July and August 2014 Cover: Marta Santiváñez Editors: Marta Santiváñez and Sofia Moreira Layout and Design: The Dew Crew Made in Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina
editorial There is a road that takes you and drives you and does not let you stop. A road that goes on, unfamiliar, odd. Filled with surprises, it constantly lacks the pavement that would make its way smooth. A rough road. There is a road that takes you everywhere and nowhere, as much as it seems like you are always directing yourself towards something, someone, nothing. The road keeps going, and that is all you know. There is a road that comes and goes and does not give you the chance to jump on or off. A road that keeps you awake and another one that puts you to sleep. There is a road that requires you to focus and hold on tightly to an almost invisible string, unless you want to fall. There is a road that keeps us alive, that gives us reasons to make it through the next day, that is a reason in itself. There are many roads, and there are none.
The Dew Crew
"The body's got a soul, too, have pity on it. Give it something to eat, boss, give it something; it's our beast of burden, you know. If you don't feed it, it'll leave you stranded in the middle o' the road." Zorba the Greek, Nikos Kazantzakis
Airport memoirs We rolled down the windows and amped up the music as we sped along the highway on our way back from the airport. Some were laughing hysterically for what appeared to be no reason at all. Those at the back seat of the car were just quiet. As quiet as can be with winds slapping your face at 100 km/h. It was our way of coping. We had done this before, or so I thought. I remember standing at different terminals hugging different friends as they went off on their separate journeys around the world. It was always the same group of people who accompanied me. We made it a point to be at the airport for each other no matter the time of day and regardless of our busy schedules. Except each time the circle would rotate and a new person would be the one with the luggage, standing in front of the security check-in as we all hugged them goodbye or welcomed them back. The flashbacks remind me how much we’ve grown. It seems like just yesterday we welcomed back a friend whom we thought would be the last to travel for some time. How naïve of me to think that would be true. You’d imagine having lived in a community where people travel constantly that I’d be used to it by now, but no. I guess my mind had always blurred out these painful events in my memory in hopes of creating some kind of stability. If it hadn’t then it would’ve resorted to a classic form of self-protection and cautiously avoided getting too close to the people who were likely to leave. I’m thankful that it didn’t. I’m glad we got close. I’m glad we shared our childhoods and then some. I’m marked by every moment we’ve spent and every joke that came to be. The fights and disagreements and frustrations are engraved too. I am shaped by these people like a sibling is shaped by their brothers and sisters throughout their growing up. As we drove I was quite content to listen to the music. I loved the road to the airport. It was framed with green trees, blooming flowers and brushed with wonderful fresh air. The highway wasn’t busy at this time of night and the car seemed eager to get as far from the terminal as possible. Perhaps it too hoped that distance from the building meant distance from the pain. I was fine until we approached the gate to our home. That’s when I habitually looked up to the roof to check if the lights were on even though the only people who could be up there were right with me here in the car.
