A Monumental Nail in the Coffin

I wasn’t always such a jagged pebble, like the ones I used to launch in to the sea, from the beach of the pretty Mediterranean horse-shoe shaped bay where I lived and grew up. It was life, years in time and experiences that had made me that way, eroding and wearing away at me, pressing me to create a harsh and impenetrable coating for myself, in order that nobody would discover the young and volatile vulnerability that I concealed inside.

It all began in the late 1970s when my father a young 18 year old from the capital of a developing European country, while on the lookout for the woman of his dreams, was shown a photo by his cousin of two mysterious girls relaxing on the beach. Looking at the photo he was immediately attracted to a striking, slim dark-haired girl. In fact he was so captivated that he demanded his cousin take him to be introduced to her immediately. His cousin agreed and it was that summer, on the beach in the seaside town where his family had a summerhouse, that he first met my mother. Once introduced, the smitten young couple met daily, spending the warm summer months getting to know each other, and frolicking by the sparkling azure sea. By the end of this fervent few months my father decided that he had found the woman that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with. He made the decision that he would go to my grandfather to ask for my mother’s hand in marriage. This was however, not quite as simple as he had hoped.

My grandfather, who had had an arranged marriage and had never experienced or knew what real love was, owned a couple of farms, one on the hill overlooking the bay and one near the sea. He and his wife had two sons and a daughter, my mother, along with many sheep, goats and chickens. During the Second World War and the German occupation my grandfather supplied the German soldiers with fresh cheese, milk and eggs and as a return they never bothered this family or shut his little farms. On account of the numerous daily tasks required ensuring the smooth running the farm, my grandfather withdrew my mother from her schooling at 12 years of age so that she could complete the daily farm chores and help her mother take care of the rest of the family. Used to having his own way, and not wanting to lose his compassionate and extremely helpful daughter, he did not take kindly to the news that his daughter had an admirer who would be arriving to ask for her hand. As soon as he got wind of the proposal from his wife, a huge argument with his daughter ensued. Driven by the selfish idea that she would no longer be wanted as a bride, the row culminated in him cruelly rubbing her attractive face in stinging nettles and covering her cheeks and forehead in painful red blotches and stings just before her suitor arrived. When my father arrived, he calmly explained that he had no intention of completely separating my mother from the rest of the family and they could work together, since his family butcher business could invigorate my grandfather’s farm. Even though my grandfather was a cantankerous old man, he realized after some time that this was going to happen sooner or later anyway. In addition, strict family tradition demanded that the parents should ensure that the daughter or sister marry first and then any sons. Therefore, my grandfather had the majority of the family supporting the desire of my parents to spend their rest of their lives together. The wedding was an unforgettable event, since relatives and friends gathered from all over the country to honour the blessed couple. The married couple moved in to a sixth floor flat in the centre of the capital city along with my mother’s younger brother who was also studying at the time. Within a year I was born and life for them was going well, with my mother taking care of her newly born baby and my dad working hard for our future and a very promising life.

