Balance And Order.

• Muntaha Matloob, Grade 9
• Short Story
• 2016

Mama had told me from a young age, that balance and order had to be maintained. For every life taken another was given. Her dark sun kissed forehead world crinkle and the laugh lines around her mouth would deepen, giving her an aged appearance. Grown up in a sterile society of strict rules, my mother was my escape from reality. While my father got wasted at a pub, we would take refuge on our veranda as the stars smiled down at us in approval. I would tug on her strands of braided hair begging her to divulge me with the chronicles of her childhood. Stories from the dreaming were my favourites because they narrated the flawless alliance between man and the Australian landforms on which they thrived. Balance and order. She would tell me tales about rainbow serpents and spotted kangaroos. I would absorb every detail like a lizard soaking up warmth from the sun.
She was the desolate product of the stolen generation. She grew up in the rugged beauty of the wilderness, where raindrops were diamonds and lightning was the driving force of electricity. Its majesty soaked up your soul. Afternoons spent swimming in a billabong and climbing gum trees had nurtured her to the country girl she was at heart.
It was that hunting season, when she spoke about her long lost family, the valleys and hills from which she had evolved, her grip would loosen and in return her smile would falter just for a second. Though she refused to admit it out loud, she missed her land and her people. It was as though invisible chains were holding her back from bathing in waterfalls and roaming the land with the blacks like a lost stargazer. To be taken away was a decision she had never made. I vowed to set her free, to where she truly belonged.
At the stronghold of sunrise, we escaped. The Australian landforms were our silent guide. As we ran away, the distance made our bleeding feet and intense hunger pains bearable. With the vast sky above us, the landscape bowing down to our adrenaline the old town erased of the canvas of our future and spread out in-front of us was the expanse of infinity, we were free! A gunshot came out of nowhere like an epidemic. It rippled past me, to my mother where she withered away with every passing second. It was the far cry of death that had followed us into the secrecy of the wild. Just like the way the white settlers had stolen her childhood, they had snatched away her life. A ranger had mistaken her for an aboriginal escaped convict and shot her. Her blood carved art on the rock she laid on. Just like that my mother became part of the landforms she adored. She had returned home and found peace. Years later a gum tree spiralled its way in the exact resting position. A symbol of hope and renewal. Balance and order.