A Placeless Sun  

    Allison's plane lands at New York's John F. Kennedy Airport on a wintry November afternoon in 1999. Subconsciously, her move is an attempt to escape the stasis of life in Australia.  New experiences and friends promise more, but she fears little time is left if her cancer returns.

Enrolled at Columbia University – with a flat-share nearby in Harlem – she sets about her  life, trying to unravel her existential emptiness. In the year before leaving Australia she began experiencing altered mental patterns, memory loss and ultra-vivid dreams, and she fears an emerging madness. Looking for an answer, she flounders, until Hooman arrives in her life.

Circulating in milieu in stark contrast to Allison’s, Hooman finds in Allison someone unique and inspiring.

Penetrating the source of her strange paranormal experiences, Allison realises the answer in ancient Egyptian and Middle East texts about the afterlife.
   
    Embarking on a new life together in Harlem, they renovate a burnt-out house and confront the forces of gentrification. Their values are tested as they live amongst the poverty, violence and racial segregation that are an unspoken part of the American dream.

Allison's paranormal experiences deepen; her premature cross-over into the other world is caused by an undiscovered secondary tumour growing in her brain.

Foreseen in a pastiche of fragments, her future and past appear in random words and objects, in posters, adverts on TV, people's conversations and her own thought processes. In rhythms of convergence, her life synchronises perfectly with those around her, passing into a world of immortality, where duality merges into a complete oneness; a placeless state, which Plato thought existed beyond the crude shadow forms of this world, constituting the real life.  It seems that world they knew, didn't exist to begin with. A new world, one both disturbingly beautiful and sublime rises up to meet them.

chapter four - sample

And if, by the help of God, he findeth on this journey a trace of the traceless Friend... he shall straightway step into THE VALLEY OF LOVE and be dissolved in the fire of love. The steed of this Valley is pain; and if there be no pain this journey will never end. In this station the lover hath no thought save the Beloved, and seeketh no refuge save the Friend.

--BAHÁ´U´LLÁH

In the apartment, Allison took a chair to the window, placing it near a radiator, where she warmed her hands while studying the view. Darkness arrived with the same cloud front which had obscured the Trade Towers earlier; the low sun occasionally peaked through the horizon, illuminating the brown water in the river and the odd cluster of buildings close to Manhattan’s waterfront. The subtly changing grey-red tints applied to the veneer of buildings changed from moment to moment as clouds gliding overhead cast moving shadows; it reminded her of the hues in the desert back home. The desert expressed a certain severe beauty, which the city now mirrored. Both possessed attributes paradoxically full and empty. Allison's father had always said to her that the desert is full of emptiness and the city is empty of fullness.

Nava and Hooman rummaged about the kitchen.

‘Can I make you a coffee or herbal tea or something cold perhaps?’ Hooman’s muffled voice filtered through the kitchen wall.

‘Yes, please, have you got camomile?’

Hooman leaned out the doorway. He read the label to her, ‘Camomile mixed with spiced apple. Is that okay?’

‘That’s fine. Thanks.’

With warmth back in her blood, she left the window.

The apartment wasn’t what she’d envisaged. Hooman seemed to her to be a somewhat conservative person, with restrained but not inarticulate tastes and so concluded that the apartment must have been his place originally. The interior was fairly plain--white walls and old worn parquetry wood floors. Nava would have moved in later, adding the hard-edged designer furniture--which Allison now observed with a smile--placed strategically around the space. A peculiar conundrum though, was the size of the apartment, it was too small for a lawyer of the stature described by Nava.

On the opposite wall--facing the view of Manhattan--were floor to ceiling bookshelves, in effect an entire wall of books. The stark adjoining wall hosted only a single large and colourful abstract canvas, which Allison knew must be Nava’s too--it was over-designed, not art, so much as wall decoration.

At the bookshelf, she began to browse through the many titles, which reflected every conceivable genre. Hooman appeared with two cups of steaming herbal tea.

‘Ah thanks, I’m just looking at your books here. You have some interesting and rare titles.’

‘Thanks, yes, I haven’t read half of them. My collecting outstrips my ability to read them all.’

‘Could I borrow some of these, sometime, maybe?’

