I Want To Be Heard

 

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SYNOPSIS

Seventy-three-year-old Timothy Blake had the romance of his life which ended tragically. Angry and resentful, he lives a life of hate and malice. He attempts to run and fight and love his whole life in search of his voice. He hopes that his voice will be heard, and his life will mean something.

Seventy-three-year-old Timothy Blake is a different person. He believes he has recently found his voice and is full of excitement and energy, determined to prove that he has changed to a man of integrity, faith and peace.

Twenty- year-old Layal Ganim from Syria has just moved to Newcastle from Perth and is hiding from her past. Her path crosses with Tim’s when she crashes her bicycle in front of him and the ambulance is delayed. Disillusioned and hurting, Layal has no family or friends and is in need of distractions as medical complications develop.

With new found faith that he doesn’t really understand, Tim enthusiastically tries to help by sharing his collection of ‘life lessons’ that he calls revelations. They develop an unusual friendship where they help each other heal and are challenged about faith. They develop a life-long platonic friendship. Life-long means only three months for one of them.

The narrative starts in Layal’s head as her consciousness returns after the bicycle crash. While waiting for the ambulance she finds herself in the care of seventy-three-year-old Timothy Blake. The story oscillates between the Tim and Layal narrative (2027) and Tim’s collection of life stories.

Tim’s revelations start when he is a ten-year-old learning how to box. Usually three stories for each decade of life. They cover his fights, his romances and his running. He joins the army, starts businesses, cheats everyone, discards all family, gets money, gets an education, all the time fighting, running, romancing, hating and failing to find his voice. He lives in Newcastle, Sydney, Perth and Queensland. He travels all over the world, is shot at, beaten up and experimented on, but at sixty-six is still boxing. Layal enjoys hearing or reading his revelations.

The Tim and Layal narrative includes characters from both their pasts. As the dialogue and drama unfold the reader discovers the secrets of broken romances. The matron in the hospital is Tim’s old flame. They have a daughter who was given up for adoption. They have a grandchild they never knew about. Tim finds out he is dying so travels to Perth to unravel Layal’s mystery and hopefully help her to not go down the path of resentment that he travelled. He discovers more than he bargains for. He finds Layal’s boyfriend and on returning convinces her to confess her secret.

The climax of the story comes when Tim explains his most important revelation. The one he had just before he met Layal. The one that changes his life and enables him to be an instrument for reconciliation and die with dignity.

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PRESCRIPT

All of life combines both crises and periods of growth.

Birth is a crisis.

Weaning is a crisis.

Puberty, adolescence, marriage

and the first born child are all periods of crisis

dividing long periods of less spectacular development.

John White‘The Fight’ p188, 1979

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CHAPTER ONE

Old Man Voices

Solitude in the allusive dreamy world of her own thoughts is interrupted every now and then by voices. Old man voices.

‘I need nothing! And no one…’

Consciousness is returning to Layal. It is one man’s voice in particular

‘…friends; I will be charming and persuasive...’

Her own thoughts are suppressed in a lethargic attempt to lock the world out. The old man voice is lively, animated, excited and fresh.

‘…I will only have friends whom I can benefit from…’

It sounds like philosophy?

‘… my own destiny. I am the most important person....’

A statement about life? A motto? A purpose? A way of life? A creed?

Blankness. Darkness. No thoughts.

Layal’s mind again retreats from the world. But is soon brought back by the earnestness in the old man’s voice.

‘…. epiphanies…’

Layal’s thoughts churn rapidly about pensioners walking the street, blind alley ways, angry dogs, the mountain bike, the cobblestone pathway. The two pedestrians. Two old men. She remembers the two men, one shorter than the other, both wearing something on their heads. Then she remembers no more.

Quiet. Stillness. Blankness…

Again that old man voice. She is fast growing fond of and focusing in on this intelligent sounding voice.

‘…revelations…’

Religion?

Layal’s head is throbbing with pain.

Darkness, sleep, dogs, cycling, old men, a walking stick, turbans? bright coloured beanies? A brick wall, and pain. A sharp shoulder pain lurches up her neck to her ear and slaps her awake. Her eyes are open.

Layal wants to sleep and forget the pain. She also wants to be awake. She has a vague idea that being awake right now is more important than sleep. It is a battle raging in her mind. With this sudden surge of consciousness the battle is over. Being awake with the pain & the hurt is now significantly more important than being asleep and imagining the pain away.

