immigrantly insane

[qyfyri]

This happens almost every night. My sleep ends abruptly and I awaken with a sense of terror in the middle of the night. I am panting and sweating profusely, panic stricken and afraid to open my eyes. As I grow more confident I manage to slowly open them I realize that the nightmare is finally over. However, the sense that I am being watched never completely parts with me and I can now feel the room inhaling the already thin air that crowds it. While I can still hear the fleeting sound of space abandoning the premises with an erratic rhythm, my chest aches and I feel that the room has now become too constrictive for me to stay in. I quickly grab my cigarettes and dash out gaping for more air. I close the door behind me and turn the light on, never failing to be surprised that no one is there to smile and hand me an appointment slip for my next immigration hearing. I suppose that this simply a figment of my now exhausted imagination, but as I turn the light on, I have simply resigned to the fact that they are there measuring every breath that I take and are writing the details down on a piece of paper supported by a plastic board, like the ones they have in the doctor’s office. I have laid out every detail of my capture and I am certain that every question on that paper has two boxes: IN or OUT. I can see the white-shirted bespectacled man checking OUT and then smiling innocently as if to say: “there’s nothing I can do for you my brother, this is the law of the land.”
The nightmare that perturbs my otherwise peaceful sleep is always the same. It’s as if the little theatre concierge of my inner show has been forbidden from changing reels, and I am stuck with the same short-feature film for quite some time. It starts with me being led through a mile-long corridor by two white-shirted guards that walk in a harmonious, almost rhythmic, sync. In the meantime I resolve to make up a tune to follow those footsteps and some lyrics to accompany them. The tune is simple, tam-taram-tam-taram, and the lyrics idiotic: taking me down/to the jailhouse/to shed the crown/and become the mouse? The last word is always drowned by the sound of a large wooden door opening, and I suddenly find that the mile long hall was shorter than the duration of my lunatic stanza. I am forced into a room which has two blocks of chairs, each with 5 rows. At the front stands a podium that reminds me of the shape of an Olympic stand. Below the podium a small desk occupied by a woman with the air of the uninterested observer gives the impression of an interrupted symmetry. The walls of the room are brown with a yellowish hue, and the ceiling is almost fully covered by a hanging chandelier, like the ones I have seen in bucolic European family homes. The windows let in a feeble sunlight that reflects onto the floor and manages to only arouse my curiosity about the dim figure that sits at the head of the podium. I approach slowly, attempting to slow my heartbeat, which seems to want to warn me of some lurking imminent danger. The face becomes more visible and its shape more clearly defined with every step I take. When I am at the last row of chairs, I am in front of what seems to be a woman in her mid-forties, with shoulder-length castagne hair, a shapely but sharp nose, a frail pair of shoulders and a non-existent pair of breasts. Her skin is white, though not pale. Her fingers are long and withered as if to warrant some respect for the human that brandishes them. I am dumped rather than seated into the first chair in the first row to the right and the officers take their seats behind me. By this time I feel relieved at finding a benevolent and harmless face amongst the dreadful air of that spacious room. The judge smiles and asks me my name for the record. I give it with a grin and she proceeds to read a summary of my case: The asylum seeker so and so appeared in front of this court twelve months ago to convince the court that his return to his native land could cause potential physical harm to him and his family and that……..” I get lost in the elongated sequences of surreal phrases that she voices without flinching. Her speech is remarkable in its monotone consistency and clarity of pronunciation. I marvel at her ability to repeat what has been put in front of her without stumbling once. At the end of the speech, when she puts down her paper she smiles at me and writes something on the same sheet she was reading from just a second ago. Then she raises her eyebrows, calls my name and screams at the top of her lungs: DENIIIIIIIIIIIED! The gavel pounds on the podium and I awaken petrified.

[liliella]

Mobility is reserved for the otherwise paralysed!

[Fiori]

Beep, beep and then it died.