Prompt: Your phone rings in the middle of the night. An indiscernible voice speaks: “There is a car waiting for you outside your house. Get inside. You don’t want to ignore this.” Your spouse rolls over, eyes squinting, and says, “Everything okay?” What happens next.
Source
Note: I swear I've written a version of this before, really need to find it, it seems to be lost somewhere either in the depths of this blog, or the jumble of the various places I've put my writings in...google docs, text files in my computer, google sheets, my work computer, my former work computer, my other super duper secret blog etcetera. Wish I could find it somewhere, it was not very good but it was something, I wouldn't be needing to rewrite this. I should search my work laptop for it. In any case, here we go. Again. Alas.
"Everything okay?" she says, rolling over, eyes squinting.
I take a long breath, breathe all my troubles out. I try to anyway. Can't think straight. I can't imagine when we'll be able to sleep in this comfort next.
"Babe, stuff everything you care about in a backpack or a duffle bag, something you can carry around with your for hours and days. Don't forget your passport. I got the call. We have to leave. They're sending the car in ten minutes. The valley check-posts will be sealed within two hours I'm told. Apparently there's a meeting with the Chiefs to make them aware of the situation in the next hour," I tell her all in single breath.
She knows what's up. We've been dreading this, preparing for this deep within our psyche even as we pretended it would never happen. This was the worse case scenario and it happened. I don't know the details, the guy was short on them, nobody even knows at this point. What we do know is bad things will happen to us if we stick around and we need to make a rush for the border as soon as we can.
She's ready with her bags in five, dollars, toiletries, undergarments, makeup and snack all ready to go. She spends the next five minutes brushing, eating mint and hyping herself up. I do a last round of checks, we have everything we need, the documents, the valuables, everything. Our backpacks both come at slightly below fifty pounds. Too much for a married middle-aged couple like us, but we've been going on hikes recently. For health reasons, we lied to ourselves as we stuffed our rucksacks with things we'd never use for a one-night camping. Hours and hours of needlessly carrying backbreaking weights, hurting our posture, bruising the shoulders. So many hours spent on youtube videos that taught you to pack efficiently, hundreds of dollars on those vacuum-sealed organizers for travel. Everything ultralight, made for those who did the Appalachian trail. Nobody understood our fascination, obsession rather with getting prepared. Now they will know.
In case the worse happens, and we need to escape from our saviors, we have food, utensils and fuel canisters with us to last for days. Animal repellents, loud flashbangs, and weapons against adversaries wild and human. NO guns, because you don't want to be caught with a weapon when you're a wanted person. It'd make our lives much worse, even in the worse-case scenario.
The driver comes in, we refuse to put our bags in the trunk, he drives swiftly across Thankot and towards the Birgunj border. At Hetauda, a different driver picks us up, this one in a shabbier car, and rushes us to the border. We're certain they don't know who or what they're transporting, for the events that are yet to unfold haven't been public knowledge yet. Very soon the tv signals will go haywire, the fM stations will start broadcasting suspicious messages, the internet in the country will go dark. By then, we'll be out of the country.
Two hours after we leave the house, a heavily-armored motorcade shows up in front of our house. Serious-looking men with serious-looking rifles thump the ground with their boots as they enter our residence. They kick the door open, ruffle through out belongings. All they discover is that we're not home.
The border is sealed just as we have crossed it. We're safe. But not for much longer.
India is not the ideal location for a political refugee. we need to make our way into an international flight before they have the sense to cancel our passports or put us in lists of internationally wanted criminals. Knowing the bureaucracy of the country, it'd be at least a few days. We have time, but we need to use it like a precious resource.
What have we gotten ourselves into.
Related post with similar title here: An escape from Kathmandu
Most related of all, this post
I should really make pages for storylines.
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