She is looking at a floral patterned plaster ceiling that has a few cracks where the paint has peeled away. She is listening to the old man voice of her recent dreams. The voice is clear. It is close to her and it is …real.

‘… I have a voice! Gazza, it has…’

Closing her eye once more, it seems the battle is not yet over. From the darkness, sleep rallies its mysterious forces once again and pulls at Layal to forget the pain, ignore the voices, and rest in the delirium.

She gives in to the pull of sleep, but her mind does not rest. It registers a man’s voice, words, conversation, again the bicycle, the dog barking, the hurt, the pain, too much pain, then blackness once more.

This cycle keeps repeating itself many times because deep down in the recess of her soul, Layal does not want to wake up. She does not want to fight. She does not want to acknowledge the pain, or deal with the accident. She does not want to admit she was at fault, and she certainly does not want the embarrassment. And yet, another part of her psyche does want to fight. She is fighting. Fighting, alone, in the darkness. And the old man’s conversation is tugging at that part of her mind.

She has not yet figured out what the conversation is about, but it is definitely vigorous and animated. It is calling for her attention. Layal knows that a tone of a voice does not always correlate with the character of its owner, however she is trusting her instincts and feels that the owners of these voices are nice genuine people who mean her no harm. She knows she is in trouble, the pain in her head tells her she is hurt, yet somehow, she is at peace with the old man voices.

Layal’s mind resolves to wake up and understand the words, and the pain.

Her eyes open once again. She is in a strange room. She can tell from the height of the ceiling and the ornamented plaster around an equally elaborate light hanging that she is in an old house. The tan corduroy curtains tell her she is in an old person’s home. The dim lighting and the springy mattress her back sinks into tells her she is certainly not in a hospital. The sound of the voices tells her she is being looked after.

Everything in the room reminds Layal of her mother’s place when she first came to Australia. A warm safe place where a frightened seven-year-old child was cared for. Layal had lost her real family somewhere between Syria (her birthplace) and Australia (her adopted country). Shirley was the only mother Layal really knew, yet she was more like a grand-mother. She (and the world) had lost Shirley six months before this accident. Shirley had an old house, with similarly patterned ceilings, similar curtains and a similar smell. The room she is in right now looks, sounds and feels like a familiar and safe place.

It takes Layal about twenty seconds to come to this conclusion as her eyes move from the ceiling to the curtains, to the furniture, the small man seated at the end of the bed with a pale blue scarf, and the other one seated between the bed and the door. He is wearing a dark blue suit. In his lap he is fidgeting with what looks like a green cricket cap. He has a long thin face, and fluffy grey eyebrows. He is the one talking so excitedly as Layal comes out of her unconscious state. Her eyes stop on him. Maybe he feels her eyes on him because as he talks he inclines his head slightly to his left and discovers Layal watching him. He keeps talking to the other man and at the same time makes a gesture to Layal. He simply raises his bushy grey eyebrows and opens his eyes wider. Layal receives his gesture as Welcome. You are safe.

‘…I have a voice.’ The tall skinny man in the suit with big grey eyebrows is saying. ‘And I want to be heard …Oh look, she’s awake. G’day girly. How are you doing?’

Without stopping, and seemingly without breathing, he continues.

‘You had a bit of a bingle on your bike. We brought it in off the street. It’s in the hallway. We’ve called the ambulance. They’re on the way. There’s been some sort of crash at the race involving spectators. They said they are a bit pushed, and didn’t know how long it would take. – Sorry. You were unconscious, so Meryl suggested we bring you in here. A bit more comfortable than the street! You’ve been out for about …’ Now he breaths, looks at his watch, then at the other man for reassurance. ‘…twenty-five minutes?’ The softer man nods.

‘Oh, sorry. My name’s Tim.’ He stops talking now. Stands up and reaches out to shake hands. Layal is unresponsive. Tim is embarrassed, but he hides it well with a charming natural smile. He guides his outstretched empty hand towards the other man. ‘And this is Gazza.’

Gazza moves his arm to do a casual salute, smiles and says ‘Hi.’

After a pause, ‘Do you have a name?’

Layal takes a breath and prepares to answer. No words come. What does come is a lump in her throat and an inexplicable dampness to her eyes. She is glad to be interrupted by a lady entering the room with a tray full of hot drinks.

‘Meryl, she’s alive!’ cries Tim dramatically lifting both arms with a little too much enthusiasm. Layal suspects that he has seen her crisis of tears about to occur and silently thanks him for diverting the attention.

