed and called it success and power. And even with this knowledge, Kelly was adamant that something good still existed inside of him, something good still existed here on earth in this fraudulent shady abode we called our world.

‘Please sir… ‘ the little bugger begged in agony, accessorized in his large brown eyes and fading appearance, ‘Whatever change you have, I’ll take!’ The Cockney twang in his accent unnerved Kelly, especially since he had to drag Deacon off his sofa before his cascading spit stained all over the Turkish silk covered cushions, which turns out was an attempt of extreme valour done in vain, so he left the drunk and the spit, grabbed a coat and dashed off in a very dramatic comportment, to salvage what was left of his ‘empire.’ He shuffled around in the shallow shiny pockets of his very dark Ralph Lauren pants and then stopped as he became entranced by uninvited thoughts, like the spilling of last nights broth boiling over in his hung-over head, Where does money come from lad? And he returned Kelly’s answer with a most obscure look, like the look a son gives his father when he starts a lesson on the birds and the bees or when your mother slaps your straying hand away from her baking bowl.

The bank I suppose, he said carefully as if to say that what Kelly took out of his pocket depended on his answer… and Kelly was starting to think that it did.

You suppose?! Kelly said to him, you suppose?! He repeated, pugnacious to find a reasonable answer to his own enquiry, My dear boy, He began sounding too much like his lesbian aunt who had raised him, Money, and Kelly flashed a grey note in front of his insatiable, beseeching eyes, is essentially a representation of gold . . .

Gold? His eyes grew larger

Gold! Dug out from deep beneath the surface of the earth by underpaid miners . . .

I once heard somebody call me a minor! The boy interrupted.

Not that kind!

Then which kind Sir?

The kind that… Kelly was exasperated, where was he going with this anyway?!

Never mind about that, would you stop interrupting? He frowned at the boy or was it at the raindrop that fell on the tip of his nose?

Gold is dug from the ground just as trees are buried in the ground, so why do you suppose money is worth more? Was he reduced to rambling his thoughts to a peasant boy? Why didn’t he just give him the money and leave?!

Ummm, it’s shinier than a leaf, and, the boy swallowed as he skewed his eyes at Kelly and dug his shabby unpolished boots into the ground.

It doesn’t die like a leaf does! He shot his head up from where he was imprinting his shoe size on the sand, ‘that’s why!’

Humans die, Kelly said, almost to himself, and their worth even less than a gold block. Kelly ruffled the hair on his almost blonde head, So what’s it to be lad? A leaf or a piece of grey paper?

Grey papers for me, thank you very much sir! And he snatched the note from Kelly’s hand and ran off like a wild thing lost in an Amazon of sorts.

Perhaps you would do well seeing yourself to a doctor! The boy shouted raucously when he was far enough… too far to be caught.

And perhaps you would do well getting a job! Kelly shouted back, impudent miscreant! He muttered.

I’m only five Mister; it would do me good to have some parents! And he was gone, as if he had but not one single care in the entire world. Kelly’s skin pleated in the clear space between his eyebrows as his feet moved to drag his dying body to a park bench. Kelly felt like a soldier, wounded in the battle of life, scarred by reality except he was not as dignified, not as gracious not as noble. Perhaps this is ultimately the validation of a suicidal mind; perhaps once one discovers the shadowy clandestine of reality, the meaning of everything goes to hell… much like where the quintessence of my soul seemed to be headed, he thought miserably as he trekked to the end of the passage and disappeared into a bright white light that engulfed every fibre of his being. Kelly could hear voices inside the light and beyond the light… beyond the very large room-well it was too enormous to be called a room-he could sense an excited anticipation, he could sense anger… It was perhaps the only place in the world were he wanted to be, the only place he belonged were he controlled everything, where reality was whatever he wanted it to be… here he could be anybody he wanted to be… but mostly here was where he could be Kelly Grant… or somebody close to who he thought was Kelly Grant. A group of people came rushing to his side, filling his head with dates, messages… with the worth of his life. Kelly listened with an habituated ear, at how his lead lady refused to wear emerald green because it clashed with her hair, at how they were way over budget, at how the last scene needed to be completed this afternoon, he listened to his P.A drone on about meeting dates with the producers, he listened to the sound of his success and he smiled wistfully wanting with every fibre of his being for something to fall out of the sky and give him a reason to be happy, a reason to feel his life once again. As he sat in the folding armchair and sipped water bottled in Switzerland, Kelly watched tentatively as the present turned into a past that he had created, he marvelled at the incongruity of a man as broken as he was creating a perfect story of love and romance and comedy and reason… Kelly’s head tilted upward and he stared at the unfurnished ceiling that housed the set of an unnecessarily grandiose 19th centaury home… . because such homes required the setting of an epic romance, because love and romance and all of the nonsensical, ridiculous fever that goes with it demanded to be surrounded by splendour and affluence and grandeur, because love is only meant for beautiful people, because only the beautiful fall in love. People liked beauty, they liked to watch beautiful people doing beautiful things, even ugly people liked to watch such things and brood over them, and become envious of them and depressed and miserable about their own shortcomings. Yet it seemed to satisfy them to reinforce their belief that life was unfair and beauty was over-rated. Everybody appreciates beauty and perfection, it is so much easier to watch a beautiful man or woman spread across your television set or across the cover of a glossy magazine than it is to have to look at a less attractive human being, featuring cellulite and over-grown nose hair! Why? Why, he wondered and when and how did people decide what and who was beautiful and why was it so vitally imperative to us that beauty should exist. Indeed this is more important to us than purity, more important than what is right and what is good?! He did not know anything about love or romance, and yet here he was manufacturing it to the public as if he knew what he was doing! Kelly knew about manipulation and sex and money, but when all of those elements fall under a roof in the Hampton’s, it becomes romantic and idealistic, irrespective of the proverbial filth that might live beneath your soul and on the inside of your mind. Was the existence of good and evil actually reliant on the balance of humankind? Did it really lend to the negative and positive protons keeping the planet in order, would everything collapse and cease to exist if things were governed by only good or only evil? Then how do we account for times in history like the golden age, when mankind lived in supposed harmony?