‘Maybe? Of course. No problem! Whatever you like, go for it, you might like some of the philosophy, religion and psychology books, over there,’ he pointed to the lower shelves at the other end of the room, ‘I mean you won’t find anything to help you with your MA, there is nothing as intense or convoluted as a university textbook, but you’re most welcome nonetheless.’

She made her way to the lower shelves--crouching down, her fingers walked along the spine of each book. Methodically she read each one, mumbling the title quickly between blowing the steam off the top of her cup and taking a tentative sip from her tea. Once in a while, she voiced a title out loud, ‘Plato, The Republic,’ then reverting to her mumbling, she continued along the shelf, ‘Jung, Dreams… The Buddha, Lankava Sutra, Rumi, hmm.’ Contemplating the breadth of knowledge, she commented, ‘This is a small bookshop really, isn’t it?’

He laughed, adding, ‘This is not everything either, I have boxes full in the wardrobe and under my bed.’

She smiled and took another sip of her camomile tea. As her eyes refocused on the bookshelf, they picked out the words The Conference of the Birds; the print on the spine was cracked, fading out on certain letters. Reaching out she took the small dusty book from the shelf. Sliding her fingers over the cover, she read the title out twice, in a quizzical tone.

‘Found something that would interest you?’

‘Yes, strangely, but, it’s weird.’

‘Why?’

‘This is the same text, I mean, it was on the lions, in those optical boxes, today, at the gallery in Soho. Strange huh?’

‘You didn’t mention they had text on them.’

‘It didn’t seem important then. I think it was Farsi or Arabic script, but I’m just guessing.’

‘Oh it has to be Farsi, for sure. Attar--the guy who wrote the book--was a Persian.’

‘Do you mind if I borrow this?’

‘No, go for it, my favourite slice is “Come you lost Atoms to your Centre draw, and be the Eternal Mirror that you saw: Rays that have wandered into Darkness wide, return and back into your Sun subside”.’

He gulped the last dregs of tea down hastily and went over to the table for the book he’d purchased the previous night, ‘I’ll just find a place for this in the architecture section. Hey! Do you want any more tea?’

‘No thanks, I’m fine. I might start reading this.’

Hooman placed the new architecture book on the shelf; Allison was gingerly flicking through the old edition of The Conference of the Birds--the fibres and yellowed pages frail.

‘That book is a first edition of the English translation; a good friend of mine, Shidan, bought it for my birthday a couple of years ago.’

‘Oh, are you sure you want to lend this?’

‘Yeah sure, it needs to be read. I haven’t picked it up for ages. Anyway, it’s not worth that much.’

It puzzled Allison, why this could be so significant. The story she made out, as she skimmed through the scenes, was an archetypal theme of a bunch of birds on a journey together, nothing particularly remarkable.

* * *

Hooman answered, ‘It’s a mix of lamb, dried limes and chopped greens.’

She mixed it with rice and yoghurt on her plate, before spooning a mouthful and muffling a response, ‘Wow, this is tasty. Do you guys have it often?’

Nava burst out, ‘Are you kidding, this kind of cooking requires a woman at home with plenty of spare time and no career prospects.’

Hooman added quietly, ‘We eat take-out a lot.’

‘But you are privileged though. Hooman did most of the preparation last night, after we got back from the café. He was up until one this morning.’

His smile was kind, ‘It was an excuse--having you around--to do something special.’

‘Thanks Hooman, I do feel privileged. It was nice of you to go to so much trouble, but you guys are over extending yourselves.’ She leant over and patted him on the arm, ‘Thanks mate,’ she said playfully with an exaggerated Australian accent. Hooman’s face flushed and Allison thought he seemed a little self-conscious with her attention. Half expecting some nominally self-depreciating line, she was surprised when he said nothing in reply. Instead, he smiled with a comical twist of his eyebrows and shrugged.

Nava and Allison looked at each other, halfway to giggling.

‘You would make a good house-husband you know. What do you think Nava?’

‘Uh huh, definitely, he’s a better cook than I am, by a long way, that is if he makes an effort and goes out and finds someone.’

This was going to get uncomfortable, Allison saw immediately where the topic was leading.

‘You know my answer to that, anyway this conversation is heading away from the cooking topic and we’ll bore Allison,’ Hooman’s eyebrows lifted high.

‘No we won’t,’ was Nava’s slightly acidic response.

‘Ah well, Allison this is going to get personal, if that’s okay with you?’