Meryl answers with just enough enthusiasm to show she is pleased, ‘Lovely’ and proceeds to give everyone the beverage of their choice.

As Meryl goes about the distraction of serving drinks, Layal prepares herself for the introduction and the explanation.

The introduction will be easy; she will give them her name. The explanation is going to be a bit harder. Her mind quickly reminds her of the situation. As the fog of unconsciousness lifted, clarity had returned. Later she will get the chance to explain it to Tim as an awakening of sorts, and Tim will say that he understands, and has had several of his own like that during the course of his life.

They do not know it, but the introduction of twenty-year-old Layal Ganim from Syria to seventy-three-year-old Timothy Blake from Australia, is going to be an important life-long plutonic friendship. For one of them this is only going to be about three months.

But right now, Layal is thinking about how to explain herself and the accident. Two thoughts come within moments of each other. The second thought has greater significance than the first. The first thought is the explanation.

Layal’s first thought is that these people will want to know why she was cycling so fast through the city streets. An explanation will be needed. She will have to talk about her preparation for the Anaconda all-terrain adventure race next week, and how she needs to practice riding on the rough cobble stone road and narrow streets.

She will say something like ‘I’ve been training every day for the last 3 months. I normally take the cycle paths on the side of the highway and through the parks. This last week I’ve had to change my routine because they have been setting up for the Super-cars. There was a dog chasing me and the sun blinding me just before I got to the corner. Then you guys were right there. My reaction was to avoid you, and in doing that I hit that big step.’

It sounds weak as she rehearses in her head, but she will fill it in a bit with some more information as she speaks. Her coach had suggested to find some narrow streets with rough pavement similar to the actual race. The cobblestone roads around this suburb are perfect. The previous day she had walked around and mapped out a suitable way through this suburb that could be used. As expected, most people were at the race or out of town avoiding the race. She had not come across any pedestrians the whole way, so she had gotten faster as her confidence increased. But she was still being careful.

The dog frightened the socks off her. It didn’t bark until it was about two metres away, on her left and rapidly approaching. She pushed harder, increased her speed and had got away. At the next lane, there was a gap to the right that opened up. As she passed it the sun blinded her momentarily. She was then approaching a sharp left-hand turn that she should have slowed down for. Recovering from the blinding sun she saw two old men coming around the corner. She could not turn into the corner without hitting them, so she did not turn. She went straight. Straight ahead, hitting some steps in the cobblestone and flying over the handlebars towards a brick wall. In slow motion Layal can visualise herself flying helplessly towards that wall, and feel the pain of embarrassment as much as the real physical pain.

She tells herself it must have been comical to watch.She decides when talking about it she will hide her embarrassment by joking about her fear of flying. Humour might soften the pain.Those were her thoughts on the explanation.

The other thought is plain and simple. It is relief. Somewhere back in that unconscious darkness, she was alone and tenaciously fighting between the dream and reality. Those reassuring old man voices from the darkness, are now real. She can now see the faces they belong to. It means that in her fight, she is not alone anymore. Layal can have a rest from the fight because these three people are here to help. She is not alone, and the relief is an enormous weight, lifted.

These thoughts happen fast. There is no time to process the emotional response, she has to introduce and explain herself to these kind strangers, immediately.

Layal begins. She attempts to speak.

‘Hi. I’m Layal. I’m…’ - eyes watering up – an involuntary shiver.

‘I’ve…’– sucking in two short breaths.

‘I was… I had…’ and then the flood of tears arrive.

That is all the words of explanation that she manages before the ambulance arrives. Before she is taken, one other word is on her lips several times. It is ‘Thankyou.’

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CHAPTER TWO

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CHAPTER THREE

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CHAPTER FOUR

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CHAPTER FIVE

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CHAPTER SIX

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CHAPTER SEVEN

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CHAPTER EIGHT

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CHAPTER NINE

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CHAPTER TEN

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CHAPTER ELEVEN

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CHAPTER TWELVE

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CHAPTER THIRTEEN

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CHAPTER FOURTEEN

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CHAPTER FIFTEEN

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CHAPTER SIXTEEN

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CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

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CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

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CHAPTER NINETEEN

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CHAPTER TWENTY

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CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

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CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

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CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

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CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

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CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

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CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

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CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

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CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

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CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

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CHAPTER THIRTY

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CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

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CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

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CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

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CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

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CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

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CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

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CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

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CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

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CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

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CHAPTER FORTY

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CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

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CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

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CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

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~

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