CHAMELEON

There are two sides of the coin: heads and tails, two sides of the moon: bright and dark, two sides of life: ‘in’ and ‘out.' Under the law of physics, these parts are never to meet. Any contact may result in the universal system failure and cause a massive paradigm shift: there would be no more black and white, right or wrong, true or false.

I am absolutely positive that my life has had a default failure from the very ‘in’ stage. I have always felt that I was born on the wrong side of the Earth, in the wrong moment: an erroneous breakage of the evolution that has pushed me out into human existence.

My first newborn cry was full of hope: I was relieved, I made myself free of my mother’s womb, I pushed my way to light through enormous pain and sufferings, but I felt happy, I felt alive. Looking into my mother’s eyes, I saw my reflection and her tears.

For the reasons beyond neurology and physiology, apart from the day I was born, the only formed memory I have in my internal storage back up in the file under the name ‘infancy’, is the moment when I found myself in a locked car. It felt so frighteningly familiar, so anxiously, like I was trapped inside my mother’s body again: it was hot and wet, and I couldn't breathe. I was sweating and trying to escape.

It was probably in my prep school year when my consciousness developed into quite a well-structured system of dreams and ideas. I remember myself feeling so weird most of the time, like I was an alien. I walked the same way to school every day, but the streets, the houses, the trees seemed so wrong, so out of place. I would smell the blooming trees, but could not recognize the fragrance. I would look at the houses around me, but neither of them would look right. Everything around me looked more like a hostile planet rather than a safe, familiar neighborhood. But what was even worse is that I felt so sure, so strongly aware of the fact that these were not the houses that were in the wrong place, but me. I would spend hours in bed trying to figure out a glitch. A glitch in the universal system that has made me feel myself such an outsider, a stranger. A glitch in that same system that has spat me out five years ago. On a good day, I would consider myself a Martian or a Venusian who was sent to another planet to find some secret weapons or some precious resources. But as most of my days were far from being good, I would accept the obvious though unwanted truth that I was utterly miserable and useless and couldn't fit into the world around me. I was a margin of error that allowed the world to exist and proved its viability. That was my most valuable discovery at that point. What I found out later would smash my whole system of beliefs and make my brain scream again. I was not screaming for love or hope anymore, as I had given hope a long time ago, but it was a silent heartbreaking scream. And the only heart that was broken was mine.

It was an ordinary Monday morning, and I was having breakfast before dragging to school. I hardly had any friends at school, so I was always stretching the time to get there as late as possible. I developed quite a diverse and vast repertoire of the rescue excuses that I would pull out of my mind like magical handkerchiefs: one moment I would forget my pencil case, another, I would desperately need to go to the toilet.

That day it didn't work. We were to have some cultural festival at school, and I had to be there on time. I was supposed to wear a national costume or at least some element of it. I was not happy with the idea at all as I hated all these school events when you had to ‘express your identity and share the joy of diversity’ with everyone (even though neither of us had the slightest idea of what that meant). Still, it was part of the school routine, and there was no way to avoid it. What I was definitely happy about was that I could finally take shelter behind some defiant ‘look I am from Japan’ mask or unambiguous headdress or, at its best, some ridiculous costume, and finally steal one day for myself with no need to look back, no bullying, no mockery.

That was the moment when my mother casually pointed out that I should wear my brother’s kufiya. She then burst into tears and started wailing, that I didn't have my one, but they couldn't take all they wanted when they had to flee war-torn Syria. Just a couple of most precious family relics and some photos. But she swore that I would get mine one day no matter the cost.

All that sounded like some unknown language to me, a gibberish. War. Fear. Escape. I felt myself a giant magnet that was dragging millions of pieces of the memory puzzle into my head. They would crash into my skull, trying to break through and get into my brain to take proper places in the memory folder, but my skull was like a steel fence. When my brain shell finally capitulated, all these trillions of sharp, edgy pieces crashed into my helpless, unprepared, vulnerable, fragile, delicate brain, creating a huge bleeding laceration.