I was only 2 years old when an earthquake on the high end of the Richter scale shook the capital city of the country to its foundations. It resulted in severe structural damage and many tall buildings disintegrating into rubble. There were several fatalities and hundreds injured. It happened at around midnight while I was sleeping in the small living room. With the first shake my mother woke up screaming, ‘The baby! The baby!’ Both my parents ran into the living room and grabbed me off the little bed where ornaments, picture frames, books and other objects had fallen all over and smashed. They escaped with me in their arms from the flat yelling, “We have a baby let us pass!” to the many people trying to walk hurriedly down the stairs terrified by the earthquake. They didn’t think for a moment, they drove straight to the seaside home where my father’s parents were also living at the time. Apparently, my grandfather’s wish was becoming a reality. My mother was about to return at the bay town, near her parents and brothers as well as the parents in law. My father decided that the capital was not a safe place to raise his young family and took the decision to take us to the summerhouse with his parents until he found another place for my mother and myself. He and my mother had some money saved and with some other contributions from both families they managed to rent a two-storey building. It was there that they opened a butcher’s shop on the ground floor and used the top floor to live. My father managed to have all of his family, friends and shop, within reach. My mother drove me to primary school every day, then returned back to help in the shop and then home to cook food for us all. I had my own room with a big window overlooking the main street, my own study desk, lots of toys and more importantly lots of love. I remember playing football and basketball with my dad, going hunting for birds, him taking me to watch his beloved football team play Sunday matches and frequently to the butcher’s shop in order to teach me the butchery skills. I remember that he always made time to spend with me. We visited my grandparents at the farms weekly and my grandfather would tell stories next to the fireplace. Every other weekend my father’s sister would come for dinner with her kids, she had two boys close to my age and we would have great fun together. I also had numerous sleepovers at either my grandparent’s summerhouse or their farms where I would play with the animals. It seemed that I was growing up in a perfect environment until I experienced for first time in my life what I grew to realize is a frequent occurrence in everyone’s life. I was just about to turn 5 years old and my grandmother, the mother of my dad, died from a heart attack. My parents took me to her funeral where I found it hard to understand why all these people who I was used to seeing being happy and cheerful so often, were now crying and screaming in despair and agony. This memory stayed with me for years, as did hearing the echoes of the screams from my aunties, the sisters of my grandmother. My dad and his father did not cry as much. I don’t know why, maybe they were being strong, or maybe they cried in their own time without anyone being there. I did not cry and I still do not know why.

Life was soon back to normal, but within one year, the father of my father shared with his son that he wanted to remarry and also have more kids, and another wave of changes were about to take place. In his late 50s, this was viewed as a very daring decision, especially since the new wife was in her early 30s. My dad took this action as a major insult to the memory of his mother, and he stopped any further contact with his father from then on. For me it was like a second grandparent had died, since he had walked out of my life without anyone explaining why to me. I never saw him again. My dad maintained a good relationship with his sister and especially after her brother and dad were not talking anymore, she and her family visited us even more often. We usually went for a late lunch at a tavern next to the sea and then back home for them to talk and us kids to play as much as we could.

It was on one of those sunny days when ,after we had had our lunch, one of my cousins and myself went for a walk by the beach next to the tavern, but we got carried away chatting as we walked and it took us long time to return. It was a big shock when we found out that our parents had left us there to go back home by foot, a distance that was over an hour’s walk. Although it was day time, in a quiet and safe town in which I had been growing up and despite knowing the main roads to make my way back to home, it was the first time that our parents had left us unattended. My cousin initially cried, and although I wanted to cry as well his reaction did not allow me to do so, since I knew we could make it if at least one of us stayed calm. I was surprised with myself for being so calm and in some way mature at such a young age. We started walking slowly and talking about various kids’ stuff. It was only ten minutes later that my cousin started complaining that he wanted to go to the toilet and I had no immediate solution for him. I kept telling him we are five minutes away from the house but he was insisting so much and begging for some relief. When he started crying again I suggested that he went behind some trees to relieve himself but this made him cry even more, because he claimed that he was scared to go alone and he wanted me there with him. I never believed that my cousin was such a baby, but the moment I realised, I just could not resist the idea of how it would look if he literally shit himself on the side of the road. I had to see it happening. I made it my goal to make him shit in his pants. It was an exciting thought, which made me think in a spiteful way towards my cousin whom I actually loved dearly. Regardless, to this purpose, I agreed with him that it was dangerous for us to go off the main road and into the woods, and that the safest way would be to stay on the road, a course that I was not sure even if it was the right one! Within ten minutes, my cousin did shit himself on the side of the road, without taking any of his clothes off, standing and crying in despair, while for me it was a satisfying sight to see. He had to walk for almost half an hour more, until we were back at home. The only obstacle was that his pants were full of shit and this was slowing him down. Once we arrived back at the house his mother was shouting at him without remorse, while I was trying to explain to everyone that we had not been intentionally late back at the tavern. Although it took them many weeks to visit us again, it seemed everyone had forgotten about this little incident, apart from my cousin, since he never again came anywhere I suggested, especially if it was far from the house or our families.

