Chapter 2
Born into Silence
The first language I learned was silence.
I knew quiet before I knew words, before I knew fear. Not the calm sort.
Not the kind that rests provide. This silence was on purpose. Formed.Taught.
It dwelt in our home's walls. In the meantime, our doors closed silently. Along the route,
footsteps softened until they arrived at a room. Silence was not an absence. It came down to control.
It is what I was born into.
No one ever shared stories about my birth with me.
Over meals, there were no happy memories exchanged; there was no humor over sleepless nights or first smiles.
Like something sharp covered in fabric, the subject was gently but forcefully pushed away as it got near.
I quit inquiring.
From the time I could walk, I was watched, which is what I knew—not with love, not with doubt, but with hope.
As if something invisible had been inserted into me at birth, and
everyone was waiting to observe when it would show itself.
Mornings at our house were peaceful routines. Breakfast was consumed in silence unless necessary.
The news was muted in the background and overlooked. My father did read.
My mother moved gingerly, as if sound itself could upset something delicate.
Early on, I realized that noise attracted attention, and attention needed answers.
Thus, I developed caution.
Teachers commended my discipline during school. They noted, "He is rather mature."
"So well-behaved." For me, they were unaware that obedience was not optional. It was all about staying alive.
Other kids talked naturally. They moaned. They chuckled loudly. They contended.
I watched them as though someone were studying another culture. Fascinating yet far away.
I was not jealous of them still.
That followed subsequently.
Lessons were not openly given at home. Family dignity and responsibility were not subjects of lectures.
Those were assimilated but not described. An arched eyebrow
conveyed more knowledge than words could ever convey.
When I messed up, there was no feeling involved in the correction.
Not any rage.
No yelling permitted. Just frustration, cold and bitter. It sank deep into my heart and lingered there long after the event had passed.
The one thing I dreaded most was disillusionment.
My dad hardly discussed the future with me. But when he did, he spoke with exactness.
"You will understand when the time comes," he would remark.
He never specified the time for what.
Silence ceased to seem neutral as I became older. It started to weigh too much.
Loaded. As though it was concealing something unnamed, wanted to be found.
I started to observe the breaks in talks. Adults stopped speaking as I walked into a room.
The method names were avoided, instead replaced by glances and head nods.
Some elements of our history were only fragments. A scar someone declined to justify.
A picture vanishing from the wall. One relative whose name never came up again.
I discovered that silence held significance. Ghosts haunted it.
One afternoon, I went into the back room with my mother; I was still small enough to be invisible.
When she saw me standing there, she froze.
She murmured, "Go back."
"Why?" I questioned.
She examined me, really studied me as if weighing something.
She added, "Because some things are not for youngsters."
"But I am here," I answered. "I can already hear them."
She grew smooth for a second, barely a second.
She said, "That is what scares me.
That was the first time I came to understand silence was intended to shield me from something.
I suggest shielding something from me.
The silence became more difficult to bear as a youngster.
My own voice started to become clear to me. How seldom I relied upon it.
How deliberate it seemed, even when I was alone.
It was as though part of me was always listening, always awake, even in my thoughts.
I aimed to yell once. Once only. To shatter the silence and find out what would result.
I have done it.
I developed control instead. I came to be disciplined. I discovered how to bury emotion
so deep it nearly vanished.
Almost.
Kareem knew before everyone else did.
"You hardly ever speak," he said one evening while we were standing outside, watching the sky darken.
I said, "I talk when it counts."
He laughed gently.
"That is what they taught you," he replied. "Not what you picked."
The words followed me.
For the first time, I pondered whether my quietness was really mine.
I stayed up all night that night, wondering about all the things I had never said.
I gulped down all the questions I had. All the events I let go of without opposition.
Silence had kept me safe. It had also kept me little.
The knowing stung.
Being born into silence then made me know that I did not have to stay in it for the rest of my life. But breaking it would have consequences.
My universe started with silence. It bound everything together. And should I upset it even somewhat, something would fall.
Still, a calm revolt started to grow in me.
Not careless. Not loud.
Exactly enough to be harmful.
I had not yet decided on what I would say or when. All I knew was that silence would not be enough to hold me back one day.
And everything would alter when that day arrived.
When silence begins to seem like a lie, it becomes most harmful.
That morning, I had no intention of breaking it. Actually, I had no agenda whatsoever.
Like a breath I had been holding for too long, I only felt pressure inside my chest that would not go away.
When I got downstairs, the house was already awake. Reading, my father sat at the table. Quietly, my mother wandered across rooms.
Normal seems to be everything. Too typical.
Standing by the counter, I poured myself a glass of water and listened. The almost
undetectable ticking of the clock.