Before Allison could answer, Nava inserted, ‘It doesn’t matter anyway, I used to moan about you to Allison before... when we were in Melbourne. She knows all about your woman-woes.’ Allison tried to recall some of these conversations.

‘What woman-woes? I just haven’t found anyone I want to be with permanently, yet, that’s all.’

‘You’re too fussy Joonam.’

Finally remembering a series of conversations in a café on Smith Street in Melbourne, they were more like long-winded complaints than conversation; Hooman was probably beyond extracting himself now, and Allison would have to see this subject through to its uncomfortable and repetitive conclusion. She could feel sympathy for Hooman welling up.

‘What about you? You can’t speak,’ he responded.

‘Yes I can! At least I have had a few boyfriends, here and there; anyway I could get married any... time... I... like. I mean you haven’t had any possibilities, or at least only long distance email-writing competitions, or childhood sandcastle-building friends, they don’t count.’ Nava turned to Allison and continued, ‘He had a girlfriend in Perth that I remember, but none here; none that count anyway.’

He smirked, shaking his head, ‘This is getting boring talking about me. What about you Allison, have you found anyone you want to spend this brief little life of ours with?’

‘Spend my life with, hmm no, I guess not. I had a few guys I thought might be life partners, but they cleared off when things became difficult or when I dashed their rather limited idea of a relationship. But then, I guess I could never picture the future with anyone; the future seems too uncertain a thing to spend an entire life with just one person.’

‘Yes I see, that’s true. The future is uncertain, for us all, but that’s half the fun of it.’ The word fun, in Hooman’s words resonated in Allison’s thoughts again and with the same tone as the gallery owner earlier in the day. Fun, now carried an association, which somehow implied that the future was a joke; this wasn’t funny to her, but tacitly unquiet. But maybe it--life--was just a big joke, a divine conspiracy of humanly untenable proportions--a comic cipher. God the great joker might be waiting with a big belly laugh, for a few brave souls, who would figure out the final clichéd punch line. Life could then be mysterious and beautiful, but also, just ridiculously funny in the darkest possible fashion; this was her conclusion, and her thoughts flowed back to the conversation in the present. Hooman was waiting for a response from her and she obliged.

‘On the positive side, even though none of my relationships ever worked out in the long-term, I figured out that love is not the pleasurable feeling of being loved, as much as mutual self-sacrifice. Relationships break down when one person doesn’t want to sacrifice something of themselves anymore. I’m not saying I can commit to that sacrifice myself either. I just recognise what is needed without wanting to commit to it.’

‘That’s a nice observation,’ he nodded.

Nava raised her voice, ‘Can you believe it! He is looking for someone to spend eternity with. And he’s always banging on about going through All the Worlds of God,’ she rolled her eyes, ‘can you imagine, what would the ad sound like, in a singles column? “Looking for spiritual giant with excessive tendencies towards prayer and meditation. Must be willing to travel throughout infinite spiritual dimensions, must have active imagination”. ’

He scrunched up his face, ‘Well Nava is making fun of me now, but that is essentially true. I won’t deny it.’

‘My God, stupido, who would ever answer that ad? Hooman. Really!’

‘Well in the end I am not that idealistic. Some qualities of compassion and kindness would be sufficient, not just superficially happy-go-lucky, but a person with a deep-seated kindness towards all people.’

‘He wants to date a young nun-type person, basically. Hooman you’re not as spiritual as you believe you are.’

‘Nava you’re right, I am not exceptionally gifted in the spirituality department, so what, I aspire to it, that’s all!’

Allison chuckled, but perceived Hooman was being unfairly brow beaten. Adjusting her tack, she tried to defend him a little, ‘Look I think there is nothing basically wrong with that Nava, if that is what he wants, then leave him be.’

‘Finally, support, thank you. You see?’ he appealed to Nava.

She sighed and crossed her arms, but after a short silence began rubbing her temples and then burst out losing any possibility of composure, ‘He’s ridiculous! I’ve been watching for years and perfectly good girls throw themselves at him like the sea on rocks. He’s completely unmoved.’

Allison perceived that this topic expressed a fundamental part of Nava’s being. "It is my sisterly duty to help find him a partner. He is always such an unwilling participant." That snippet of conversation popped into Allison’s head from a few years back. At the time she thought Nava was being a bit meddlesome in the life of her brother, but hadn’t said anything to the contrary because it seemed like one of those intractable issues.

