Invalid

 

I stare at a screen. I have been staring eleven hours. Sifting page after page, looking for the mildest indication that the next call might offer personhood. I cannot feel my legs just now. It is sunny outside, but I prefer the natural invisibility of my room over the pronounced one of the outdoors. Sounds of everyday life are at my window. Children calling out to each other, the booming laughter of men, music blasting from a speaker somewhere. Every single one of these individuals must possess the right documents to prove they exist. I have no recollection of how I got here. But when I did, it was without the means to announce my arrival. Day and night pass and people live their lives; not unlike how they did where I came from, but with more to live for.

I have not been able to determine how I can get noticed, but something tells me it is by proving my utility to whoever is in charge. I think it has been two years since I started trying to make myself so useful. Even a measure of hostility would not be unwelcome now. I would know I was being perceived. I cannot always believe that I am completely invisible to every living thing that I see on this planet. The alternative – that they are all in on an elaborate plan of being indifferent to my presence – is, however, even more improbable. Why do I think there is a way to get noticed? Where does this faith in integration and assimilation come from?

I pause for a second. This call seems promising. ‘Planetary onboarding for Invalids if applicable,’ the last line says. That sounds like me. I take a deep breath. At least the rest of the day will feel like meaningful work.

Nothing Works Out

 

Nothing works out. I feel like the defining way in which I think about myself is that I cannot belong. I am not from anywhere and they want me nowhere. There is a level of hyperbole in this. This is hardly the biggest tragedy. But I do feel immensely jealous of everyone who gets to be from somewhere, who gets to recognise a place as home, and have people tied to that place they can go back to.

As I stare into being forced to the first place I have enjoyed living in, I have to ask myself, ‘where to?’ Go back to where I came from? I literally cannot. Go back to where my parents are from? How is that going ‘back?’ The only thing I can say for sure is that wherever I end up, there will be no sense of ‘return’ in that journey. I will be going to another unfamiliar (if not unwelcoming) space, and be made to start from zero again.

I remember reading a James Baldwin book earlier this year which contained the sentence ‘There is a home for you to go back to, as long as you do not go there.’ It made me feel something. There are several places I can look at in this way: Kuwait, Patiala, Kasaragod, and soon, also the Netherlands.  

Nothing works out, there is nothing to look forward to.