Memories of the Kuwait War~Chapter 5~ Where is Thomas?!

The sound of the explosion was so loud that Acha instantly crouched on the road with his hands covering his head. “Was it a missile? Was it a bomb? Where did it land!” He was too shocked to open his eyes for a few seconds. I guess everybody else on that road was too. It was a brief period of dead silence before he heard a commotion break out. When he looked, there was a group of people gathered around something, about 15 to 20 meters ahead on that road. Others were running towards the spot. There wasn’t any fire or smoke, though. “So it mustn’t have been a bomb or anything”, he thought. Keeping his gaze on the crowd, he went, “Thomas, come let’s go see what that is and quickly get out of here. Lovely(my mother)and the kids must be scared at home hearing the noise”. 

Thomas uncle didn’t say a word. He was cowardly by nature and was the kind that would avoid such situations at any cost. Acha turned around since he didn’t get a response. To his surprise, Thomas uncle was not behind. Actually he was nowhere to be found. “Now where has he gone!”, he thought. He looked around while he shouting out, “Thomas.... Thomachaaa.... Where did you go?”. With the tension building up as the need to get home to a safe place was increasing, Acha was getting frustrated with the fact that Thomas uncle had decided to abscond. A quick round through the alleys and bye-ways between the buildings there didn’t prove successful. Thomas uncle was still missing. Like a sudden refresher, the scene of the crowd down the road came to his mind. “Maybe Thomas went to see what that was?! Not likely, since he is such a scaredy-cat....But no harm checking”, he thought. His focus was now, not seeing what the crowd was about, but to see if Thomas uncle was there.

There weren’t many people on the road that morning, but whoever was, was there at that spot on the road. Some of them were running around, some calling for the ambulance and the others just standing to see what was going on. Acha reached the crowd soon enough, with his quick paced walking. The crowd was kind of thick that he had to look over shoulders of the men before him. Thomas uncle wasn’t among them. Somebody was lying on the ground covered in blood....A black man. His shirt and his face were all red with blood. His teeth had fallen off and little while pieces covered in blood lay around his face. “What happened?”, he enquired. “A car was coming suddenly around the corner and hit this man, he was crossing the road”, was the reply. Acha took one more look at the man before heading out again to look for his friend. The guy was unresponsive, people were trying to look in his pocket for any identification document or card. He wore red socks. Someone had managed to call the ambulance and the siren was heard from a distance. Acha left from the scene and took another long walk up and down the area in search of Thomas uncle. No trace of him. “Maybe he went back home?”, thinking about this possibility, he hurriedly walked home. 

It was about lunch time and Amma had gotten lunch ready. She was just transferring the curries into the serving bowls when Acha reached home. “Did you get the money...?”, she asked, and the next question rang simultaneously from both their mouths, “Where is Thomas?”

The silence that followed was harrowing. Both of them stood there looking into each other's eyes, both of them waiting for the other person to answer. BAcha was scared now, and Amma instantly knew something went wrong. “Tell me!! What happened? Where is Thomas?”, she asked in desperation. Acha narrated the whole story. “Yes, we heard a noise in the distance, it was like somebody slamming a door, but was quite faint here”, she remembered. And then Acha went on to narrate how he went around the block searching for Thomas uncle. Somehow Amma wasn’t interested in that bit of the story. “Tell me about the black guy”, she insisted. 

Thomas uncle was a dark skinned man...Dark, as in really, really dark! Acha was not the kind who would notice details, but Amma was the opposite. She was really scared now. That vibe seemed to have reached Acha too, he appeared extremely unpleasant. “That’s not Thomas, don’t worry”, he said sounding defensive, “It was really a black man, much darker than Thomas, and with thick curly hair and....” Amma cut him short there, “but Thomas has thick curly hair too!! What color shirt was he wearing, was it blue? You were beginning to say something. What was that...??” “I don’t remember the shirt colour, also, it was covered in blood, I didn’t pay attention......and he was wearing red socks”, Acha poured out what little he remembered.

“Achaya!!!!! That IS Thomas!!!”, Amma broke into tears her voice shivering. “When the two of you were talking this morning and I was putting down the coffee on the tepoy, Thomas was sitting with his legs straightened. I looked down to avoid tripping on his leg. HE WAS WEARING RED SOCKS!!”

~priya~