The buzz of electricity in the walls. They filled the space but seemed so small that they hardly existed.
I wondered how long this house had been living like this. How many generations had mastered quiet movement through it?
"How was school?" My mother inquired in a quiet voice.
"Okay," I remarked.
When it came from my lips, the term seemed hollow.
My father never looked away from his paper. I sensed his focus change, though.
No matter how little, he always detected a shift in tone.
"You are quiet today," he added.
I virtually chuckled. My default had always been quiet. I got, though, what he intended. I said, "I am considering."
He set the folded paper apart after a leisurely fold. The gesture was calm and under control. My stomach clenched at it.
"About what?" He queried.
The question was easy. The answer was no.
"Regarding where I am going," I added.
Mother ceased moving. The room appeared to be holding its breath.
My father paid me to study. His eyes were not fiery. They were weighing.
He assured, "You do not have to worry about that yet." "Your path is clear."
The remarks fell just where I had feared they would.
I replied, "I do not see it."
Our silence was deafening.
My dad leaned back in his chair. "That is because you are not meant to," he answered.
"Not yet."
"Then when?" I questioned.
My mother talked fast. "Finish your water. You will be late."
It was a rejection—a subdued one, yet definitive.
I complied. I have always.
Still, something had already changed.
Later that afternoon, I saw Kareem in the training yard. He was by himself, carefully and gently repeating routines. Every action was regulated and frugal.
Not one thing was wasted.
I kept an eye on him for a while before he caught me.
He murmured without turning, "You look unsettled."
I said, "Everyone keeps saying that."
"That is because you are," he stated, last turning toward me. You carry something new.
I pondered. Then I contributed notes.
"They keep telling me my path is clear," I replied. I gulped. "Did you ever doubt yours?"
He answered right away, "Yes." "And?"
He went on, "And I was told questioning was disrespectful." "I therefore came to know how to do it quietly."
The phrases affected him more deeply than he meant.
I inquired, "What if I do not stay silent?"
He scrutinized me closely. This time, it is longer.
"Then you stop being a child," he remarked. "And start turning into an issue."
I kept thinking back to the word.
Problem.
Sitting in my room that evening with the door closed, the world condensed to the sound of my own breathing.
I pondered the way my father discussed certainty and clarity. I considered how Kareem discussed the outcome.
They were both being honest, just from various angles of the same cage.
I walked over to the mirror and examined my reflection. The individual gazing back at me barely registered with me.
Right now, his eyes were keen. More awake.
I murmured, "Who are you?"
I panicked at the question.
I wanted a response since I was curious.
Voices swelled late that evening in the home. Not strong enough to be arguments, yet sharp enough to cut across walls. I heard my father's voice.
One more guy's voice was unfamiliar to me.
I was listening from atop the stairs.
"Not now," my father replied.
"It is going to happen whether you want it or not," the other man answered. He is
prepared.
Are you ready for what?
My chest twisted something.
"I will not hurry him," my father remarked. "Not yet."
"Delay has its own risks," the guy said. "Silence will not last forever."
At my sides, my hands tightened.
They were discussing me.
At that moment, something snapped.
Not aggressively. Not violently. Enough just to let the truth through.
I had no protection.
I was reading myself.
I retreated to my room as the voices faded. Heart racing, I sat on the edge of my bed.
My life did not seem like it belonged to me anymore. It seemed like anything else was being molded in someone else's hands.
I considered Kareem's comments.
Name it first, then you may challenge it.
The next day, I took a little something—anything nobody would see.
I inquired about some information.
It was nothing dramatic—merely a small request for clarification during a normally Unneeded discussion.
The response was instantaneous.
Looks passed back and forth. Silence sharpened.
My father answered composedly, but his eyes cautioned me.
Not again.
That caution stayed with me.
I had not crossed any apparent line. But then something had turned around.
Silence was not now a sanctuary.
It wasn't easy.
And for the first time, I wanted to answer it not with obedience but with truth.
The moment silence started asking something from me, it ceased to be neutral.
It had been a refuge until then. An inconspicuous method of travel. A language that made me invisible and therefore safe. But silence now had shifted its attitude.
It was no longer passive. It was just waiting. Watching.
The first indication was responsibility.
Like most deadly things on Earth, it came silently.
My father did not announce it. He provided no clarification on it. He started including me where I had never been included before.
Meetings in which I listened and sat near the wall. Discussions in which I was acknowledged, but my voice was not invited.
Men talked as if I were not present, then stopped a little when I changed my weight, recalling.
I saw everything.
The manner in which some terms stopped disputes from running on.
I came to see that power did not scream. It guessed.
One afternoon, I was requested to go with my father to a place I had just heard about sporadically.