‘Well look, anyway I always thought they never knew me well enough, to know what they were getting into. If they knew me, really, they would be disappointed.’

‘No they wouldn’t!’ shouted Nava, exhausted by his excuses.

Hooman continued to speak quietly, in a measured tone, ‘Well… if they weren’t disappointed in me eventually, I might get worried. That would be a sign they hadn’t looked deeply enough, for flaws.’

‘Don’t over complicate things will you, lower your standards, just a bit.’

Nava’s body language stiffened terminally and in a diversionary tactic Allison pointed out the window, ‘Look the clouds have moved on, you can see the city clearly now.’

The others followed the direction of Allison’s pointing hand; the night was black with a glow from the city, lighting fragments of cloud passing swiftly overhead.

‘Yes… it’s great… I knew you would like it. I never tire of it; do you want to go onto the balcony for a better look? It won’t last long, the clouds will be back soon.’

‘Yes please,’ they got up, Allison glanced at Nava. ‘You coming too?’

Still trembling dimly with the unresolved conversation, Nava replied in quiet resignation, ‘No, it’s too cold, I see it every night. I’ll watch from here.’ Diverting her gaze quickly, she began clearing dishes. Hooman went for jackets and gloves.

* * *

On the balcony, a thin blanket of patchy snow covered most surfaces.

‘Thanks for the exit to the conversation in there.’

‘That’s okay,’ Allison smiled, walking in slow and deliberately even steps, trying--as she did on the first night in New York--to make a perfect circle in the snow. Taking a glove off and crouching down, she patted the crunchy snow inside the circle. Scooping several handfuls from the centre, she made a snowball. Looking up at him she tried not to smile, but felt her checks holding a perceptible grin.

Searching his face as she stood up, she discerned that he had pre-empted the shape of her thoughts, and asked.

‘You don’t mind then?’

‘No, be my guest.’

‘This is my first ever snowball fight... well not really, but I want to pretend it is. I’ve never seen this much snow before, in a suburban setting, in a city like this.’

He stood still, a calm totem with closed eyes. The snowball hit him in the chest. Opening his eyes and looking down, he murmured, ‘Hmm. You’re a good shot. That’s dead centre.’

‘You’re not going to fight back?’

‘Me? No.’

‘Go on.’

Hesitating, he replied, ‘No it’s okay, maybe another time.’

‘Okay... but you’re being a party pooper, you know that?’

‘Well… anyway we came out for the view,’ he brushed himself down, smiled and leant on the railings.

‘Yes we did, but you have to promise to get me back another time, other wise I’ll feel guilty,’ she joined him, gazing out over the river and beyond that Manhattan.

Staring straight ahead he said, ‘Okay, I promise. I’ll get you back some other time.’

The sounds of New Jersey traffic, moving along the river edge, rose up to meet them and Manhattan’s muted noises--drifting across the water--mingled with the traffic noise in delicate interplay.

They listened to these sounds for a long while and Allison tried to disentangle the source of each sound, eventually commenting, ‘I’d love to get a shot of all this. I had my camera today, but I totally forgot to use it... I was just so absorbed by everything… though, I think I’d definitely need a tripod and cable release in this light. I have a good one back in Australia, but it was too bulky to bring here.’

‘I think Nava has a tripod for her work, she got it ages ago for interior shots and I don’t think she ever opened the box. It’s brand new.’

‘It was just a vague wish; I am going to buy a small transportable one for myself soon anyway. I could do it another time.’

‘Nava wouldn’t mind, but it’s up to you.’

She thought about it for a moment, ‘You think so? But she’s a bit upset now. Touchy.’

‘Ha, yeah. No, she’ll be fine about it. She blows over quickly. And we can go up to the roof... if you like.’

Energised by the randomness of going to the roof, she clapped her padded hands, ‘A mini adventure... wow!’

‘Do you want to take some shots?’ she asked.

‘Me… I don’t know anything about photography. Nothing would turn out, I’m sure of it.’

‘Have a go, I’ll show you what to do.’

He walked over, looking at the dials and numbers as if they were in a lost ancient language and held the cable with a blank look.

She smiled, leaning over the camera to set the focus to infinity, ‘Right... ready to go. When I give you the go ahead, you squeeze this cable lever and hold it until I say release. We can take a series of shots at different times and see which one works out. Oh, but before we start, do you want to compose the shot first?’