Although daily work was my parents’ main activity, they always managed to have friends at home during the evening or even some Sundays when they closed the shop in the early afternoon. It was on one of those days that I made my parents extremely angry with me, during a social visit of several of their friends. A cat somehow sneaked on the flat roof of our house where my mother usually dried the washed clothes. When my mother went to collect the clothes, the cat apparently felt threatened and scratched my mother, who called my dad to save the day. I was nearly 7 years old and this was as exciting as it could get for me. I ran to the roof with my dad, who had already assessed the situation and decided that the cat was either sick or dangerously angry, which was provoking its offensive behaviour. He brought his rifle, which he usually only used to hunt birds, and from the half open door that led to the rooftop, was trying to aim at the agitated cat which was going left and right and meowing in despair. I kneeled down outside the door, hidden behind the wall and I wondered, what was taking him so long, why he didn’t just shoot to scare the cat off the roof? The following moment I took a decision driven by my innocence and childish curiosity that could have shaped the rest of the life of my whole family. I decided to lean forward and ask my dad why was he wasn’t shooting, only when I pushed my head forward from the side of the door, I saw the end of the rifle face to face only a few centimetres away and pointing directly at the middle of my head at the same time my dad’s finger ready on the trigger. Everyone screamed, my dad dropped the gun on the floor, remained frozen and his eyes watered like he was about to cry. For a moment there was silence. I was not sure what had just happened. My mother walked out, grabbed me and took me downstairs to my room shouting to never go anywhere near guns again. She then went back and I could hear her shouting at my dad to throw the rifle away. He never did though. I believe that day, my mother had cursed that rifle because of what nearly happened or maybe it was her motherly intuition.

Not long after this, summer came and I was going swimming almost every day, mostly with my mother. It was a Sunday, a very hot summer day and since the morning I had been bugging my mother to go for a swim, but she was busy preparing a nice dinner for all of us and after all my moaning, my father suggested that we go together instead. The younger of my two uncles, my mother’s brother, happened to come for a short visit and also decided to join us. At the beach it was amazing, a real paradise for me playing nonstop and having both my dad and uncle there as well. We stayed for quite a few hours and when the time came to drive back home, my uncle suggested that we jump in his car instead of my dad’s car. It was a real challenging moment, especially after my dad said I could choose. It was difficult decision, mainly because I hadn’t expected it but finally I chose to go with my uncle. My dad got in to his car and drove after us to the house. We arrived at the front of our house, I got out and ran to the main door to buzz my mum to open. Suddenly, a loud bang from far away startled me. My uncle walked to the main road to see what had happened and before I realised it he shouted at me, ‘go back in, tell you mum to come now!’ The kind and sweet uncle had given for first time in his life a strict order without a glimpse of remorse. It all happened so fast. I could not understand what was going on. My mum ran downstairs, we all got in my uncle’s car and we drove back towards the beach. After less than a mile my uncle parked on the side of the road and I could see many people gathered, the traffic at a standstill and somewhere at the back of all this chaos, my dad’s car upside down. I felt my blood rushing so fast through my body, I cried without knowing what this meant. They told me to remain in the car and they both ran towards the crashed car. I wanted to look but I was so afraid. I kneeled on the back seat and put my head out slowly so I could maintain a view of either my uncle or mum, but desperately hoping to see my dad. Soon I was able to see them all again hugging each other. What an unbelievable relief, which made me cry even more though. They all walked back to my uncle’s car and he drove us back home. My dad was miraculously unharmed, considering the car was badly damaged. They kept continually talking about this terrifying event. Only one minute away from our house, another car had crashed into him on the passenger side with enough force to turn his car upside down and the passenger side had been completely destroyed. Both my parents were deeply shaken by this experience and I kept hearing to my mother mumbling for days after, ‘what if our son had chosen to come back with you instead of uncle?’

