abaya

A black government car has turned onto the long driveway leading up to the farmhouse. Dust rolls behind it as it drives serenely, purposefully, up the road. The old man hears an engine approaching and he looks up, squinting to see if he recognizes the vehicle.

The man sees the shining black efficiency of the car's design -- and then, in just a few tumbling seconds, everything blurs. The sound of his only grandson's voice, the image of the young man's beaming face, the feeling of the boy's small hand as they walked down that same driveway twenty years ago, dust from the fields on their overalls. The man's chest tightens and he pleads with his eyes for the car to turn around, to have the wrong address. Anything to stop the sound of the engine turning off, the car door opening...

Soon the man's wife will see the car and understand, too. But in this one moment, his eyes have betrayed him; he is alone in his loss of gravity, in his silent clawing for memories. For those few seconds his wife is still safe in her belief that their cherished grandson is alive and well on the front. But now the old woman hears the car; she is already moving, stretching, about to shift her eyes from the porch to the driveway. Even in the man's shock he desperately wants to shield her, to stop her from knowing what he knows. But he can do nothing. In one second her eyes will focus on the car and she will add her grief to his own.

__________________
And think not you can direct the course of Love;
for Love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.
--Khalil Gibran