After a couple of agonizing days, when my wound started self-healing, all the restless thoughts, ripping questions, mixed feelings, viscous anxieties, unaccountable fears, all this started to get some shape and sense. There was the reason why my language sounded so different and had such a strong accent. There was the reason why I couldn't eat some of the food that my classmates would love so much. There was the reason why my family didn't have much furniture, and we never had toys. I even felt a little relieved: I was not crazy. Yes, I was an outsider, but because I was not from here, and yes, I was an alien, but because my country was a different planet, and yes, I could not have recognized the fragrances and scents, but I had never smelled them before. I was even a bit excited as there existed a particular word for such people like us: REFUGEES. I was not sure about what the word meant but was eager to find out.

The discovery was not long to wait for. In grade 3, we had to move to a new suburb. On my first day at school, I heard some kids talking about me. They called me a beggar. I didn't know the meaning of the word, so I approached the kids and asked who a beggar was. A fat flat-faced big guy with greasy hair looked at me, spat out and said that all refugees are beggars, we come and take away their government’s money while his dad is breaking his spine at work. He pushed me away, and they all left. I was standing there, not sure what to do. What I was sure about was the feeling that was growing inside me. Shame. Not fear, not humiliation, not even hatred, but shame - the most destructive feeling ever that was releasing its venom into my blood.

Since that unfortunate day, the last leftovers of hope for a happy existence abandoned me. My ‘sorry I am late’ school repertoire expanded significantly. I acquired a couple of new ‘terminally ill very close relatives’, my list of diseases looked more like a medical bulletin of WHO (a couple of them were non-existing illnesses made up by combining two or sometimes three severe health conditions like abnormal vascular brain disfunction), but no one would ever doubt my words or somehow react as no one actually cared. There was some reaction from my classmates, but it was far from being compassionate: those who hated me (the majority, I assume) would grin evilly, those who didn't give a damn (these were all the rest), would just keep picking their noses or sticking chewing gums under the desks. My unhealthy atomic behavioral habits had led to an easily predictable outcome: in the middle school I started skipping classes under the umbrella of the same excuses and finally, as an apogee, by grade 9, my attendance list would hit the score of 3:2 (with the number of absent days winning) while my school performance report looked more like a descending stock quote rather than a student achievement summary. For clearly apparent reasons, all this deliberately condescending attitude towards schooling ended up in my exclusion from school with a ‘persistent disruptive behavior’ note in my personal file on top.

Even though desperation and grieving were universally expected, at least to some extent, in such a situation, I didn't feel anything at all. Or, to be more precise, I felt relieved. I managed to make myself free again. Through enormous pain and sufferings, so similar but so different from my birth, I paved myself the way out. Though not ever being too inclined to self-reflection and learning from my own mistakes, I felt almost vital need to face my past and try to finally detect that glitch in the system that had been stalking me through my whole life and that had forced me to land where I was. As ten years ago, I would lie in my bed for days digging out the most painful memories, decomposing them into the smallest fragments, shifting them along the timeline desperately trying to determine the root cause, the core. Sometimes I would turn on to the slippery path blaming myself for all that had happened in my life, but luckily, such pusillanimity would never linger for long, and I would be back on track ready to dig dipper with even greater fury. The honorary title of the perpetrator would be passed from my parents for never being able to afford the new school uniform to my brothers for never standing for me, from my classmates for always being so hard on me to my teachers for never even pretending that they cared, from our neighbors for never inviting us on a BBQ to our GP for always saying that I was as healthy as an ox. They all seemed to fit into the role, but I never let myself be tricked as I never doubted that all of them were just the minor consequences, some side effects of a major issue.

At some point, I felt so lost, so messed-up, so obsessed that I decided to put my mission on pause and get some fresh air to clear up my head. I was quite amazed to discover that I hadn't been out of the house for more than a week, so when I stepped into the daylight, I had to shut my eyes as I felt a sharp eye pain from light. When I managed to adjust my eyesight, I felt another sharp pain somewhere inside my stomach. It was almost an inflammation, some burning feeling which origin I could easily detect: I must have missed a couple of meals during the week (if not to say I was intentionally trying to starve myself to death somewhere along my ‘finding meaning in life expedition’ ) so I followed my survival instinct and dragged myself to the nearest food store. I was not looking around and was mostly concentrating on my shoes when I heard someone saying that I was ‘that’ boy from ‘that’ Syrian family who was kicked out from ‘that’ really good school. ‘That’ was a big bang! A tremendous nuclear explosion that destroys everything on its way, leaving deadly ashes. ‘That’ was what I was so desperately searching for, the core, the root cause, the major issue, ‘that’ was the reason for all my sufferings, the answer to all my innermost questions, the trigger for all the miseries. ‘That’ was the final point of my expedition. ‘That’ was the result of the erroneous breakage of the evolution. ‘That’ was me! My identity. My very essence. My origin. Myself!