We all tried to forget this unprecedented event as quickly as possible and the following months ensued as normal as could ever be.

My father, a butcher by trade, with much hard work and dedication as well as help from his father in law, managed to turn the shop into a very successful business, and it didn’t take long to earn enough money to buy his own butcher’s shop. His new shop dominated the area, customers from many of the smaller towns from around the capital city were coming to shop there, not only because the meat was of good quality but also to see my father, a good mannered family man. For myself this fact was somewhat irrelevant, as for the next couple of years I lived as a kid deserves to live and experience life, focusing on getting more involved in sports and school activities as well as enjoying a stable family environment. Throughout that time, I had made friends and got invited to various kids’ parties and family gatherings. Life at this time was at peak for my family, as we all established our existence within the local society. I was reaching the age of 9 and as I was just beginning to make plans for the future, however I slowly began having suspicions that something was very wrong in our household.

My father was coming back from work and often complained that he had bad headaches. It was less than a month after these increasingly frequent occurrences that my dad went for medical examinations. No one could have even imagined what was lurking around the corner for our family. My mother insisted that they go to check him out at the local hospital. The day my parents returned home from the first visit at the hospital, my father went straight to the shop and didn’t come up to the house. My mother walked in the house and before I got the chance to ask her what happened, she sank slowly to the floor in the corridor in front of me, dropping her handbag like a heavy burden at her side and she burst in to anxious and uncontrollable tears. I froze. I had never seen her like this in my entire life. I walked slowly towards her and asked her to talk to me. She literally crawled to the phone and called her mother. It rang three times and my grandmother picked up. That was the moment my mum cried even louder and in between her crying out loud she only managed to say, with broken words that my father was very sick. I couldn’t comprehend what this meant and remained silent next to her. My grandmother tried to calm her down and eventually she did. After this phone call, she looked at me and asked me to promise that I would be a good kid, helping my dad with anything he might need. I complied and went in my room. It was impossible to predict what all this meant for our family, I was just a kid ready to conquer life and this was not something I had ever thought I would have to face. The following months, after being witness to several conversations my mum had with relatives and friends, I became aware that my father had a tumor on his brain, it was already the size of a tennis ball and his chances of survival were very limited. Cancer, an epidemic in our society that people are loath to even mention by name. My mother knew him better than anyone and for that reason she took the decision to never tell him that he had brain cancer, hoping that this might have helped him to keep his hopes up for survival. Within a relatively short period of time, the doctors urged for him to have surgery and successfully removed the tumor from his brain. In the meantime, my mother kept my routine as a kid uninterrupted, handling the household responsibilities as usual and managing to keep the new butcher shop running with the help of a few old and new employees. At the same time she was also trying to cope with my father’s daily increasing health needs. It took less than a year for my father to fully recover and return to the shop, full of energy again and with an uplifted mood. His recovery made everything look like a bad dream. My life at that time was so busy with schoolwork and sports activities that I didn’t really realise what had happened and how important the following months would be with regard to my father’s health.

The inevitable knocked at our family’s door once more, as it took only three months for the tumor to re-grow. A second operation was soon scheduled, the tumor was once more removed, but this together with my dad’s chances of recovery meant that he didn’t came back from the hospital the same person. He was unable to move or talk and was slowly and completely losing perception of his surroundings. I could hear my mother cry in distress almost every night next to him, just before she was leaving him to go to the living room to sleep by herself, since the smell in my parents’ room from my father’s dying body was unbearable. Deep inside me I knew that one day I would come back home and he was not going to be alive, but still my young understanding of life was always taking these thoughts away and hope was replacing these pictures. I was living through the slow physical death of my dad, the emotional death of my mother and an uncertain future for myself.

