LITMIR.BIZ

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in my science training could help me comprehend what was happening. I tried to make sense of it, but my brain was anesthetized. Probably for the best.

      I watched the others fall to the sea. I recognized the pretty stewardess who had brought me my meals. She’ d lost her sari and only her blouse and underskirt fluttered in the wind. There was a man with a bloody gash on his head and a piece of white plastic the size of a platter lodged in his thigh. A girl with arms twisted the wrong way. It was a sorrowful rain shower of bodies falling falling falling.

      Dozens became hundreds. Most of us were brown, but some were white. I had a memory of that mattering five minutes earlier, and then the meaning faded. We were all the same in that moment, victims of a heinous calamity none of us yet understood.

      Most of the others had left their bodies before they fell to the sea, and they congregated alongside me. We were a mostly subdued audience and together we observed the human wreckage before us. I was grateful for whatever it was that had paralyzed our minds.

      I felt a hand in mine and turned to see Meena beside me. She frowned.

      “I can’t find my Cabbage Patch kid,” she whispered.

      “It’s all right. She’ll be fine.” I squeezed her hand and we waited for her mother to join us.

      Ameera

      ∆

      If there were a Chatelaine quiz on comfort with technology, Mom would have scored as a Paranoid Luddite. She didn’t have Internet at home (“I’m on the computer all day long — why would I want to be in front of a screen at night?”) and so our conversations were scheduled for Wednesday evenings, just before she left the bank. She closed her office door, wore headphones for additional privacy, and, not wanting any traceable personal correspondence on her work computer, used a laptop. She tapped into the neighbouring Crowne Plaza’s free guest Wi-Fi. Our Skype calls had the feel of a covert operation.

      Meanwhile, I sat on a couch in the Atlantis lobby where the Wi-Fi signal was reliable. I also used headphones, but only to hear her over the din around me.

      “Honey, I only have ten minutes tonight. I’m sorry. I’ve got to leave soon.” Mom adjusted the laptop so that her face was centred in the box on my screen.

      “Oh yeah? Where are you going tonight?” Was she wearing blush and eyeshadow? The last time I’d seen her wear that kind of makeup was at my graduation.

      “I have a date. Dinner. With a man. Well, of course it’s a man,” she laughed nervously. “Someone I met on LifeLove.com.”

      “That’s great, Mom. How long have you been seeing him?” I’d been encouraging her to try online dating for years, and, back in the fall, I’d walked her through the registration process and helped her craft her profile. I’d nixed “I enjoy quiet evenings at home” and replaced it with “I enjoy films, cooking, and reading.” I pressured her to post an attractive photo of herself. She hadn’t mentioned the site in a long time and I’d assumed she’ d deactivated her account.

      “Since mid-January. Well, that’s when we began talking online. It’s been slow at work,” she said sheepishly.

      “Mom! Why didn’t you say something before? What, that’s three months already!”

      “Two and half. Oh you know. I didn’t want to make something out of nothing. We’re only just getting to know one another.”

      “What’s he like?”

      “He’s owns a plumbing company. He has a good sense of humour. Nice man.” She paused, as though she was going to say something else. “But you’re looking a little weary. Everything okay on your end?”

      “Sure. Nothing new.” I looked at my projection in the left hand corner of the screen. A new pimple had emerged on my cheek and my eyes had dark circles.

      “Heard anything about the promotion yet?”

      “Not yet. Our contracts are up at the end of May, so it’ll have to be before then. I’m not too worried about it,” I lied. Since the complaint, it was all I worried about. It was a relief to not have heard anything further from Anita.

      I steered the conversation back to Mom’s date. They’d corresponded by e-mail for two weeks and then spoken on the phone three times before meeting in person. Mom had Googled him to verify that he was indeed a plumber who had his own business. They’d had two coffee dates and this was going to be their second dinner. According to Mom, there hadn’t been any “affection” yet.

      After we hung up, I reflected on my mother’s guardedness — even with me — and how different we were from one another. Wasn’t caution a learned behaviour rather than innate? And then I thought about Azeez. Mom had described my biological father as talkative, inquisitive, open. As I’d done many times before, I wondered if I was anything like him.

      Azeez

      ∞

      Three hundred and twenty-nine of us hovered over the ocean, watching the briny water swallow what remained of our bodies. We waited. I still had no physical sensations, but my mind glowed awake like a sunrise.

      I think the others were also experiencing a growing awareness. Some of the adults distracted the children so they wouldn’t view the gruesome drama below, but Meena told me it wasn’t necessary.

      “We’re spirits. Children no more. Just like you’re a man no more.” She said this matter-of-factly, as though our demise was a simple and acceptable fact. Why wasn’t she bawling her eyes out, having a fit, shaking in fear?

      I looked down at my body, realizing that it was an illusion, a placeholder. I really was a man no more. But what else was I? Meena blinked and light glittered through her, a hundred stars filling her. We were still holding hands, but I was the one clinging to her now.

      Time passed. Meena’s mother made her way through the crowd, bewildered, and we huddled around her. Together we stared at the chunks of metal, bits of fabric, and floating bodies in the churning water below. There was less of it than before, the ocean slowly swallowing the evidence of our existence.

      I wondered if my family knew of the crash yet. Would it be on the news? I hoped they’d learn of my death in the comfort of their sitting room rather than within the chaos of the airport’s arrivals hall. I couldn’t bear the thought of Mummy, Daddy, Nadeem, or Ameera facing that horror in public.

      I wanted to go to them but was immobilized by invisible chains. Time and again, I willed myself to travel eastward, but I was rooted, weighed down, the substance of me like a marble statue. The others confirmed that it was happening to them, too. An older lady in our gathering said we were required to stay to the end, to witness everything. Which end? Witness what? I wanted to ask. But I remained quiet.

      Helicopters and boats arrived. A fleeting and impossible notion cheered me: we were going to be rescued! Perhaps some of us were alive? But no. It was only our flesh and bone containers that were raised up, recovered. Carried away to safety, too late.

      “Look,” Meena said calmly, “There. They found me. I mean, the me that I was before.”

      A sobbing man in uniform dangled from a helicopter. He held Meena’s corpse to his chest tightly yet gently, as though she were a living child, his own beloved daughter. He was lifted up and a pair of arms pulled him and his precious cargo inside the chopper. Meena’s body was laid down beside others and covered in a blanket, as if being tucked in for the night. The uniformed man wiped his eyes, stepped toward the metal bird’s open doors, and leapt out into thin air to continue his work.

      I followed the drift of my own body down down down. It was faraway now, miles away, resting at the sandy bottom of the icy sea. I knew it would never be recovered. The deepest despair clutched at me then, and I knew that my family would suffer as a result of never seeing my corpse. It would be more difficult for them to say goodbye, to let go. Meena read my thoughts, and stretched her shape until she was six feet

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