When I started my mission, I was ready for any insane unanticipated discovery. I was absolutely confident that I would be able to fight back any truth, any external enemy. I was so tough, so seasoned with long persistent humiliation, so ready to pay my life back. But I was not prepared for what had come out to light or, to be more accurate, what had obscured the last rays of the sun. I was not prepared to confront myself, my very existence. I felt I was going crazy. My injured mind would search for escape, for some universal remedy. But the wound was too fresh and too painful to be healed.

I couldn't go back home, back to that toxic environment. I felt dirty. I desperately needed to escape, to find some healing retreat. I needed to rip my skin off and bury it so that I was never the same again, so that I was free! I never wanted to be ‘that’ boy again. I ran away as fast as I could. Acid tears were running down my face, washing away my innate features. I would wipe those tears with the inside of my palms erasing the fate lines and fingerprints. I would scrub my body, trying to rip off the skin. I was in agony. Again. Like that day, a long time ago, when I was locked in the car. I had failed so many times in life, but I would never fail again. When I found myself on the platform on the train station, I knew what I was going to do to save myself: I will lie. Yes, that simple. I will pretend, lie, hide, transfigure, mimic. I will absorb the best from the natural world, learn from the most ingenious nocturnal creatures. I will master the skill of finding shelter, staying unnoticed, blending in, vanishing, dissolving in a crowd. I will be a very diligent and determined student. I will become a chameleon.

The next five years of my life, without any exaggeration, can be described as intriguing or even adventurous. I would travel from town to town, working in the burger places or petrol stations or doing other minor jobs. I never stuck anywhere for too long for very obvious reasons for not wanting to get attached or form any connections as freedom was my priority. It was the first time in my life that I felt genuinely free: free from my unfortunate past, from the traumatic memories, from all the miseries of my previous life. I even felt overly free sometimes: I had unhesitatingly, fiercely, irrevocably uprooted my family tree from my heart and mind and acquired such an unbearable lightness that I felt everything and nothing at the same time. Meticulously creating the new life story architecture, I was getting rid of anything that could bring back the echoes of former me: I had no family, no close relatives, no friends, no scars, no freckles, no other birthmarks, no distinguishing features that could be used to revive the ghost of myself. I started from scratch. It was quite an energy-consuming but fascinating process. By the age of twenty, I had already lived in seven towns and had tried a substantial amount of face-masks on. I was a nomad, a writer, a salesperson, a lawn boy, even a nurse assistant. The deeper I went inside the country, the fewer questions people would ask. It was bewilderingly easy to keep the scam going, so by the age of majority, I had not only acquired the full legal rights but had gained quite a loud resume with a number of reference letters that could speak for themselves.

By that time, I managed to create some kind of a safe zone for myself, a circle of security. After a couple of years of experiments and testings, I had finally chosen my new name (the old habit of word-composition substantially influenced the choice procedure), my new nationality, and my new biography. All were clean from dark stains but didn't lack drama: my name was inherited by me from my European ancestors, my parents had died in a car crash, I had no siblings, I was born and spent my adolescent years in Victoria but moved to WA to change the scenery and get rid of painful memories. It didn't sound too intriguing but had this pathetic magnetic veil that could work for me when needed. With my new image things were even easier: my nose had been broken when I was back in primary, so it was devoid from the expected national features of being too straight, my hair had always been a couple of tones lighter than my brothers’, for whatever reason, (so with the help of my neighbor-hairdresser, I just added a couple of highlights to my bangs), and my skin was quite pale (which had always been one of the triggers for my brothers to start a conflict). All this allowed me to easily fall into a universal European genotype, which was exactly what I wanted. I felt myself quite well-equipped and ready to start the new chapter of my life, so I finally could relax and breathe freely.

