Elijah, an eleven year old boy of African descent, was walking on the ground floor of a block of flats in Bijlmer, Echtenstein, located somewhere in Amsterdam. He was wondering what the word 'boku' meant, if it was an insult, and if an insult, how strong an insult it was. The boys from Suriname said that to him in school while sometimes laughing after saying it. He repeated their word softly. It sounded comical and good to say - too good even. He remembered hearing someone mention that if it felt too good to say then it probably shouldn't be said at all for only bad language bestows a particular pleasure upon its speakers.
'So it was an insult,' Elijah said to himself sadly even if this conclusion didn't disturb his peace. His peace remained because he was close to his home, his sanctuary where he would face no words whose meanings he had to contemplate on, whose sound he was unsure of, asking himself if words that sound comical could truly be insults.
Elijah passed a couple flats which had their windows blocked either by curtains or by newspaper clippings, feeling the intense feeling of peace and safety that only a bullied boy could experience when he was close to home. He came upon a corner which led to a constant dark blue wall that ended with a lift.
Initially, Elijah only had eyes for the lift that was in front of him, thoughts of home and sanctuary possessing him. His flat was on the fourth floor. But Elijah slowed down as he passed a flat that had newspapers completely covering its window and turned to it, staring at the torn pieces of news that covered the glass. Although he had lived in this building for some time he had never paid these covered windows any mind but now he wondered. Why would someone put torn newspapers on their window? Why not get some curtains or blinds? Why newspapers? Do they wish to say something with this; are these particular ones special to those who lived there ? He wanted to see what they said. Elijah however hesitated. He didn't know if that was wisest thing to do as his experience earlier that day with the bullies made him want to be as inconspicuous as possible. 'And these people once they see me, might say something. That is, if they see me. I can't see them, can they see me?' he asked himself. He walked up to the window. But before he could make out anything he heard a crack, a raised voice that made him flinch. Elijah however wasn't looking at the window that was covered anymore but the only window on this floor that had a clear window just behind him.
At first he didn't know what was going on and only saw two people. A hairy man of below average height and a taller blonde woman. She had her arms extended and her right knee up as a barrier to prevent the man from coming closer, and was successful as the man's short arms weren't able to reach her face. He in turn hit her raised knee, trying to hit her face but was only able to make her flinch when his hand swung past her. Elijah now realised what was going on and was submerged into fire. Fear for some reason is associated with coldness, freezing you, but if you asked Elijah it should be synonymous with fire, a fast fire with its heat not spreading through you but already instantly everywhere rooting you to where you were. And boy was Elijah afraid standing there looking at this scene open-mouthed, never having bore witness to violence of this nature before. He couldn't make out what the man was shouting about but he felt the force of his virile voice which to him seemed like a laser penetrating all physical matter, or like a wildfire burning all before it.
Elijah looked closer at the man's face and his eyes and thought that even his eyes were laser like, so penetrative did he stare at the taller, blonde woman. The woman's own look to Elijah seemed inscrutable at first and then appeared as the look of someone ready to bear a weight soon to be placed upon her, or something already placed upon her but whose weight was just now beginning to be felt.
Elijah stood looking from one to the other gathering as much from the scene as he could even as he knew what was going on. He noted the woman's thin lips and strangely colourless face under the situation, just as he noted the man's inordinate amount of arm hair and the concentrated fury which to Elijah seemed out of place. The man seemed too angry to be so much in control. Anger to his mind should be uncontrollable as his own anger always was. How could this man be composed and angry at the same time, he wondered. Suddenly the woman turned to Elijah and Elijah sucked in his breath, not because she was looking at him, but because of the expression that her lips started to form. Before Elijah had time to overcome his confusion, and decipher the expression on her lips, the man turned to him too, shouting something at him that he couldn't hear even if he did recognise the violence in it. The man then performed the bras d'honneur and quickly, violently even, went for the door of his flat.
'Violence incarnate,' thought Elijah in shock, 'is coming my way. Violence is coming my way'.
The flames that fear had fired all around him, that had rooted him in place, parted in several places and then were extinguished. He broke for the lift. Elijah came from a religious family and prayed that God would keep violence from him. He reached the lift and God answered by immediately opening its doors.
'Of course he would,' said Elijah to himself, relief spreading through him. 'Why wouldn't he look out for me?'
He rapidly pressed his floor number but never looked back to see if the man, violence incarnate, was behind him. The lift doors closed and for the second time today, Elijah breathed in peace and safety, even if the former tremors still made their way through his body. The woman's thin lips came to him again, and the expression they had formed when she saw him. Elijah's former confusion returned to him as did the tremors. 'Why did she do that?' he asked himself. 'Why in that moment?'
Elijah lived in a single-parent household with his father raising him and he entered the two bedroom flat to find him reading his notes from his Dutch language class with his glasses on. Elijah, with his voice trembling, his former agitation now almost completely overwhelming him, sat next to his father, snuggling up beside him, and told him what he saw. His father listened to him giving Elijah's words his full attention, something that parents rarely do with younger children.
'And then she smiled at me. Why would she be smiling at me? And even the smile, the smile had something weird about it. It was like a sorry smile. Like she was sorry, sorry for me.' Elijah's voice has started to shake. 'Why would she be sorry for me?' Without waiting for an answer like a true excitable child Elijah continued: 'Can you do something, dad? Will you do something?' Elijah pleaded. 'Their flat is on the ground floor. The first one as you come out of the lift. Will you do something?'
'Yes,' his father said firmly, and confidently, squeezing Elijah closer to him. 'I'll take care of it. You don't think about it anymore, and don't worry but forget it. Act like it never happened.'
And just like that, the man, the woman, her lips, her sad smile of pity and violence incarnate, all were wiped from memory. Elijah went to make himself a peanut butter and banana sandwich.
Years later when Elijah was an adult this memory returned to him, his hands shaking when he experienced a fragment of the same emotions he did on that day, and shook even harder when he realised that he really, truly and completely forgot about something that had made such an impression on him. And he forgot almost instantly too.
'Was I hypnotised or was that some kind of power, but what kind of power...' he asked himself. 'I must have been hypnotised. There's no way I could have just forgotten about it the instant he told me to. But...he doesn't know hypnosis, my father, does he? Yet his words made me...'
The woman's inopportune smile came to him again and he smiled back incredulously, shocked still that he had forgotten about her so quickly and easily, and that she would be the one to have pity on him that could forget about her like she was nothing to worry about, like she never existed.
'Someone like me,' he said to himself with tears in his eyes, 'is nothing to feel pity for.'
