Fool's Gold and Treasures Untold

I strolled beside my old companions, tracing my forefinger along their spines. A fine layer of dust coated my fingertip and I paused for a moment to inspect the measure of time between my family’s last usage of the library. I sighed and blew the fluff into the air to watch it dance suspended in the beams of the setting sun reaching down through the high arched windows across from me. The oak-paneled walls grew warm and glowed, casting a golden light about the room. I remembered how I once loved spending my time here, passing hour upon hour immersed in the pages of these books. I continued to trace the perimeter of the room, lost in nostalgia when something shook me gently from my indulgent stupor. Glancing over my shoulder I examined the place over which my hand hovered. Where I had expected to brush the binding of more of the same leather-bound and girthy volumes, there was a small black moleskin notebook that I had never seen before, tucked cozily into the crevice between two much larger novels. I glanced around the room swiftly, though I’m not sure why, before attempting to encourage it out of its hiding place. This proved to be a small task that required the removal of the two protecting bodies of work that surrounded it before I could lay my hands on the stranger. I crossed the room to a stiff and hostile armchair in the corner to make a table of my lap for further examination. Untying the fine ribbon I gently peeled apart the yellowing pages filled with narrow and elegant handwritten script. Intrigue flooded me as I wondered about its origins. It seemed too old to belong to anyone in this family. But surely it must have all the same. I made a mental note to ask my parents about it when they returned home from work, which shouldn’t be too much longer. My eyes rested on the first page and I could not resist the pull. I began to read.

* * *

A sudden jolt of a key in the front door downstairs jerked me from my intense concentration and I span in my chair to see my father bursting through the heavy double doors with a look of terror etched onto his face. I felt my stomach drop along with the book in my hand. Thud. Suddenly the provincial noise of the street below seemed to come growling into the room from where my father stood, growing larger and more fearsome with every second my awareness of the situation increased. Suddenly the light cast through the windows seemed red, as though the world outside had been set ablaze. I ran towards him and he grabbed my arm as we ran together through the halls without a word. I grabbed my younger brother from his cot and turned to the door. My mother, eyes brimming with tears and supported by my eldest brother, came around the corner. ‘What’s happening? Where are we going?” I asked them. “We have to leave now, Sunni. It’s not safe here anymore” replied my brother. My mother let out a slight whimper beside him and covered her face with her hands. She was shaking. My little brother began to cry in my arms before reaching for her to take him into hers.

I ran through the street, barefoot, wincing as my tender feet hit the jagged stone with every sprinting step. Through the rising dust, I scrunched my eyes against the blazing sun to glimpse the triumphant silhouette of an emaciated figure trembling under the weight of what appeared to be a mahogany treasure chest in the near distance. Amidst the onslaught of rushing figures and the piercing cries of mothers screaming for their children, elders hunched over and bewildered and the sounds of brutality; cries of unbearable pain and thuds of fist on flesh…I stood mezmerised for a fleeting moment by this figure, arms raised high above his head, posturing salvation. What glistening treasure did this man carry in his mud and blood dirtied hands? Before I could make it out I jumped as my father bellowed at the man from beside me. “Drop it you fool! It’s a fucking toilet!”. It was ornamental and certainly a valuable antique commode, but a toilet nonetheless. He did not carry the weight of riches on his shoulders but the contents of an overflowing toilet pan. Releasing a high-pitched scream and leaping back like a stray cat, he released the chest mid-air to plummet to the ground with a thud on its side, spilling its contents to mingle with the shit and piss already in the earth at his feet. I felt a lump rise in my throat at the pitiful sight as the man now dashed, tail between legs, to another abandoned home for more loot. I felt my mother’s grip tighten around my upper arm and drag me forwards through the mass of bodies pushing close on either side. I fought to kick myself an inch above the crowd around me to gulp the air above before sinking back into the stream of people. Like a violent ocean, we crashed again and again into the other, spraying blood and sweat and tears. Never before or since have I seen a stampede as violently fraught and wild-eyed as the human beings that fled their homes on that afternoon.

