To be a Silhouette in a Blue World

iii. To be a Silhouette in a Blue World

[Unedited]

A week had passed and dusk fallen, before Najiyah was greeted by the semblance of the somewhere more she had been searching for.

The sky, a pale sheet of indigo, loomed over a large and vast Mediterranean sea. Boats lined up against the sea's docks, and flocks of gulls - alive and loud - gathered in the sky and along the shorelines. Najiyah allowed herself to revel, for a moment, in the simplicity of a land untouched by warfare. Her feet curled in the sand as she looked out at all of that indigo; the world drowning in this saddest shade of blue.

A few metres away, sat a silhouette of a girl by the coast, still and silent, watching the boats sail in and sail by. Though, Najiyah did not notice her until an infinity later.

When she did, she was reminded of her mother - before the war had come and taken everything that was decent and pure with it. Her mother had loved the ocean. Like it was her child. Could watch the waves roll in and out for an eternity.

Najiyah missed her mother. So much. Too much.

Only when this memory left her, Najiyah did she notice the same silhouette - that had once sat by the shore - now walking towards her. The figure's entire face obscured from Najiyah's by a black veil. In other words, the girl was virtually invisible. Anonymous.

This terrified Najiyah. As much as she did not want to admit it. Reminding her of an oppression, she tried every day to forget. An oppression she had tried so hard to escape.

The stranger's Arabic was fast, her words frantic - as she pointed at the niqab Najiyah wore and cried out to all the silence that surrounded the two girls; 'Show yourself.'

Confused and terrified all at once, Najiyah took a step backwards, undoing her headdress, letting loose wild curls, and brown skin.

For many moments, she stood. Undone, before a shadow of a girl. An apparition. Unsure what else to do.

It was not until, she noticed the shoulders of the silhouette relax, that she whispered in a kinder voice than the stranger, for the silhouette to undo her own headdress.

To Najiyah's surprise, the stranger listened - tearing away the hijab from her head, revealing a girl no more than sixteen years of age, who wore what might have been a beautiful face, had it not been ruined by a trail of badly healed scar tissue, that ran through the girl's left eyelid all the way down to the side of her mouth.

Najiyah did not disguise her shock well. The girl saw it, likely mistaking it for disgust. Not that, Najiyah was ever able to ask. The stranger ran away before she could offer any explanation.

Leaving Najiyah, standing there. Alone.

Every evening after that, Najiyah came back to the coast. Her entire soul and self, pulled toward it, like she herself were the waves.

The difference when she came tonight, was that the silhouette girl. The one whom she had stared at in horror - was here. Occupying the exact same spot along the shoreline, as if she had never runaway all those evenings before.

This time it was Najiyah who approached her. With caution. Taking a seat next to the girl, before whispering, 'I'm sorry.'

The girl said nothing, before she said, 'do you know what those ships are?'

Najiyah did. It was the reason she had come to these shores, in the first place; the reason that she kept coming back.

'I found this place not too long after rebels bombed my village. I didn't have anywhere to go. So for days, maybe weeks, I just walked. Unsure where exactly it was, that I was going. Then, as if Allah was answering my prayers I found here. Sank my entire frame in the sand and sobbed and sobbed and sobbed. Didn't stop until the sun came out and so did the workers.'