‘Oh yes, right, okay,’ he crouched down, straining his eyes. ‘The city... it’s barely visible, but from what I can see it looks okay to me, I think… but maybe you better check too.’

Holding his arm, she steadied herself on the icy rooftop, crouched down and looked through the viewfinder, making minor adjustments to the angle of the lens.

‘That’s good, okay. Here, hold the cable again, I’ll time it... although... I can’t see a thing on my watch,’ swivelling around she tried to find an angle at which indirect city light would illuminate the tarnished dials on her watch.

‘Here, use mine. It has an internal light,’ he passed her his watch. In the gloom two things were obvious, its intense shininess, and its expense.

Standing behind him, she watched the scene, smiling internally as he continually stared at the city, then back at the cable with a continued blank and lost look. Notwithstanding his limits when it came to photography, she found him amusing in a cute, helpless, childlike way.

Between each shot she observed him gingerly winding fresh film into the frame.

After a few shots he said, ‘This is easier than I thought.’

‘Yes it is. Hey... you don’t have to be so gentle with the camera,’ smiling and shaking her head once he had turned back to the city. She continued counting down time, initially at twenty second intervals then at intervals of thirty and forty seconds.

From the limited glimpse of his personality thus far, Allison found him interesting, a mix of qualities she hadn‘t seen before.

‘...sixty seconds... two minutes. Okay release!’ To her, he had the typical external appearance of a city lawyer, with all his suits and glistening ties, slightly prudish, both liberal and conservative, depending on the topic. Normally she would be a little repelled or at least guarded, with someone like him; he gave off mixed signals, particularly the fact that he was not living at a level to which he was clearly capable financially. There were incongruous elements underneath the sheen of his urbane life, but still, he was compelling to her, in a manner that was as yet indefinable, he was open too--kind.

‘...five minutes. Now!’ Concluding finally that, she liked him; he would be a friend--a good friend possibly. Counting internally now, she signalled with less purpose, ‘Okay… now,’ because this shot seemed like it would be the last; she surveyed the hazy air on the upper part of the Hudson River.

The weather was changing rapidly. A mist and bank of heavy snow clouds moved in from the Bronx, it swallowed Washington Bridge, as it crossed the river towards the apartment complex. At first, small snow flakes appeared, eventually however a heavy barrage of puffy feather-like flakes descended, cutting a diagonal swath through the blackness and further obscuring the city, which appeared now only as a dull glow behind a coarse veil of fabric. The cloud and snow had completely swallowed the city.

‘Are we finished now?’ he said, turning around with suppressed excitement.

‘Yeah that’ll do. Anyway, we can’t see much with the snow like this.’

As she packed the camera into its pouch, Hooman commented, ‘You know this camera reminds me of Iran--when I was a child.’

‘Really, why?’

‘I knew I’d seen this camera before--I just realized--I think one of my uncles had this exact model. There were a few Russian built goods in the country at that time. The communists tried to infuse Iran with more that just ideology.’

‘I like to hear that from you.’

‘You do. What… about Russian goods?’

‘No… I mean... I’m connected to your life now. Through this camera; I’m a part of your unique history. Your childhood memory.’

‘And you know... I can remember taking a picture of the extended family with my uncle’s help; he held the camera for me--it was too heavy--and I pressed the button. This was in the early seventies. You know: mop-tops; flared jeans; and mini-skirts--we were in his pomegranate grove in southern Iran, it was one of the yearly reunions, a Passover celebration just outside Esfahan.’

‘Sounds bizarre... an Iranian Brady Bunch. I’m not sure I’m ready for that.’

He laughed.

In the apartment, they brushed down their clothes and hung their coats in a wardrobe near the door. Nava had recovered most of her good humour.

‘So how was it, did you get some good photos?’

‘I don’t know, we’ll see. I’ll show you the results when we see each other next. Hooman was the main camera operator.’

‘Really? I would have liked to see that, his photography skills are as good as my cooking. He can barely take good happy snaps.’

‘Well he did okay, I think.’

‘It wasn’t so hard,’ he said in excitement.

Nava grinned, ‘Yeah whatever,’ passing Allison a knowing glance--which she didn’t attempt to hide from Hooman--then she kissed the air in his direction.