One image sticks in my mind from that time, with the resilience and force of a musical hook, digging deeper into my brain at every slight reminiscence…the body of a man. Floating. Facedown. In a river of blood. His own? Someone else's? I don't know. But all mingled together there in the dust. All the same, all inseparable, indistinguishable, suddenly fused and discarded. Trodden on and slipped up on like a trip in a rug. Salty tears rush down my face as though to wash away the image burned into their retina. I wish I could wash away the memory. When we arrived across the border we spotted a house. Deserted by the family that occupied it so suddenly that it appeared as a time capsule. Besides the shattered picture frames littering the floor, and the clear looting of all its valuables, it retained some semblance of warmth. Some feeling of a family home. When I stood across from the bathroom mirror for the first time I did not recognize who I saw staring back at me. Heavy with dust, darkened by its mingling with sweat and baked onto my skin in the midday sun I was two eyes and a red mouth in a dark face. Even my eyes were not my own. Red and bloodshot and wider than I’d ever seen. I splashed water onto my cheeks and my tears mingled with the soap as I scrubbed and scrubbed and sobbed into my hands.

* * *

Snap. I closed the book and rushed up, stumbling slightly, to return the small black notebook to its place on the shelf before straightening my dress and swiveling back to the door. My father entered the room at the moment my skirt had not yet settled its sudden flounce. His eyes moved with suspicion to the shelf behind me. "What are you doing, Rani?" he asked. "What's going on?". "Dad, listen. Don't get mad, okay? I didn't mean to read it. I really didn't even read it at a-", "Okay, Rani. Relax. It's fine. I wanted you to know. I put it there last night. I didn't think you'd find it so fast to be completely honest but, you always do surprise me...". "Wha-what?" I stammered. "I don't understand". He sat me down and explained to me that the diary had been his fathers; my grandfather that I'd never met. "But then, why didn't you tell me about all of this?" "It's not an easy thing to explain. I didn't think you needed to know." "Well, what's the rest of the story?" I asked. "How far did you get?" he said, walking towards the bookshelf and taking back down the diary before flicking through the pages. "Did you get to the bit about the treasure?" he asked. "Oh, yeah. The treasure. That was awful" I shuddered. "No. Not that treasure...". My father went on to tell me that his great grandmother had one day, many months after their arrival at this deserted house, had been cleaning as usual when she thought to examine the contents of the attic. None of the family had ever bothered to check up there before, you see, since it needed a key to get in and no-one knew where it was. So she made use of her broomstick handle and knocked the door straight off its hinges. And when she peeked inside she nearly tumbled straight back down the step ladder to her death. Inside the attic room was a treasure trove of ancient treasures; swords and shields, bronze statues of various gods and deities, beautiful artworks centuries-old...the family were amazed. Of course. they sold most of it very quickly since they had nothing to their names at the time. But one day, over fifty years later, when both my grandfather and grandmother had passed, a letter came. This letter addressed the new occupants of the house and claimed to be from the family of the original owners of the property. The letter said that our family could keep the house and whatever was in it, but to please return a few special items that had a significant meaning to the family. Fortunately, these "special items" had also been special to my father, who had pleaded to his father to keep them for him. Three huge swords inscribed in an ancient language, as heavy as an elephant's hind leg, or at least it felt so to my young father. On reading the letter my father of course immediately resolved to return them to their rightful owners, though it hurt him so much more after his father's death. In the end, they paid my family $20,000 to return the swords. Yep. $20,000. More than they'd ever seen in their lifetime. My father refused of course. He organized their shipment out of his own pocket and that was that. But the next week a package showed up with $20,000 in cash. And that kind of money was not like $20,000 today. Back then it was enough to buy yourself a mansion with a tennis court and an indoor pool and retire in your thirties with a family of 5. But my dad took the money and donated it all to a charity devoted to helping migrants and refugees settle. Both our families had suffered immeasurable pain. And even now, several decades later, the pain echoed in the living memory of the older generations. "Wow," I said, finally. "I can't believe you kept all of that a secret. For all that time". "Well," he replied, smiling slightly, "you don't know the whole secret..." and he turned to go, patting me gently on the shoulder and leaving me speechless in the rapidly darkening library.