So far, Phoebe has always found a way that continues when something is broken. A temporary bridge or at least a stretched slackline. Not this time. Continuing is ruined. Not even her imagination wants to help, no paving stones appear, not even a trail. Nothing, nothing at all. Phoebe is not ready yet to speak out what she knows. G: What do you know Phoebe? Phoebe loves it when he suddenly stands behind her and his voice is holding her. His voice in which she is allowed to always lean back, to retrieve and recognize anew. Now she can say it. P: I know that there is no way to go forward. Also, no ‘going on in a similar way’. Her eyes are wandering around and cannot gain hold. He looks at her and knows what she is looking for and cannot find. G: I once lost two, in different ways but still in the same moment and in the same deed. He was so angry. I warned him. I told him he should watch out. I told him that now, when he is so angry, he is prone to an attack which wants to take possession of him. Yet he is supposed to rule, nothing should rule over him. For a moment his eyes wander out of Phoebe’s gaze and into a foreign country, foreign to Phoebe but not that foreign at all. His eyes wander to a different time maybe even not that long ago. When he continues talking, he is back with her with pain in his eyes, double pain. G: He didn’t even look at me. He didn’t put his head up when I was standing in front of him, only kept staring with bubbling anger to the ground. And then he went away from me to take him away from me as well. He decided to give up without fighting. He didn’t raise a claim to power but allowed himself to be captured and then he slayed him, and I lost him. Lost both. ‘Where is your brother?’, I asked him. His answer was so cold, so spiteful, so strange. He didn’t know about it, he was not his brother’s keeper. Phoebe sees what a heavy burden this incident was for him, and she understands that he had reached a point where the was no way of going forward. G: Yes, there was no way to continue. He had to go. In my ears the screams of his brother were yelling and the blood that seeped away in the ground didn’t allow this screaming to fade away. And the murderer should live on the same soil? No, he had to go, even though he would be restless and fugitive, he could not stay there. If he still heard the screaming. If he still saw the one that wandered around far away from him. G: But Phoebe even though there is no way of continuing in the same manner, there is still a way to go forward in a different way. P: How did it go on in a different way then? G: Someone else. A replacement for him who didn’t exist anymore. Phoebe understands: A new way. And she is still, completely still. A new way, a different way. The way that she was taking was no longer there. But there will be a new way, a replacement way. She doesn’t want to forget about the annihilated way, she knows about it, about the way, which is no more, which pleased her. It was taken from her. She wants to grieve but not get saddened, grieve and rejoice, looking forward to the other way, the new way. Phoebe looks up to tell him that she is looking forward to the replacement, the new. Yes, she is happy.
© Persis Jalilzadeh 2023-07-16