Heaven's Edge by Romesh Gunesekera Read Free Book Online Page B

whether I should show I was awake.
    I was in a sleeveless smock and there was a small dressing taped to my shoulder. I tried to remember whether I had seen Uva running towards me or away.
    A doctor came in, looking rather harassed. He hurried over to the other patient and leafed through the papers on the clipboard dangling at the end of the bed. He said something to the nurse who had followed behind and then scribbled on the board. Then he turned towards me.
    He was a young man with a worried face. ‘Feeling better?’ he asked and checked my pulse.
    I asked him where I was, and what had happened.
    Using his thumbs he pulled my lower lids down and examined my eyes. ‘A minor accident. You’ve been sedated.’ He asked to see my tongue. Then he told me to turn myhead to one side on the pillow. I felt him do something with my ear.
    â€˜Is that a tag?’
    â€˜Think of it as an earring,’ he replied. Quickly he removed the dressing from my shoulder. The plaster strips coming off hurt more than whatever he’d done before. He jotted down something on my clipboard too and handed it to the nurse.
    Later I was given some bread and radish curry to eat. When I finished, the nurse brought me my clothes. She didn’t speak, but it was obvious that I was meant to get dressed. I was then escorted to the doctor’s office.
    â€˜You’ll be taken to your quarters now,’ the doctor said, scribbling some more on a pad. He went on to explain that I was not a prisoner, but only temporarily restricted. ‘You’ll get what you need, until a decision is made. You see, you were an unfortunate obstruction in an incident yesterday.’ My dollars and my watch had been confiscated, but he assured me that I would be given a ration of tokens to use in due course. He discharged me into the custody of two soldiers who were lounging outside. ‘Your suitcase is in the van already.’
    The back of the vehicle had no windows. I couldn’t see where we were going. When we stopped and I was let out, I didn’t recognise the area at all. It was bleaker and dryer than anywhere I’d been. There was no hint of the sea.
    I was led into a compound of concrete cells. Each with one barred window and a metal door. There were about a dozen of them; none of them looked occupied.
    A soldier pointed mine out and also showed me the standpipe and the latrine. The other informed me that foodwould be brought once a day to the sentry-point on the main road at the end of the lane. He used his gun to indicate the direction I should take. ‘Come at first whistle.’
    â€˜I can walk there?’ I asked.
    He nodded. ‘But fences are electric,’ he warned.
    After the soldiers left, I saw some dark figures scuttling in and out of another compound, across the way. I tried make some contact, wondering if Uva might be among them, but no one responded. I gave up. I couldn’t see any women there, and the men looked as though they belonged to some religious sect. We may not have been in prison but each area was fenced in; theirs did not seem to have a gate opening on to the same dusty lane that mine did. I guessed the only entrance was via the main road, and presumably restricted.
    I was still in a state of shock, I suppose, and went to sleep before dark.
    The military whistle in the morning was a siren designed to oppress as much as awake. With each passing minute heat rose and the vibrating air thickened. I got myself ready as quickly as I could, but when I stepped out into the lane I felt the sun had already warped the earth. In the phosphorus dust by the gate a big black beetle lay upside-down, its thorax chewed into a crater. I stuck to the edge, walking beneath the trees, a shade or two less in temperature. The border bristled with brittle weeds, clumps of spearheads. In places I could see nests of red termites devouring the earth.
    At the sentry-point I found I was the only one there to