Nomad sands

The wind drives the sand northwards. Each year the desert moves a little further north, the shifting sea of dunes covering the fertile lands, killing it, choking it. But the sand that covers also reveals. What it shrouds there to lie in death it later unseals and the dry wind stirs again in dusty tombs.

The sand keeps no secrets forever, for if one knows how to listen one can hear then whispering in the night.

My adoptive parents found me in the desert half-choked by the sand, half buried. I have no idea from where I came; the sand holds all my secrets.

They took me in and named me. My name is Ankura, which in the local dialect means, 'the empty one.' I can feel that emptiness even now, it is at the centre of who I am. Time and distance have cloaked this emptiness. The suit I wear, this office, the house in which I live, my family are all layers I have drawn about it. Sometimes I feel like I could peel away these layers one by one till I vanished, returned to the whispering emptiness of the desert. To become another quiet voice in the wind.

The intercom is buzzing. My secretary would tell me something, but it is late in the day so I ignore it. Whatever it is, it will wait now. I look through my window across the city. There is a storm coming and already the sky to the south is dark. It is blowing in over the desert, driving the dust before it. By nightfall the city will have come to a standstill, the dust choking people and stopping cars. One day the desert will overtake the city but for now it contents itself with these storms when for an evening at least its secrets walk in the streets.

The wind groans against this building. The sound makes me restless. It is a sound that reminds me how short life is. I glance at the framed photo on my desk of my wife and son. They are smiling in the photo; they will always be smiling there. I do what I have done many times in the past few years. I press my lips to the picture and silently thank them for being there. There is a pile of papers on my desk that I must finish with before I go home. Another hour, maybe two. It is dark already and so I flick on the desk lamp. I stare for a few moments at my reflection in the window. The streets below are full of cars and people eager to get home before the storm arrives.

A little later my secretary knocks on the door and pops her head in. She is leaving early to beat the storm. She asks if there is anything that I need before she goes. There isn't. I wish her a safe journey home. She looks out of the window behind me and says, better not get caught in that. I agree and gesture helplessly at the pile of papers in front of me. Then she goes.

I glance up from time to time as the sky darkens; the traffic on the streets is thinning. Everyone is tucked up safely at home, out of harms way. It is where I should be, where I want to be, but without my work here I would have nothing. The wind roars now behind the double glazed windows. This building moves when the wind blows like this, moves as though it is alive and restless. And its steel skeleton protests against it as it flexes in unaccustomed motion. A number of times I am startled by these noises, they play strange tricks. At times the sound is like footsteps running, at other times it gives voices to the wind, edging the deeper sound with screams.

I get up to stretch my legs and wander down the dark corridors of this floor. The offices that lead off it are dark and silent. Normally there are a dozen people working late, but tonight there is just me. The storm has sent the rest home early. But for the darkness, I feel that I am not alone. My footsteps echo in the corridors, the sound of the wind pursues me and I can hear it laughing in the distance.

When I return to the office the sky to the south is black as night. The sky to the north is shading towards darkness, but the sun low on the horizon reflects from the windows of nearby buildings picking them out, bright like teeth, against the storm. I return to my work but the sound of the wind is impossible to ignore. I persist for another ten minutes, but I cannot concentrate. I decide to leave this now and return early tomorrow. As I pack my things away the lights start to flicker. The electricity supply, overburdened at the best of times, is in danger of failing completely.

As I leave the office and close the door, the building shifts again. The noise reverberating down the empty corridor sounds like the shuffling of bare feet. I look both ways down the corridor, but it is of course empty. I hesitate when I reach the lifts. It would not do to get trapped in the lift tonight. I remember the flickering lights. Instead I take the stairs.

The staircase seems almost to have been added to the building as an afterthought. The stairs are of simple concrete, unadorned, and they are always cool except in the height of summer. My footfalls are even louder here. They echo back and fore until they are lost in the sound of the wind. I start slowly, there is no reason to hurry, but as I go I find myself going more quickly. Some strange anxiety has possessed me, a feeling I cannot shake. And the faster I go, the worse it gets. By the time I reach the bottom I am not quite running, but neither am I walking.

There is an emergency exit at the bottom of the stairs that leads directly out into the car park. I decide to take this rather than go through the main foyer. I leave the building then like a thief.

There is a lot of dust in the air already, visibility is already low. There are a few cars in the car park, belonging I guess to the security guards. There is too much dust in the air to drive, so I decide to walk. it is not a great distance to my house and sometimes I walk it for the simple pleasure of doing so. Not tonight though. I pull the lapels of my jacket up about my face and try to sink down between them. by squinting I can manage to keep the worst of the dust out of my eyes.

There is no one in the streets. Once or twice I think I see people in the distance but it is hard to tell. The dust gusts in, forms dark shapes that hold together for a second and then dissipate. The wind is blowing harder now and I can feel the sand like tiny pin-pricks against my skin. Walking in this weather is a strange thing. My eyes are fixed on the ground at my feet and it is like being in a trance. I watch the ground go past, watch my feet stepping forwards.

