Blue Teddy Bear

I sat beside the open window, letting the hot air into my room. I didn’t mind … the airconditioning had kept the room to below tolerable levels anyway. I made a mental note to remind the flat owners to fix the control switch some time soon. It got too damn cold in the room at times.

 The view from the second floor window was not all that great. At that time of night, the pale brown hue of the buildings took on an ugly gray color that spoke of age and despair. The city is riddled with new villas, flats and apartments yet, the company decided to stick me in an obscure side-street address in a non-descript building with dilapidated paint and decadent halls. It’s proximity to some fastfood restaurants and a grocery store is my only consolation to this location.

 In the distance I made out the silhouette of an old mosque barely visible against the darkening sky. The sandstorms usually render this view into a ghostly monochromatic haze … more of a vignette that gives an illusion that the structure was actually in motion. Last night, however, the mosque and its steeple were more visible in the cloudless, starless night.

 In my left hand I held an unlit cigarette and on my right, a palm sized blue teddy bear. As often as I could, I always kept it nearby. Not the cigarette, silly … the small stuffed toy. It was a Christmas gift from my son … half of a pair of indigo colored keychain bears. He says he always keeps his beside him, as well. Five months … always one day too long of missing his company, his daily account of new discoveries … his smile … his laughter. I may have developed the ability to mask these emotions through work, yet I cannot deny that every moment I have to myself be spent playing our memories together in my mind over and over again… an auto-loop command embedded in my head.

 I am not as miserable as the first day I came here nor as desperate, the following months that followed. I do not mope and bury my head in complete disregard of other people and events around me as I used to. I now smile at an errant joke and even find myself visiting my friends on weekends. It was just that last night … sitting on a chair beside my open window … with soft music in the background, I couldn’t hold the twin tears that fell from my eyes. I just let them slowly roll down my cheeks unto my chin. I didn’t bother wiping them … letting the humid Qatari air do me the favor.

 As I was about to slide the window shut, I closed my eyes, threw the unlit cigarette out unto the parapet below and brought the blue teddy bear to my lips and whispered … “I miss you every day, son” … a lonely kiss goodnight to my son so many, many miles away.

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Posted by tuliro at 02:52 PM | 1 comments