A Simple Act Of Empathy

• Nicole Tutton, Grade 11, St Francis Xaviers College
• Short Story
• 2009

Finalist in the 'World of Words 2009' competition

Change came in September, challenging everything I thought I knew. It came hard and fast, all ill omens shrouded by the awakening of spring. Just as the last tears of winter were wiped away, a second flood arrived with the thousands of mourners raining their anguish.

In the wake of the deluge, I became the towers falling down.

My heart’s hope had fled and in its place began a solemn tattoo of isolation, a crescendo rising until all feeling was deafened by this most loathed cacophony. Numbness. The world refused to acknowledge my existential hiatus; Tabula Rasa eluded me as I had yet to atone for the actions of extremists I neither supported nor condoned.

Seeking coherency, I turned my gaze outwards in order to rediscover myself. This is what I found.

I am my mother’s hands and my father’s smile, her embrace and his nod.

I am the eyes, seeking signs of life beyond the hijab. Not because I am discontent with my own spirituality, but as an attempt to understand the ways in which others might be, a simple act of empathy.

I am burning curiosity mingled with incomprehension. ‘Is she happy?’ I wonder, ruminating on the scantily clad woman opposite me at the bus stop. She is innocence peeking through heavily lacquered lashes, cornflower blue depths belying the jasmine perfume painstakingly threaded with cigarette smoke and depravity.

Her hands clasp the vice as though it were a lifeline. The tension between her knuckles draws my latent quixotic attributes and I am suddenly ten years old again, watching my aunt clasp the Qur’an, lamenting Uncle’s passage into a reality transcending our own.

Coughs wrack the stranger’s vessel, signalling a dockage for my time machine.

My eyes caress her pityingly. I do not see freedom in her exposed flesh, only another woman stripped of her dignity. Others pass without taking any notice, leaving only a brief impression of their disinterest on the hollow of my heart.

I am not this exploited woman, imprisoned by fear. I am a victim of her ignorance rather than the perpetrator her eyes seek to accuse.

I am the fiery tails of their whispers, the flagrancy of their misapprehension and the burning of my cheeks in rage and humiliation.

I am the spirit of patriotism within the planes of your face, come every January the twenty sixth.

I am your friend.

And yet, I am estranged. Not peculiar because of my beliefs or my familial background. It is not my veil that hides my true self, rather, your perception of it.

I am the hijab.
I am Australian.
I am one whilst being so many.

One constant in a stream of consciousness, higher than what I myself possess. I am all that I have ever known, a patchwork quilt reflecting the vibrancy and collision of my family’s past and my own future.

I am the hand, delicately resting upon the temple. Soft thoughts wrought by soft fingers, travelling to smooth a furrowed brow.