That’s when it hit me and it hit me hard! He would never meet me up there again! He always knew when I was up there. There are few times I could remember when I wasn’t interrupted by his sudden pounce (in attempt to scare me, which worked I might add) or his jolly self as his feet crossed the dark stairway to the dimly lit roof (I preferred the calmer lights). True, I went up there alone when I needed time to myself but at the back of my mind I knew that time would be cut short. I had grown used to his interruption and it didn’t bother me anymore. In fact I had come to look forward to them. How can I go up there now knowing that I will habitually be checking the doorway expecting to see him in any second only to be left with a hollow feeling as a reality sets in and the stairway remains empty? What about every time I feel my seat vibrate right before I hear his door bang shut and wait to hear the familiar sound of his approaching footsteps? From now on it’ll be lonely. I’ll have to go up there knowing I won’t meet anyone and solely bear the task of cheering myself up. The car came to a halt in its familiar resting spot welcomed by all the other vehicles that had made that very same journey many times before. As the hand-brakes were raised I was desperate to get out of there before the tears over- flooded the brims of my eyelids. I had to seem composed for now so I waited impatiently for the song playing on the radio to be over. Finally it ended and everyone opened their doors. I rushed out of mine and headed to the roof hoping that their loud laughs would draw away attention from my abrupt leaving. As soon as I got up there, flashbacks flooded my mind as if a reservoir had collapsed. I remembered all those times I had written a fantastic paper and was so excited to have him read it (him being a literature lover too). Who will read my letters to various authority figures before I send them out? Who will I tell when I read and awesome book or watch a decades old sitcom? He was the one who made sure the group stuck together. He is the most genuine person I have ever met! I’m going to miss his refreshing honesty! A fresh wave of tears welcomed each memory as I stood there in the dark looking out at the same scenery I had for seven years now. The roof was a bad idea. Every square inch up here was the birthplace of a new moment which exists now only in our hazy memories. I could narrate endless anecdotes from our time up here and the stars that watched over us would bear witness to the tales. I bet they remember them better than our imperfect memories that are known to edit the moments we’ve lived before storing them. I wish those seven years had been filmed! If only I could watch the tape and relive it all! Every first meeting. Every short-lived impression.
Every hide and seek. Every game of cards. Every phone call. Every acting attempt. Every tearful fight. Every silent glance. Every laughing fit. Every angry storming out. Every soccer match. Every foot flattened under a car. Every building the way it was. Every person the way they were. Every tree that watched us grow and grew with us too. Every roof gathering. Every retreat. Every swimming pool fiesta. Every Celebration. Every graduation. Every shared meal. Every waffle mania. Every water balloon party. Every young face. Every neighbor. Every friend. Every relative. Every dance. Every song. Every school bus ride. Every new uniform. Every outing. Every failed project. Every dream. The club house. Sliding in a cardboard box. Ice skating. Roller blading. Basketball. Cluedo. Barbecue fundraising. Ice cream cake. Prophet-roles. Christmas at the Kennedy’s. Watching shooting stars in August. Blankets on the roof. Mattresses on the roof. Cushions on the roof. Exercise on the roof. Long conversations and singing along to songs. The good life. Piano in the chapel. Bella’s lullaby. Loud drumming. Partying with foreigners. Swimming practice then burgers. Running in the morning.. Group studying. Movies at night. A week of no networks as we guarded our residence. Charades….the list is endless! This time it wasn’t a temporary goodbye. This time was different. He was starting a new life. Everything was going to change. He will change. We will never be the same again. We all knew this day would come but it came too soon. The plan was to study college abroad however we were robbed of a few years with each other as opportunities were opened before college was in sight. Life is full of surprises and the plans we make serve only as placebos while the journey unfolds. As I sit and write this, a passing plane paves the night sky making way for promising futures and sweeping along tokens of the past. I am overcome with anger and hatred towards this inanimate object as it takes away my friend. It’s my way of coping. In that moment I stop wrestling with my emotions and let them run their course. I allow them to wash over me and hold nothing back. I feel the sharp stings of loss and longing. I feel the heat of fury as I lash out at life for being so cruel. I feel the ruthless stabs of never agains. I feel the anxious grip of fear of the unknown future in which I am thrust. I feel harsh reality cut me open with its whip. I feel the despair of losing control. I feel the emotions that haven’t yet surfaced from my subconsciousness.
I wonder how long it will be, this time, before I can look at up at a plane and simply contemplate the thrill of flying, like an innocent child, once again. Or will the next goodbye come too soon?