The same moment I allowed myself to loosen the leash and switched off the alert button was exactly the moment when I met her. She was the most beautiful creature I had ever seen in my entire life. I was knocked out, smashed. It was love from the first sight. I loved everything about her: her deep voice, her dazzling face, her disarming smile, her wavy hair. I became her shadow. She would move her hand - and I would mirror this movement, she would smile - and I would do the same. I felt myself an over-sized marionette that was revived by the magical spell. She was pure magic herself. I had no clue why she had chosen me, but long years of self - flagellation had taught me that the reason was not necessarily yourself. More to the point, never being spoiled by fate, I was entirely determined to accept this divine gift with an open heart, never searching for reasons behind it. To cement my determination, I convinced myself that while relentlessly practicing playing various roles, I had gained some valuable characteristics that might have been to thank for this miracle to happen to me.

We were inseparable: physically, mentally, spiritually. She liked touching my face and eyes, and I was kissing her fingers with gratitude. She would hold my hand while falling asleep. It seemed she had an innate talent to spread the love around her, and I was blessed to be covered with that love pollen from tips to toes. Every day she would come up with some new ideas of where we should go and what we should do. She was so lively, so open to all new, so eager to live every moment of her life. I was never spoiled with love, but she taught me how to do it, and I was happy to give all the reserves I had back to her. I would look at her when she was sleeping scared to move so that not to break her fragile dream, I was happy to cook for her (I had learned quite a lot while living by myself), and I would feed her like my little baby, I tried to notice every slightest change in her mood, any hint of sadness to be there to make her smile again. We started living together, so naturally, with no tension at all. I was so happy I had finally been given a chance to write my own story with a happy ending—the story of the two of us.

We spent several years drifting in the off-shore waters of life, far from the burdens of real-life and fondled by Eros, Jesus, Allah, and any other divine beings who had the power to bless humans. We were living in a dream when, by the cruel, inevitable laws of life, all the magic had to be destroyed.

The world that we had been so meticulously creating for the two of us was perfect, until the breaking point when she started talking about having a child, the child that would be my exact copy, my mirror. The child that, by her deepest desire, would inherit all the beautiful features of my genetics. I felt sick. I felt how the whole world had fallen on me and smashed me. An erroneous breakage of the evolution, a system failure, a default error. The second big bang in my life - the moment when the two sides of the coin, two sides of the moon, and two sides of life had met. The moment when all the laws of physics were broken. That was never to happen, but it was exactly what had happened. All my vicious anxieties and innermost fears erupted inside my head, creating a massive paradigm shift. What if, by the twist of fate, by a snap of an evil’s magic wand, all I was hiding so diligently, all the features that I was lucky to never been granted, what if all the genetics that had almost ruined my life would manifest in my child. How can I deliberately push him off the edge that I myself was so close to falling off a long time ago? What if his DNA would be much stronger than mine and would be clearly imprinted in his face, and skin and hair. I was desperate.

In the next couple of years, this topic would arise from time to time, but I had learned how to navigate on the safe fairway and avoid direct collisions. I felt myself a trapped primary schoolboy again when I started using the old dusted magical suitcase filled with rescue excuses that I thought I would never have to use again. The irony was that this time I was trying to avoid something that I wanted more than anything in the whole world: HER. I would stay up until late, pretending to be working on something, or I was feeling unwell, or I had to wake up really early next morning. I knew it could not last forever, but I was trying to grasp the last beams of sunlight before I would fall into complete darkness.

One Monday morning, she just left. Mondays must be accursed. I didn't try to stop her as I knew that the only thing that could make her stay was the truth, but, ironically, the truth was exactly the thing that would push her away from me irretrievably. She was happy to accept love from a free-spirited guy but not from a liar with a traumatic past with too many stains on it and rotten roots. No one ever loved me when I was myself, so why should she be an exception. When leaving, she paused at the door case for a second, looked at me sadly, and said she could feel I didn't love her anymore. What an irony. She was the only human being I had ever loved. I could tell her I was doing it to save her from shame, fear, loneliness, frustration, from all those feeling she would experience if we had a child, from all those feelings I had to cope when I was a child myself, but I had no courage to do it. I was looking at the door screaming silently, begging for an earthquake, volcanic eruption, hurricane, something that could kill me and end up the agony. I was begging for the bomb to hit the house and collapse the ceiling slabs on my head to smash me, the bomb that failed to reach me when I was a child in war-torn Syria. This time I was begging for it to hit the ten. But as it had always happened in my life, the more I would scream for something, the less I would get. So I just stopped screaming, again.