Around me the character of the city changes. Whereas when I set off the buildings were tall, polished and well maintained, the area I am now in is more run down. Chain link fences separate off empty parking lots from the street and behind them the buildings are windowless brick bunkers, their purpose given away only by the signs which front each one. I steal glances at some of them, blinking through watering eyes as I do so. This place is a dead quiet place at the best of times. It is not a place for people, it is a place for machines and work.

It is when I look up at one of the buildings that I notice that someone is following me. I can see  him in the distance. I stop then and half turn around and he stops too. I look into the shifting dust and his outline dissolves into the darkness. I stand looking for about a minute then I start off again. From time to time I look back over my shoulder but every time I do I catch his movement out of the corner of my eye and then he stops.

The storm gets higher. The wind is now a real force in the streets. Sand is starting to drift against the buildings, it dances in, ghostly along the floor like smoke. The street lights are doing their best but they provide a murky light that extends only a few feet into the darkness. I sense rather than hear the footsteps behind me and turn. The shape following me is quite distinct now. he is making no secret of his presence. There is something familiar about his shape, something in the way he moves that comes to me as a distant memory. But this thought is swept from my mind when I notice that behind him there are more shapes moving indistinctly, half formed ghosts of people. I turn forwards and, head down, my pace increases.

The streets look unfamiliar in this unnatural twilight; things half-seen loom out of the darkness. The industrial estate has given way to a more residential area but there are no lights in the windows. The only light comes from the veiled street lamps. As if in response to my attention the light flickers momentarily, and then the lights dim. The shadows crawl further out from their corners.

"It is no night to walk in the streets," I hear a voice quite distinctly from over my left shoulder and turn towards it. My trailing shadow is there but still at a distance. I shout to make myself heard above the roar of the wind, "Hello!" but the booming darkness swallows my voice. The shadow pauses and again I am struck by that same feeling of memory, of distorted reminiscence. "Hello," I shout it louder this time and take a step towards him. He steps backwards and fades into the storm.

"Hey!" I yell after him, but only the wind answers me. There is nothing there now but the distant shadows. And they fade and change as I watch them, daring me to believe in them, daring me to believe in myself.

I stand that way for about a minute straining to see but I know that it is  futile. It is then that the wind gusts and staggers me further down the street. I sense that the figures behind me have resumed their pursuit. To make progress now I have to lean into the wind.

After a few minutes the character of the streets changes again. The vacant lots give way to houses where people once lived. The houses are soon to be demolished and they too are empty, but as I pass them tonight it feels as though there is a pair of eyes at every window. And for a second I can see through those eyes. I see a figure, small in the gathering night, pursued by his own dreams and fears. Shrouded in the present his hidden past is revealed to him. All that separates them is his own unwillingness to accept, a reservation pounded into him by life, by his society. But tonight is different, tonight the desert sings in the city and the stinging sand will strip the paint from cars and the bark from trees before morning will blast away this shell that surrounds him and then he will know.

But there is more to him, to me, than that. I think of my wife and child who wait for me at home. No doubt they will be worried and when I think of them my pace quickens. I long to be home and this longing spirals up from deep inside me coiling around my spine and striking at my heart. It is then that the voice speaks again and I can feel its warm breath in my ear.

"They do not miss you." This time I cannot turn. The words have pushed chill fingers of terror into my back. My arms and legs go weak at the words. This is not true.

"It is true." The voice is joined now by a whispered chorus, twisted from the wind. The words fade in and out, "It is true… It is true…" I break into a run, but the voice is still there, at my ear.

"You cannot run from us. You cannot run from yourself."

But I do run. I am not sure where I am running to. The voice has touched me in a way I cannot explain. The air burns in my throat but the sand does not seem to affect me. I draw great breaths of the air, of this dry wind that now blows through me. I pass cars covered in tarpaulins, indistinct and strange shapes. A number of times I stumble but it is as though strong arms lift me up and push me on. And then there is the voice. It is louder now and closer, speaking to me in a voice that with a dull ached I recognise now as my own. I am now passing familiar landmarks, a friend's fence, a rhododendron bush that has taken over someone's front garden. But these barely register, I have only one single thought: home. I am nearly home.

The wind is screaming now, the voice, my voice, is screaming too, The sounds are the same and I cannot tell where I end and the desert night begins. And so we run together into the street where I live, everything is as it should be, but there is a single note out of place that jars and crashes in my mind. My car is in the drive. My car.

And I stop. The house lights are on but the curtains are not closed. I can see into our living room and it is so familiar and close, but so distant. Slowly I approach it. The terror behind me now fading into insignificance against this. For through the window I can see another man sitting with my family. A man who looks and talks like me, but is not. My daughter sits on this man's knee. My wife speaks with him and he smiles and with my voice replies.

I stand now before the window and this time the voice is mine and I scream and pound against the glass, but my voice is only the wind and my pounding fists nothing but the sand blowing in the hot night.

I have seen this sight a thousand times on nights like this. I know that now and each time the story is the same. I am the emptiness, a soul without a body. And there within that warm and well lit room is my body. My body! Possessed by another who cheated me so long ago.