LUSHIK WAHBA
Concrete road A car stops. Two almost hairy, muscular legs introduce a young individual on the road’s dust. A backpack follows. With a nostalgic grin on his face, the young man watches the car leaving him behind with the humming sound of its acceleration. What is left is himself, his backpack on his side and a symphonic concert of nature in modest tone. The hesitant but curious eyes of the young man go around looking for something that could bring him back into the fastened stream of life. His thumb goes up, but some quick seconds later his arm is hanging besides his body again. No car or trucks around. All that hums are the crickets in a mocking chirp, rubbing their wings against each other, hidden spectators of what is next to happen. Out of his pocket, the lonely traveler grabs tobacco and a paper, roles a cigarette and lights it up. His face gets surrounded by the thin spiraling smoke circles. The young man walks to the road’s mid stripes. His left leg on the direction he came from, his right one on the one he might go, he lies down. Face up to the sky. When the cigarette burns his fingers, he lets it fall, but doesn’t curse. His life has always been one of the road. But now that the heat of the sun on the black concrete fondly warms his back, he is the one to wonder: is the road surely the accelerated and not the paused, the seek for new and not the discover of what already exists?
SIMON INTI DECAT
Untitled I can't wait to be on the road again. My mind is settled when my body travels. Restless, careless. Going where the next train, car, plane, bus, ship or my feet might take me. Feeling the wind in my face, messing my hair up, whispering stories in my ears. Seeing places I have dreamed of, heard of, read about or never thought of. Hearing how life goes on around me while I stand still, speechless, breathless, feeling the heartbeat of the earth. You are with me. Packing my bag for the first long journey without you, I thought I would lose you and
you thought I was leaving you. Instead of that I found you. In the beauty of a moment. In the smile on someone's face. And again and again in the best memories I have. You say you don't miss me. And that's good because it means that I am still with you as well. If we keep watching each other’s small steps, later we won't be surprised by the lenght of the way we have gone. Being on the road is being alive. I can't wait. REBECCA RECHENBERG
Ignoring signposts The smell coming from the back of the jeep pumped along to the rhythm of the throbbing summer. Age eats man, as money eats itself, in a slow, excruciating smoulder. It is never extinguished. It only passed on. Age eats man in a blindfolded creep away from the origin, which neither resets nor whispers where it now lies. Ribbons of glowing embers crawl in serried ranks of rusty light. The leather seats are burning in the setting sun. All of the men and women in the St. George’s Hospital’s EMI ward babble in pleas to hitchhike down this road, as they once did with their legs, now shrivelled vestiges of autonomy. Some kind of mangled hoof branded with the converse ‘all-stars’ wheel, jumped down and met a prolonged impact with the molten tarmac. The sole stuck, as though to a film of marmite and nausea rippled through the spine and brain attached to them. Splitting off like a plaster, slowly, with small hairs of bitumen, the road tore away from the sole. Off into the spinifex and russet, bubblegum hued ochre it went, kicking up plumes in the air, which burned and shimmered in gold. What a grand memory, Lucian must have thought, as he sat on cold London concrete. His newspaper steamed with battered haddock and golem-finger chips. Warm, salty and familiar, the fragrance would whet any appetite; it massaged the pallet with savoury fists. He slunk his body as it began to spit slightly, further into the subway tunnel. Leery-eyed, the sky hung between grey and blue and the street lights began to emboss their yellow influence in increasingly defined spheres. Muttering to himself through an overgrown beard, the marks that lined his face from his time in the Australian wilderness returned and sighed alongside him. A suitcase sat in the corner of the room. The room was an incredibly expensive apartment
