Altered routes

Written by: Jo Tam

“Did you know flights towards Europe are now passing through the North Pole to reach their destination? That takes a hell lot more time, don’t you think?”

With wild, startled eyes, I dragged my gaze across the room to my sister, who voiced those words with a twitch at the corner of her mouth. Outside our window was the vast night sky, my sister’s screen reflected on the glass. Flight booking websites, I saw, casting a glaring shade of light upon the dim void, like a stark little white monster in the dark.

Did she really not know the reason behind those altered routes? I thought as I clutched the chair, my hands trembling in the warm room. On the couch sat my computer, the names Ukraine and Iran popping up everywhere. I strode across her and shut my screen, then carried it into my bedroom. 

Recently, I got to know more about the concept of “psychic numbing” in class: the idea of people failing to interpret and emphasise a crisis involving great casualties because the scale of it is too tremendous for them to process emotionally. Maybe my sister fits immaculately into the box sculpted by Robert Jay Lifton and Paul Slovic. How does it feel, I wanted to ask her, to not have images of people wailing through your dreams, and not feel a boundless void building a home within you when you see news of humans being dismissed by their own kind?

No, not a void. A void does not pull strings. Oftentimes I feel like my heart could actually be ripped apart, leaving threads of cracks on my chest.

Only then did I realise: individual, weeping faces in my mind could mean no more than numbers to another person;  that collapsing buildings and fraudulent promises do not flood others’ brains like stormy rolling crashing on a quiet shore. They could never understand how the load upon my heart descended along tears of gratitude when the news of that Iranian boy returning to school popped up on my phone. 

The “numbing” is fearsome, more alarming than ever. Such desire to shift the tide that I harbour, yet when I looked at my sister once more, I realised some people just really intend to live their lives in tiny boxes forever.

She laughed at her phone, a shriek so discordant, and mocked the airline for changing her flight.

I pleaded with my eyes. “Please.” I mouthed.