Chapter 2

Carrie: Maybe some women aren’t meant to be tamed.

Maybe they need to run free until

they find someone just as wild to run with them.

Sex and the City

Hawa’s head split in two as the splash of warm water merged with the sequins of perspiration on her forehead and a wedding procession joined the 6 ‘‘0’ clock traffic below her stained balcony. The fresh orange towel helped to wipe off the wetness that jaded her face but left the semi permanent crease between her brows. She wondered out loud, staring at the procession from the balcony because she could never quite understand, "how somebody could be getting married everyday?!"

Don’t people get married in London? Anitha looked at Hawa as if she had sold her mind to the English, her burnt caramel waist flamboyantly sticking itself out in proud appraisal of the soft tarnished yellow material cushioning it.

"Not everyday of the week!" Hawa’s eyes fixed on her waist in fascination at its slight wobble.

"Then when do they get married?" Her accent thickened as she matched the crease on Hawa’s forehead and wiped her face with the end of her sari in heightened exaggeration at the weather.

On weekends and sometimes during the holidays.

Are those the days that are sacred to them? Anitha came closer to the balcony or was it to Hawa?

Well… Ummm… no, they’re just not working on those days.

A smile appeared quietly across Hawa’s face and she thought of how tradition and religion was the foundation for everything here. Anitha grunted then laughed her particularly loud laugh, I think that you gone back to English to become more wise!!

No, she corrected, to marry a rich British Indian, said a small wistful voice that strangely belonged to Hawa. Shah Ali Khan, Hawa Gibran and her uncle had all come back to settle forever in India… But Shah had come back with no real promise of marriage from Hawa… that would soon change, especially since it was primarily her aunt’s job to rewrite all the wrong parts of Hawa’s destiny. Her tongue flicked against the hardness of her palate, But if somebody gets married everyday… Light marigolds carpeted the street below as a white horse with a flower veiled groom proceeded to his happily ever after in the middle of the city road, then that must mean that somebody falls in love everyday! A disorderly traffic flattened the mustard flowers so that they mingled with the reddish coloured mud.

"Since when is love the only reason for shaadi?" A warm hand rested on irresolute shoulders.

Nobody wants to die alone child. And there they were the words that deafened her being. Anitha left Hawa’s soul standing alone to stare at the coming of the sunset whilst her body shivered at the prospect of the winter of her life. A deep restlessness tangoed on the platform of her reality as she stood like a pagan statue in the heat of a growing darkness and her mind ran out into the city like a woman possessed searching—for a sign—a reason to keep breathing. Dark eyes skewed into what was left of the skyline. When had she become so accustomed to being alone that it had festered into loneliness?! When had she become so insistent on seducing the death of her life into her bed?! When she had realized that it was wealth, it was status, it was beauty that men fell in love with. People don’t love people… they don’t love life… . they love things, they loved being surrounded by pretty things , they no longer admired and appreciated beauty unless it was possessed by them. It was madness, and it was killing her, it was killing everything that was pure and good. Where do you go when you know things that nobody else sees, that nobody else can begin to recognize… do you remain alone for all of your living days because you must, because even death will not touch you till its appointed time, because even your creator has forbidden you to take your own life, because your time on earth has been pre-ordained by some magnificent advanced influence, because in reality it does not matter what you do, you cannot alter that thing called fate and so where do you go when all is said and done and the question of the meaning of your life can only be answered in your death?! So was Hawa just supposed to wait, and trust in divine intervention to pan out her life until in the last moments of her life she finally understood the meaning of life… of her life, when she finally recognized and was able to