in Westminster. The mahogany- rimmed lenses of the apartment painted Lucian in an impressionist flurry of grey and peach, and eating prawn tempura, the observer put her small hands to and from her mouth in a mechanical nod. Mari owned a 1970s Beetle, and in the summer she would stuff the boot with tart, juicy plums and fragrant cherries to drive back to her country house. There her boyfriend waited in his Ray-Bans, somewhere on their twenty-five acres. It had turquoise chipped paint and the most elegant curves to it, like the egg of a duck. Once there, they would make jam tarts while picking at the raw and sour gems. The pastry would come out, like a wellcompacted sandcastle. Both of their shoes would be sullied by the myriad stems, brushed past and bled on the canvas sides, and they’d hand-scrub the stains with hot soapy water. The smell of the water was warm, like the underbellies of sleeping children. She sold the car four summers later. Afterwards, she got married and had one of her weakly-Anglican kids. The apartment they moved into was a beautiful, high-ceilinged threeroom one that still smelled as middle-class as subtle wood polish and essential oils. Mari went to visit her uncle in the hospital where he lives. He’s had a kidney operation. He lies there, with latching eyes, in a vast gown of tranquil blue. He looks like a lake. When Mari sold the car, she sold it to one of her uncle’s friends. Hooked to the dialysis machine, he sat, moksha-eyed as the red straw sucked and blew his sanguine circuitry. Lucian was excited on a gap year when he bought a turquoise beetle. With bright eyes, he took it over the whipping Pacific and began a road-trip in Queensland with his father, Dennis. Along the wide highways, he rolled down the murky green glass windows and let the hot leather aroma burst in a menthol wave of coolness. The landmarks passed in a dense acrid smoke of eucalyptus and dust-devils. Making it all the way to a horizon full of Brisbane lights, the father and son swerved in the car. It was hypnotic. The figure of a dog emerged between the headlights and the phallic monoliths of the city. It turned and its pelt flapped and blazed like the sun. Tumbling down a roadside dune, the car crunched and slapped against itself, shards and grains intermingled, the contact between two generations of material occurred in the then, extremely
flat shell of a vehicle. Dennis and Lucian were juggled and bloodied, but they climbed out of their violent captor. Meanwhile, the internal scraping of metal ribs ignited the silver petroleum, shining in the crepuscule. Mari left the hospital and passed the EMI ward, from it she heard wild laughter. She peered in and saw bodies, shivering from Parkinson’s or inert, either way, caught on an obscure crag in the river of time. Like crayfish, she thought. The car explodes. Slowly, the flames crept up and around and Dennis and Lucian limped beside the wreckage, to see their prospects evaporate in a column of hard vapour. They burst into hysterical laughter on the sand after an hour of shocked mourning. The duo felt too invigorated and young. They had unearthed an epiphany there, it took an hour for its viscous body to slide down the glass neck into the base of the bottle.. To be unaware of the anaesthetics of life is the goal. It was the vortex of light beside Brisbane. Many dream of this double-anaesthetic. Lucian removes his shoe, to wring out the water from his sodden sock. He puts his portion of chips down to do it. The shoe is made of canvas and is not quite waterproof. He rubs the rubber wheel of it with vigorous hands, in a foray, to remove it. Dennis sits these days in a continuous dream. It is always the same. He stays in the waterproof seat of his cushioned chair wherein Bach is the gas that fills the vacuum. The EMI ward in St. George’s hospital would be a quiet place otherwise. A mangled inferno of leather which is still burning with plumes of high smoke stands behind a jeep. The jeep is placed behind an outstretched thumb, bisected by the copper light of the conflagration. It is running and removing him from euphoria. It is going from the euphoria of the last time he felt able to drive himself along the road.
MOHAMMED ZAAHIDUR RAHMAN
Untitled
When you say ‘road’, you mean writing with a turquoise marker on a piece of paper, calculating the space each capital letter can occupy; you mean holding it up and smiling hard for the world to see, until your arms hurt or your face breaks, whichever happens first. When you say ‘road’, you mean otherness; skinny-dipping in burning salt water, exploring the stony skeleton of a city after midnight, skipping through air because there are flower vases on balconies, cats that roam dead fairytale houses, rich men in white suits making a feast of the world. When you say ‘road’, you mean colors, sounds, textures; the smell of orange peels in an overheated cabin, the sound of a sliding door opening and blasting shut as if it’s trying to cut time into pieces, the texture of crisp, cold sheets at a hostel that feels like hitting rock bottom. There are also voices, inside your head, outside the window, speaking the world away (they speak therefore they are), the sound of a stranger singing you a song hitting the old city walls, yellow light behind windows at 3am, bullet-holed alleys lit by streetlamps, souls drawn on papers when time disappears, air being sucked out of rooms, blood as metamorphosis, the body as a crime scene, the world as a crime scene. When you say ‘road’, you mean stories.
