Content Note: description of suicide 

Passing

The door closes with a familiar click. Some nurse must have brought in another poor soul from the outside world. I hear their steps in the narrow hallway of the asylum, a one way street to the end of the corridor. They are going in the room with the nice view that Yasim used to live in. 

Locked up and locked away. For everyone’s safety, they said. 

It didn’t save Yasim though, and I wonder where they put his body after they found him hanging in the shower. I wonder whether the dead get deported too, back to a homeland which oppressed its people and made them travel across oceans to reach safer shores. 

I could only watch as they carried his body out on a stretcher. Nurses and doctor’s ferrying him into the afterlife.

Unlike many, Yasim had made it across the Mediterranean alive, only to drown in the sorrow for those that had shared the tiny inflatable raft and could no longer hold fast. He spoke of his brother, who dreamt of celebrating Eid al-Fitr in a small suburban home, but joined the thousands of others for their final rest on the seabed before even catching a glimpse of the promised land. 

If I was free, I would have held their hands as they braved the storms. I would have summoned favourable winds and currents. I would have calmed the waves, carried their raft and they would both be alive.

But I am not. And they are not.

Yasim and I were something like friends; weeks of confinement can have this effect on strangers. We spent our time telling stories, laughing and crying over the insanity of the world we found ourselves in. 

My first and only friend in millennia, swinging back and forth like the pendulums of the clocks they make in this region.

He had showed me the letter. The round, blue stamp that sealed his fate. His time was up. 

I could only watch as they carried his body out on a stretcher. Nurses and doctor’s ferrying him into the afterlife. 

A long time ago, it was my responsibility to return those who died in capture, but times have changed, and now instead of worship and admiration, humans gave me what they call a diagnosis. 

Last week, I saw a doctor who told me they are conducting more tests to find out if its F20 (schizophrenia) or F22 (persistent delusional disorder). According to them, my miracles are imaginaries, delusions of a sick person not the expression of my divine power. 

When I had first arrived here, I tried to prove them wrong, by telling my story, then by reasoning with their tiny brains and finally summoning storms waves and wind but nothing worked. Eventually, I gave up.

It is impossible to argue one’s sanity. 

i think of Yasim. Of his soul, that I would have carried back to Syria to rest. His ancestral lands, now war-torn and polluted, are no place for the gentle man that dreamt of a better life. i think of his body, cold and lonely, locked in the dark fridge of a morgue. i remember his kind eyes widened and empty, his night terrors that coaxed chilling screams from his throat.

i have been in this room for months, only coming out to eat the brown sludge they call lunch here. My world is shrinking every day. 

The door clicks, the cafeteria, my room. White walls and colourful pills.

There is only one escape. Yasim knew that.

i hope he is safe now, embracing his brother at the bottom of the sea.

i wanted to help him, hold and soothe him, but i could only watch as they carried his body out on a stretcher. Nurses and doctor’s ferrying him into the afterlife. 

Returning to my room, i empty my mind and begin to count my breath like they taught me to. The door closes with a familiar click. 

Inhale.1..2..3..4..5..6..

                     i am not yemoja the protector of the world.

Exhale. 8..7..6..5..4..3..2..1

i am not sacred. 

Inhale. 1..2..3..4..5..6..

i am not divine. 

Exhale. 8..7..6..5..4..3..2..1

i am broken.

i am nothing.