At this time I was ten years old, I was training, playing and competing with the local youth volleyball team. As with most of the kids in the team I had been waiting for a particular match at which talent scouts would be in attendance and I believed that I had a good chance of getting noticed. The night before the big match my mother insisted that I go and stay at the house of one of my aunties’ so that I could get the bus to travel to the big game the next day from there. Before I left, my mother and uncle prompted me to go and kiss my father goodbye, something that they had never asked me to do before. Without thinking much of it, I went next to the bed, grabbed his hand and kissed him on his forehead. He barely opened his eyes and said to me in a very low tone ‘be careful of anything you do and anywhere you go from now on, your mother and uncles love you’, he then closed his eyes and soon went back to the lifeless mode that I was used to seeing him in. Every time I went out of the house I tried to forget what was happening back home, but this evening and until late at night when I went to sleep, I could not forget his words. The next morning I woke up eager and excited about the day ahead. Suddenly my aunt came in to the bedroom, hugged me, rubbed my back and as silently as she could told me, ‘your father left us last night and I am so sorry about this. You cannot go to the game today. Please get ready because we have to go back to your house where your mother needs you so much right now.’ She walked out and left me sitting on the bed. I got up, looked in the mirror at myself and my first emotion was to feel sick. I wanted to vomit but I tried not to. I kneeled, I closed my eyes and tried to picture my father, my mother and myself as I used to know us years ago, happy and full of life yet no pictures of such images were coming to my mind. I tried again and again, but none of those images were coming to mind. I burst into silent tears without wanting to open my eyes again, since the only picture I could see was an empty, colourless and terrifying unknown future. These few moments, in my auntie’s house by myself, shaped the rest of my young and thereafter adult life, but no one could ever have predicted in which ways.

It was so difficult to accept that such a promising life had turned out to be so uncertain. I was already nothing like most of the other kids. Most of them were concerned about what games they would play next, whereas I was mainly concerned about who would be next to die, my mother or myself. I had experienced the ending of a human life already twice and been threatened by it another twice myself. As opposed to the other kids I had an aim, I had to become an adult sooner than expected in order to gain more insights about how death works. I was desperately trying to explain why close family members kept going away. I felt mentally broken, in a way that I couldn’t define. They drove me back home where my mother was half unconscious with both my uncles there and a large number of other people all dressed in black and most of them crying as well. At that point I blanked. The only thing I remember was that I was looking down, and being carried here and there from different people throughout the day. I couldn’t remember anything afterwards, the details of that day or the following days. My body and brain took over and blanked out most of the aftermath of that dreadful morning of my life.

Only two months after my father’s death and the beginning from what looked to be a monotonous and sad life, I found a puppy dog outside our house and I took him in. This dog became my best friend within days. I built a house for him, and took him to the local vet with my mother for the essential injections. I named him ‘Jack’ and I think he was the only living being during this period that I was not ashamed to be with, maybe only because he had not been around to see what we had recently gone through as a family. He was a part of my fresh start. Jack did not know though, that I might be cursed and that those most attached to me were prone to go away in unbearable ways. The owner of the house we were renting came a few months after I got Jack and complained to my mother that the dog was ruining the trees he had in the back yard and that Jack had to go. My mother came to me and insisted that there was no other way but to let Jack go and although I took the initial news as grown man, it took me only a few minutes to go to Jack and sit with him crying the whole afternoon, evening and until late that night. I hadn’t cried at my father’s funeral, or afterwards and that day I had the chance to cry for everything I had missed. Jack was unable to understand my tears of despair. He was next to me, being quiet, looking sad as will. I could not bear the fact that happiness was so limited in my life. The sight of me crying for so long made my mother uneasy, she could only feel for me since a dog for her was the least of her worries at that time. The next day I helped my mother to cook some nice food for Jack and after he was fed we took him with the car to the neighbouring town. In the car I was crying all the way in front of my mother and Jack, both of whom were quiet. We arrived at a remote location, I opened the door and Jack jumped out. This one last look he gave me, I have never forgotten. The memory of this look makes me cry even now. I never saw Jack again. However, Jack had given me the chance to let out all the tears I had kept inside me regarding my father’s death and since then I associated Jack with someone that stimulated a way for me to openly express my sadness, highlighting an important aspect of life, which was that it was simply normal to cry. My mother was living through her own drama, trying to recover from a life changing experience with a growing kid, a closed family business and only her close family on her side. My father’s family never visited us again, I never saw my cousins again or anyone from that side of the family. I didn’t know the reasons, however I knew once more that people you love can go not only one at a time, but in bulk, entire families wiped away from your life without anyone explaining why or even asking for your opinion about it.