ENDI MATO
Travel instructions for people without watches. 'Your train has leave' 'I'm sorry madam' Let it sink in‌ look at your watch, What watch? run to the end of the airport and back, 'You miss your plane' go up and down the Hungarian bus station, frantically look at the empty monitor, cry to the desk clerk, 'Next bus tomorro' lose track of time, write a German paper, sleep on a bench, make a friend, 'Buy terkish visa ' drink lots of coffee, lend a pen that you'll never get back, occupy a chair for 11 hours, 'Go second floor help desk' sit in a cafe like it's your living room, wave to a bus, 'Bleez wait for morning' steal someone's WiFi, eat free nougat at the duty free - 5 times, buy useless gifts, meet a childhood friend, cross a border on foot,
hitch a ride with a drug dealer, sleep in the grass, scream to the sky, bury your feet in the sand, learn to read Greek, swim in someone’s pond – in your underwear, ask a stranger for food, sit on a windowsill while it's raining, have a conversation about art restoration in a language you don't speak, drink too fast, walk too slow, snore on the train like there's no tomorrow, listen to your neighbors’ conversations, leave your finger on the camera while filming, eat, eat, eat.. And then eat some more, 'It seems you've missed your stop' Where are we going again? Take off your shoes… While you’re at it take out the razor, etching pen, cutter and three scissors that you forgot in your hand luggage, cry on an escalator, accept that you cannot speak French, accidentally knock over a child with your backpack, Sleep in your party clothes, Lose your glasses in a roller-coaster , Throw away a bag of towels, Spend your last Kuna on a bag of pasta, Lose all your socks, Break your shoes, And hit your head on a taxi door.
Realize that you’re late, really late, extremely and unbelievably late... And then miss the bus to Sarajevo for the third time. Don't panic! Well, panic sometimes...
Love, wanderlust and alternative perceptions of time..
- Guess who?
Seasons without you Many nights ago I asked the rain to stay a bit longer. I asked her not to stop tapping against my bedroom window until I fell asleep. I thought she had agreed when I heard her grunt a reply. She even flashed me a wink that lit up the room. Perhaps even the whole town but I’d like to think she only winks at me. Assured by her promise I lay in bed and closed my eyes to her whispers of our goodnight tune. Then she groaned once more so I woke up but she was gone without a colored bow left behind to say goodbye. She stole my sleep and left, breaking her promise and my trust. I wondered if she might drop by to return my sleep but she didn’t. So I went online to find her virtual replacement. If she didn’t listen to me then perhaps she wouldn’t mind if I listened to her. I followed her moods and journeys hoping to know where she went after she left me. Even the clouds that brought her into the world couldn’t predict her next move but I heard from the people she winked at. They said she is heavier and colder these days. She wears white now. I am happy she misses me. After a while they said she had become warmer and lighter coloring everything she met. She wears perfume now. I wish she would visit me with one of her colors. Then they said she stopped coming for a while. Last I heard she visited a few of our friends. She wore yellow and orange then. I am still waiting for her to return my sleep.