‘Hey can I use your computer, I assume you have internet? I want to send an email to Paul and let him know I landed.’

Hooman said, ‘Yeah it’s in my bedroom, I’ll show you and then I’ll make hot chocolate for us all, shall I?’

He walked in the kitchen after showing Allison the computer, Nava spoke to him in Farsi, ‘So what do you think?’

‘Of Allison, you mean, from what I can tell very perceptive, quite unconventional. I mean, in an interesting way. She’s smart: definitely.’

‘Cute eh?’ He knew immediately that Nava intended to fish ever so subtly, or at least she thought she was being subtle. He rolled his eyes in his mind.

‘Yes nice, don’t speak in Farsi please. Speak English, you know I don’t like it. Especially with guests around.’

With a broad smile, Nava continued in Iranian, ‘Would make a good friend, I think.’

Hooman responded in English, ‘Yes, but I guess I don’t know her well enough yet. You can’t presume Nava.’

‘Yes, but I know her and she is worth getting to know, believe me.’

Looking at her sideways, he smiled affirmatively, despite his vaguely cynical thoughts, because firstly, he didn’t want to crush her enthusiasm, but also, he sensed a brief assenting possibility. Nava was not a hugely competent judge of character. She had said this many times before and proved to be universally wrong; but now by sheer chance, she might be right. He thought about chance meetings and Allison coming in from JFK after he’d got the new book with Terminal Five on the cover. But then, he thought, she hadn’t flown into that terminal, it was Terminal Seven she’d mentioned coming through. So it was probably nothing.

Reverting to English, Nava asked, ‘What’s up Hooman, you’ve gone all quiet, what happened to the hot chocolate?’ Standing in front of three empty cups for some time, he saw what he should be doing and opened the cupboard in search of chocolate powder.

* * *

Running down the corridor, in a way which made him feel moderately indecorous, he just managed to slip the book through the closing gap in the elevator doors, while she vigorously thrashed the close-door button.

‘Thanks,’ she ripped the book from his hand, laughing while she continued hitting the button.

‘Hey, hey, stop trying to leave without me.’

Exiting the building through the lobby doors, Hooman cautioned her about the black ice on the edge of the road, as they walked into a rush of frigid air.

‘It’s very slippery; you can’t always see it in this light. The salting of the road doesn’t always cover it all.’

She ignored him without hesitation, crossing the road.

‘God is she stubborn,’ he muttered quietly, with muted frustration. A spark of playful annoyance transformed itself into an uncharacteristic impulse. He watched with calm detachment as he leant down and padded together a quick but well proportioned snowball. Just as she had crossed over to the other side of the road, it landed with precision in the back of her head.

The force of the blow propelled her stumbling forward onto her knees, her hands sunk deep into an icy slush in the gutter.

‘Oh gees, what was I thinking?’ forgetting himself he ran over to her, slipping and sliding on the way. Helping her upright, he brushed her snow-bound hair.

‘Oh God! I’m really sorry, are you okay?’

But she laughed and said, ‘You really keep your promises, I knew you would get me back eventually, but I never thought it would be tonight.’

‘I don’t know what I was doing, what an utter idiot I am.’

‘No. You’re feistier than I thought Hooman. It’s a good thing,’ she looked down at her wet knees and gloves laughing.

Extending his hands he offered his gloves, ‘I’m really sorry.’

‘Don’t sweat it, here, you take these,’ she passed him the now wet gloves he had lent her earlier, ‘they’re yours anyway and I’ll buy some tomorrow. I saw a little hat and glove stall this morning on the corner of 72nd and Amsterdam Street.’

He pushed his own gloves at her again, she didn’t take them, but smiled. Leaning up she kissed him on the cheek, murmuring, ‘I’ve gotta go, the bus is here.’

Jumping on she waved, ‘See ya soon!’

Waving back, he had nothing to say in response and as the bus moved off she opened a window shouting, ‘Hey! It’s my turn next, to get you back I mean.’

Once more, he tried to think of something remotely interesting to say, but nothing arrived, he felt un-adult, out of depth; it was a sensation almost forgotten from his teenage years which washed over him. Continuing to wave self-consciously, he watched the bus becoming smaller and listened to the engine whining occasionally when it lost traction on the black ice. Eventually the sound of the engine faded in the darkness.

Copyright ©  Dimitri Tishler                                               top