Humans must be remarkably resilient. When Isabella left, I thought I wouldn't pull myself out. I felt my body and mind were slowly but steadily deteriorating and degenerating, so I thought it was just a matter of time when my cells would lose interest in keeping my useless body alive and stop regenerating. To my biggest surprise and greatest disappointment, the self-destruction process was delayed - ten years after I let her go, I was still alive.

For the first couple of years without her, I felt myself a zombie. I worked 10-12 hours a day, then went to the nearest food store to get some ready meals, then watched some stupid show on TV until falling asleep (the blue light of the screen was my pacifier, my sleeping pill), and that would start over and over aging every new day. Several times a month I would check Facebook to peek into Isabella’s life and make sure she was happily there, but even though I found poking in my wound painfully pleasant when one day I saw a happy photo of herself, two cute chubby baby twins and a handsome young guy posted, I deleted the app as even with my lust for pain, it was way too much.

I was totally devoid of the will to live, and obediently accepted anything that my life would send me. That is why I didn't hesitate to move back to Victoria when I was offered a new position in the company’s office in Melbourne. My relocation overlapped with my 40th birthday. Not that I had any intention to make it a special day, but my colleagues had different life values. So when I appeared in the office on my first day, I had to face a huge ‘welcome to our team’ poster and a number of other unnecessary attributes of a celebration such as balloons, squibs, and cheering. At the end of the workday, the most persistent and welcoming peers dragged me to the nearest bar to consolidate our acquaintance and layout a paving-stone path to our future long-lasting friendship. I hardly had any alcohol for the last years, so I got wine into my body fast enough. I managed to get away from the clutches of my ‘new mate’, and started pushing my way through the crowd to get to the bar. I found a free spot on the high chair and lifted my hand up to attract the barmen’s attention and order a strong coffee. When the barmen turned into my direction, I felt unwell. Even though 25 years later, I couldn't be mistaken as I recognized my younger brother. God works in mysterious ways. He was staring at me with the same mixture of feelings that I had reflected on his face: hesitation, excitement, scare, disbelief. No one could start talking first, and it was unnecessary as the level of pick-time noise in the bar wouldn't allow us to hear each other anyway. I just gestured with my thumb up on the back door behind my shoulder, and he lifted his palm in a ‘high five’ manner.

It was a bit chilly outside, and I felt an urge for my jacket while I was waiting for my brother in the back yard. Jamal (Jam as we used to call him) shut the door open and reached me in one big step. He didn't say anything but simply embraced me warmly inside his big strong arms. It felt so unusually nice and safe. I was deprived of human displays of emotions for a long time and forced myself to forget how beautifully it might feel. He was much taller than me, so I put my head on his shoulder, and then it happened. From the deepest corners of my heart, from the most hidden areas of my soul, all the tears that I had never cried started pouring out of me. They were running down my face, washing away all the dense layers of greasepaint I had applied during the years of hypocrisy. I was not sure if it was the influence of too much wine I had have or the pressure of too many feelings I had buried inside me, but one of those had served as a trigger and caused the dam burst. I was crying and crying until I had no more to cry for. When I stepped back from Jam, I saw my reflection in his tear-stained eyes. For the irony of fate, we had never been brothers, but standing there in the dark of the night, we were more than brothers, he was my savior, and I was his grateful pilgrim.

That night none of us could sleep. Jam was telling me about his family, his beautiful wife and children, how happy and blessed he was. He was lucky enough to save some money, so he and his friend managed to open the bar. It was tough at the start, but later, things got on track, and now the bar was a profitable and successful business project. He felt he was a happy man who had even more than he had ever prayed for.

When the first sun rays sneaked into the room, I went to make us coffee. When I came back, I could physically feel that something had changed. His face, so happy and excited a minute ago, looked grey and lifeless. I knew it was my time to open up. Jam asked me why I left. I couldn't answer him, and he was merciful enough not to insist. He told me that my father was restlessly searching for me for years. He never smiled again, never was the same. He died of a heart attack when Jam was the same age as me when I ran away. Our mother had to carry the cross all by herself, but she never complained, never blamed anyone, even me, never gave up. All my brothers were ‘good people’ as he naively called them, and he was sure they would all be happy to see me. I had to go back not for them but for our mother. He said I didn't have much time. She had been sick for the last couple of years. She was discharged from the hospital as they couldn't do anything else for her. She had no more than a month.