Late night letting go of composure I thought the worst was behind me. I thought those seven days of not knowing when it’ll hit you, when the tears will come; of always being on the brink of crying, were the worst. I was wrong. It’s now, when you want to see them alive in front of you, to hear their voice, see the nuances of their features change as they laugh, smile, get excited, ride the waves of their tone, sense their next word, synchronize your breathing to theirs, witness their creations, that’s when it hits you. That’s what those seven days of continuous tears anticipated. The moment when you instinctively reach out to touch them instead your hand hits a cold wall to steady your staggering stance. When you search desperately for a video of them to get lost in and feed the illusion that it is not over. When you look for some recording to hear their coaxing voice just one more time. When you desperately rummage around in your mind for a clear memory of their face only to find it all blurred into a dream. When memories are no longer vivid enough to keep living in and the present unveils its hollowness. Perhaps I should have spent more time, planned more things, said more things, held them longer, outstayed my welcome well into the night. Would that have made it better now? Would I have more of them to hold onto? Perhaps I should have seen them less, known them less, loved them less. No that would leave me with the regret of a lost chance. Or maybe I would have never known what I would have missed. Do you know what it is like to live with a heart that misses? It’s learning to be content with longing instead of presence. It is embracing change when all you want is familiarity. It is not waiting for the words you expect to come no matter how much you desire to hear them. It is never needing, always wanting. It is a cup half full but always half empty. It is a song that takes you back as you struggle to look forward to what the future brings. It is late nights of writing trying to get it just right; the way they talked, how they looked at you, at each other, how the sun set in their eyes and the moon kept you company after you bid them goodnight. How sleep was your last stop before seeing them. It is learning to wake up to the quiet, to go to sleep without the tingling on your lips from the goodnight kisses. To get used to the lack of desire to reach out and hold. To be held less. For all the emotions to subside and attune themselves to less. To remember intensity
but not feel it. It is living in between, easily swaying to either extreme; joy and sorrow, laughter and crying, walking and sprinting, reaching and shying, open and closed, past and future, nothingness and heaviness, proximity and distance, familiarity and remoteness, warmth and cold, day and night, earth and ether, mountain and sea. It is hating full stops, bus stops and twilight shadows; all signs of ending or goodbye. Being angry at passing planes that won’t take you to them and embassies for stymieing you. It is never knowing indifference again. I wonder how long it will be, this time, before I can look at up at a plane and simply contemplate the thrill of flying, like an innocent child, once again. Or will the next goodbye come too soon?
A suburb in Frankfurt By day… What strikes me most is how void this land is. So daunting to the senses. It is void of the familiar smells of burek and smoke wafting from the abundant bakeries and cafes. The shops have no captivating odors that keep you there long after your eyes have been saturated by the sights. The streets all look the same. Uniform and bare. Bare of murals and paintings. Empty of color. Dull without a single unusual corner to explore. Not a piling heap of garbage to remind you of the collectors whose pay is long overdue. Not a slightly shabby building that invites you to walk through the tales of history. Not a bump on the pavement or an unfamiliar looking license plate. Even nature is not unruly. The trees obey the lines and the sky doesn’t blink without the signal of Umbrellas and North Face jackets. The landscape is flat, vacant of majestic hills or rocky trails to hike. No music to keep you awake into the night. No crowds. No people eager to welcome you over a cup of cava and tell you their story. I keep expecting to be surprised, interested or amused, but it doesn’t happen. Senses lose their sharpness due to the lack of stimulation. It makes it not easy to feel too. Emotions become mundane and uniform too, ready to be poured into the already shaped mold not needing to sculpt one from scratch yourself anymore. It’s not easy to be spontaneous here when the streets refuse to curve to the sway of your hips. When there is no rhythm. Just a single uniform beat.
By night Shaket. Silence. The culmination of civilization. Closed doors, mowed lawns, drawn curtains, locked mailboxes. Silence. The trees fear the rustling of their leaves. The wind asks for permission before curving the strasse. The stars look like abandoned statues, fake statues perched up there as an illusion. Appeasement to placate the masses. There are no masses anymore. Isolated building blocks of society living in the blocks they built. The sidewalk dictates where I walk and marks on the road tell me where to cross. They don’t say why, assuming I know that they know best. I wish I had learnt parkour just to traverse the city like a land. Like we are both earth and we know each other. I don’t recognize her anymore under the concrete jungles. I doubt she is there and I don’t think I am from the earth anymore either. Silence. That’s what keeps them inside, so they don’t hear it. Or maybe so they don’t disturb it. They know that she knows best.
LUSHIK WAHBA
Blues People ask me why I am always Away. But then again ‘away’ is an overestimated concept. They always seem to wonder and are always intrigued by my absence. They find me cool because of it. They think my life is extremely exciting. Adventurous. “It was a pleasure meeting you.” What they don’t get is that it stopped being a matter of choice. My babe won’t let me go. The road has got a grip on me and it won’t let me Go. I’m leaving; Once more.
SOFIA MOREIRA