The next summer, my mother took me to a friend’s house on an island for holidays, one of my father’s best friends. We stayed with his family for a few weeks. It was a nice break from everyday life, but awkward, since they were frequently talking about my father’s death and the potential future uncertainties for my mother and me. The friend took us out daily with his small boat to travel around the island, where the fresh warm air at moments took all the worries out of my mind and made them look like a bad dream. I was overdosing on fresh air but when the boat returned back to shore, I was back to reality. I was missing those feelings of pureness of mind and innocence. My reality was stigmatised and every time there was a minute or even a few seconds to escape reality, I grabbed it without a second thought. Nearly at the age of eleven, I couldn’t have known that escaping reality was something that older people could buy or induce in other ways for themselves. I also couldn’t have known the immense difficulty of then getting rid of such acquired habits that are in many cases considered taboo. For me, it was enough to escape reality by letting my imagination run wild, triggered by fresh air, melodic music, a good view or even the singing of the priest when we were going to church once in a while.

The following year was my last at primary school and many school related activities kept my mind somewhat occupied. I was spending time in trying to concentrate on learning new things at school and I was still involved with the local sports team. The main change to everyday life was frequent sleepovers at my uncle’s houses, the older brother of my mother. I was then old enough that I could babysit my younger cousins, who were my only young relatives that were pure, full of energy and happiness, helping me to forget the rough times that I had been through. The other way to break the daily routine was cycling. I had a big bicycle and I was able to cycle faster to most destinations in the surrounding area of our house. My mind was always keen to explore and any kind of stimulation was always welcome by my pure body. Almost every day I was out after school cycling in the area around our house and for the past few days I had wanted to do something different. I knew that my grandparents were using the farm further from our house and the one closest to our house was empty. With my bicycle I had already explored most of the areas around our house, but I had not yet been more than twenty minutes distance from our back yard. For the past few weeks I had had an unexplained desire to smoke a cigarette and this thought was teasing my mind daily. Maybe because in every house with adults that I visited with my mum, everyone was smoking, maybe because of the smell that sometimes I liked or maybe because the inner childhood curiosity was starting to kick in or maybe a combination of all three. The fact was that I couldn’t buy any from anywhere and I didn’t dare to nick cigarettes from my mother who was a casual smoker, but I knew where my grandfather kept his stash of cigarettes in both farms and it was so easy to break in if no one was there. It was the most exciting thought I’d had for a long time and one of the afternoons I got the approval from my mother to go cycling a bit further than usual. I soon reached the farm, entered the perimeter, forced opened the kitchen window, which I knew was never locked, and got the cigarettes with some matches in my hands. I knew how to light up a cigarette, since I’d seen it many times in my daily life, but I didn’t know about how to actually smoke it, or how much I had to inhale and exhale. The first inhale was followed by continuous coughing, a very unpleasant experience. I then had puffs without inhaling but soon I felt that this prohibited experience was making me feel so good. Maybe it was because of the adrenaline rush, maybe it was just doing something out of the ordinary or maybe because I was looking to justify the fact that I was not feeling a normal kid like all the others that had both their parents and a more normal life overall. I was different in ways I could not understand and I had to find out why I was feeling like this. Once roused from my deep thoughts, I was back on my bike and heading towards home. It took me only a few minutes to arrive back since it was mostly downhill. My mother was at the back yard, gardening and once she saw me coming in, came to hug me and kiss me, only this time she smelled something that made her face change from a loving mother to an angry female. The smoke on my skin and mouth was so strong that she immediately looked at me with anger and asked me where I had been and what I had been doing. It only took me a second to realise that my stunning plan was about to go downhill. The next, almost instantaneous, decision that