One month. How to fit in the whole life you have missed in one month. How to say 9125 sorry for each day of the last 25 years your mother has been crying for you. How to say all these thank you, and love you that she has never heard from you. How to let her cheer you up before the footy match and put a bandaid on your scratched knee after. How to make up all the missing photos, unwrap all the presents, read all the birthday cards that you have never given to her. How to make her feel proud of you for your grades, your ‘best defender’ award, your gold swimming medal. How to make all these never happened things happen in one month? How to give your mother the life you have ruthlessly stolen from her back? There is no way to do it. I was standing behind the bedroom door, trying to find the courage to step in. I felt I was getting smaller turning into a little boy, but I have spent too much time pitying myself, and I had no more time left, so I pressed the door handle and stepped in.

The room was almost dark, and I had to adjust my eyes to distinguish the objects. There was a distinctive medication smell, and I instinctively scratched my nose. I noticed a standing lamp to the left of me on the chest of drawers and flipped the switch. I looked around the small, modestly furnished room, and I saw her. My mother was lying on the bed with her eyes closed, her arms peacefully folded on her chest. She looked so old, so tiny and fragile that I felt a sharp pinch in my heart. Silently, I came up to the bed and sat on the very edge. I was peering into her face trying to read the story of life imprinted on it. Eyelashes have faded of constant crying, hollow eyes for never having enough sleep, pale skin for long hours of working. Every wrinkle was there ready to unfold the story behind it. One of a million sad stories you could collect to write the full family memoirs.

I could not resist an overwhelming desire to touch her, so I gently took her palm in mine. It was so small, so delicate and so cold. I felt scared for a moment, but then she opened up her eyes. I have betrayed her, abandoned her, left her desperate, and was ready for any reaction but not the one I got. My mother looked at me and smiled. It was just a hint of a smile, a smile of someone who was exhausted after a long hard day, but I felt like these 25 years when I saw this smile last time have never existed.

Tears. Salty, transparent waters of remorse drawn down by the laws of gravity. Only tears could help me to pray for forgiveness and nourish the sprout of a new soul. No words were capable of healing the wound that I had inflicted in my mother’s heart years ago. No words could atone for my sin. But she deserved the truth. She had the right to know why her son had run away. I told her about my shame, my fears, my humiliations, how I was trying to erase my identity, and paint a new unmarked self-portrait, how I was desperately shedding my skin to reborn. I told her about Isabelle, the love of my life, and how she had to leave as she was suffocating from all the lies that made the air around me sticky and poisonous.

My mother couldn’t speak. She gestured on a chest of drawers, and I pulled out the upper drawer. There was a letter—an envelope with just three words in the address line: to my son.

‘I hope you will understand when you grow up. I can’t hide behind the saving phrase that I had no choice, because I had it. And it was my choice to be a journalist and to tell people the truth about all the impossible, inhuman things that are happening in our world. I had a choice not to go to Syria and to stay in Germany to raise you in a happy sugary pink reality, but I knew I would never be able to look into your eyes with pride after that. If you are reading this letter, then I am not with you anymore. I will always be your mother, and I will always love you. But to be a human being is more than to be an individual'.

I couldn't understand a word. I could decode the symbols, but they had no meaning for me. I was reading the letter, again and again, trying to get the sense out of it, but I couldn’t. I turned my head searching for my mother’s eyes, pleading for explanations. My biological mother was a German journalist. She died when the bomb exploded near the car where she was with me. For some miraculous reasons, I survived. The Belangi saved me from a burning car and gave me their family name. Later, they had to flee the country to escape the war.

Maktub.

I will probably spend years trying to bring together the pieces of my life story, but this chilly Monday morning, standing by my mother’s tomb, I was wearing a kufiya that she had embroidered for me, and I felt pride. I was proud to be blessed to have two mothers, two strong, brave women praying for me to two different Gods. I was blessed to be given a second chance to live. I was blessed to love and be loved. I can not change my past, but I can change the future: for my mothers, my brothers, my father, Isabella, for myself.

I know where to start. From the very beginning. I am Amal. And this is my life story.