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Divisions

Some left on foot with the little they owned balanced on their heads in knotted sheets, backs unbent under the burden of the sun. There were others, eyes bitten by dust and caked with hope, who swayed alongside bullock carts piled with pots and pans, bedrolls, buffalo skins filled with sunsloshed water. Mostly, they fled on trains that heaved through the fields like pregnant beasts. The boy slept on the wooden floor of the compartment, feet pressed against a soft shoulder, an elbow knocking against his head. A stench of unwashed bodies, wet goats, unfed mouths. The saltginger scent of his mother’s sweat filled his nostrils. He dreamt. His tongue stuck and unstuck to the roof of his mouth; a gluey chewing sound. Inhale. Cotton ball. Impossible to exhale. Inhale. Cotton ball. Inhale. Inhale. Inhale. His eyes flew open. The flat brown fields clacked past. He made a choking noise, licked the dried sweat off his lips, swallowed. The curve of his mother’s hips against his shins. On the wooden seat above him, his grandmother snored, the hairs on her chin trembling with each breath. Her hand hovered over his face, a shield against harm. The boy had gathered some spit in his mouth and now he pushed it back down his throat, his gaze fixed on the bulging pillowcase that had slipped from under his grandmother’s head. The buttons were hard to undo; he squirmed away from his mother’s touch and crawled under the seat, hidden by other bundles. He knew it was in there, he had seen it and, as his fingers probed past a wadded veil, worn slippers, a spoon, he scanned the compartment - those who were not sleeping clung to their corners like molluscs, puppet-eyed. The flask, the tin warm to his touch, the sweet weight of moving liquid. The boy promised himself, half of what he found would be left for the others, half of half, but the water refused to stop, it gushed into his mouth, spurted into his nose, dribbled down his neck, trickled onto the floor. Thirteen gulps and a last drop, a family’s treasure. When he had finished, the boy whimpered and wiped the rivulets of dust on the floor with the heel of his hand, crawled to his mother and pushed his swollen belly into the small of her back, sucked his hand, and slept. Sons without fathers, sisters without brothers, wives without husbands, the old the blind the young the sick; homeless, stateless, speechless with hope; the unborn; this was the army of invaders that staggered across the divide. The summer of 1947. Exodus.