I took added a lead weight to what I had already started subconsciously building, an impermeable wall around me. I lied to the only person that I had to care for me and protect me for the rest of my life. I said to my mother that I had been cycling all the time and that I hadn’t been anywhere different from all other times. She looked at me with anger and despair, not only because she knew I was lying, but most importantly because she did not know what to do. In her panic to show her disappointment towards me as well as to ensure that I understood both my mistakes she did something that confirmed all my fears since my father’s death. I realised that my overall existence was like a feather, directed from only one source of air, my mother. She told me that she would drive me to the most central location of the capital city, at midnight, to leave me there with people that also started smoking at my age and had now ended up hopelessly sick. Initially I didn’t believe her, until it was well before midnight when she called me to come out of my room, while I had been pretending that I was going to sleep early that day. The sound of her voice had changed from a loving mother to a judge’s, giving a sentence by banging a hammer on the desk. I stayed in my room silent since I was scared but also unable to understand why, for something so childish, I was going to be punished so hard. She soon came to practically drag me to the car, disregarding my agonising crying. I was shaking as I had realised my time on this planet was limited. I had no chance of survival once I was out of the car, at midnight, alone in the centre of the capital city. Soon I realised she had made up her mind and deep inside me I knew that this day would sooner or later come anyway, the day that the remainder of my life would in some way be taken away from me. Once in the car she didn’t talk, she was doing her best to make it look as real as possible. I continued crying for the rest of the drive, but silently. We arrived and she parked the car at one of the small side roads. Without saying anything to me we both got out of the car and she walked me close to a train station entrance. Various people were there, shouting, smoking and looking for their next prey on this cold winter night. She didn’t even hug me, she simply released her hand from mine, said goodbye and started walking away from me. It only took two seconds to lose her in the dark. All my body went cold and although I barely could move, I managed to walk a few feet in an attempt to blend in within this unknown environment. My life had taken a turn that even in my wildest dreams I could not have predicted. I walked towards a kiosk thinking that the man inside would call the police or try to help me if any of the men lurking around made an attempt to abduct me. The only thing that came to my mind was the hope of my grandmother. I presumed that my grandmother would take me back to her farm, even if my mother didn’t want me anymore. Either way, the only phone numbers I knew by heart was our house’s and for both farms of my grandparents. Although I didn’t have any money, I thought I would tell the man in the kiosk what was happening to me to and ask him to allow me to call my grandmother. I went closer to the kiosk, I looked inside and I was ready to burst in to tears once more, walk inside and beg him for his help. Suddenly I felt a hand behind me grabbing me from the neck. I didn’t resist, since I knew it was inevitable to happen. Which of those dark characters would not notice a lost kid, alone after midnight in an area like this? I looked back and yes I was about to be taken, but fortunately not by a stranger. My mother was there, like an angel from heaven. She asked me, ‘Is this the life you want or the life in the house we live now?’ It was the fastest reply I have ever given. I said ‘Yes, our house, as we know it!’ and I burst in tears, not able to hide anymore from anyone. She grabbed my hand and we started walking towards the car. The tears in my eyes were affecting my vision and I couldn’t see anything in front of me so I was relying on holding her hand as tightly as I could to lead me to the car. I felt like I had been from heaven to hell and back to heaven within a few minutes. On our way back everything was so blurry, after experiencing such an emotional rollercoaster, I had realised that there were rules that I had to follow. After all, I had to act like a kid, my mother’s kid, even if I was far from being a simple normal kid anymore. I was just over the age of eleven and I had lived through circumstances that scared me in a way that would underlie my actions for the rest of my life, further bringing everyone around me into harm’s way. I never talked about these events again with my mum and for the time being I tried to forget this terrifying experience.