A warehouse close to the city's boundary. Unlabeled. Ordinary to those
who had no idea what they were looking for.
"Look," my father remarked as we walked. Say nothing.
I agreed.
Inside, the air smelled a little of metal and oil and was cold. Men gathered in little
groups, their voices subdued and wary.
The room changed around my father as he came in.
I sensed it happening.
Eyes moved. Postures are straightened. Words turned into measurements.
This was disrespectful.
This required a computation.
An older guy came up to us, his face worn from choices he had survived. He looked at me after greeting my father.
He said, "So this is him."
"Yes," my father answered.
The man looked at me honestly. "Quiet," he said. That is great.
I said nothing.
My father nodded once, his approval evident in the motion.
Something twisted in my chest as we departed. Not gracefulness. Anything colder.
Then I realized that people were misinterpreting silence as acceptance.
I could not sleep that night.
I kept repeating the guy's words. Peaceful. That is encouraging.
For whom is this good?
The following day, silence became more obvious in price.
Before supper, Kareem came upon me. He moved more sharply, and his face was
sterner than usual.
He said, "They are watching you now."
"I know," I said.
"No," he answered. "You do not. Not the way I mean."
His voice dropped. "Your silence is being interpreted."
"Like what?" I inquired.
"As consent."
The word fell hard.
"I have not consented to anything," I stated.
"You have not objected either," he retorted.
That evening, the subject turned to a choice influencing more than only our family.
My father spoke deliberately, framing results and outlining repercussions. Others agreed.
I paid attention.
Understood.
I kept mum too.
The choice was made.
Later, alone in my room, I came to understand what had occurred.
I said nothing; something had changed.
Not in theory.
Not in intention.
Therefore.
The next day, I found out a man had lost his job due to this choice and was quietly
eliminated. Moved. His family moved. None. No drama.
Only erasure.
I was ill.
Not as I had acted.
But I had not.
Someone had given something physical for silence. Anything unchangeable.
I visited Kareem.
"This was not supposed to occur," I stated.
He gazed at me fixedly. "It was always going to happen," he responded. "You only
realize it now."
"I did not select it," I replied.
He said, "You chose not to stop it."
The difference went farther than blame.
My father phoned me once more from his study that afternoon.
"You handled yourself well," he remarked.
I said nothing at all.
"They trust it," he added. "They value restraint."
I squeezed my palms tightly.
"They believe I concur," I noted.
He stared at me steadily. "Behavior shows agreement."
"And silence counts as behavior," I remarked.
"Yes," he responded.
His eyes met mine. "Then silence is not neutral."
Something changed in his face. Not an issue. Recognition.
"You are learning," he commented. That is positive.
It was poor.
It wasn't very comforting.
Learning carries responsibility, thus. And obligation meant blood.
Standing outside alone that evening, the city was far away and unaware. I consider the erased man.
Regarding the simplicity of its happening.
Regarding how naturally the world kept going afterward.
This came at a cost.
Not noisy.
Not really exciting.
However, be exact.
I came to understand then that, without repercussions, quiet was not still an option.
Not speaking was no longer safe. It was participation.
Speaking might be even worse.
I was standing between two sorts of damage.
External one.
One from inside.
Kareem came with me silently.
"You now sense it," he remarked.
"Yes," came my answer.
"Good," he murmured. "That implies you still have a conscience."
"And what happens if I lose it?" I asked.
"Then," he remarked, "silence will feel simple again. That is how you will know."
I took a different path that evening.
Not to fight back.
Not to be confronted.
To gauge, nevertheless.
To find out precisely when silence protected and when it devastated.
From that time on, every time I said anything, I would know precisely what it cost.
And one day, when the price got too high, silence would no longer be a choice.
That night, the quiet came back, but it did not feel empty anymore.
It encircled me like something familiar that knew how to wound. I lie awake, gazing at the ceiling and listening to the house's slow, even rhythm.
Every noise felt calculated now. Every break had a purpose.
I reflected on the man who had disappeared so completely that the world hardly noticed.
Regarding how simply a life might be turned about without blood, without noise, without anyone having to talk.
I realized then that silence was not the lack of activity. It was a language by itself. One that silently and permanently changed things.
I, for the first time, felt the weight of my legacy, not in my blood or name but in the decisions I had not yet taken.
The ones waiting for me are doors I can no longer claim not to notice.
I walked to the window and examined the cityscape.
Unaware of the judgments taken above them, around them, and in rooms like mine, lights flashed in the distance.
The expense of covert agreements did not affect the continuous breathing of the planet.
Pushing my fingers against the glass, I let the chill sink into my flesh.
Power held no allure for me.
I yearned not to be in charge.
I wished to stay human.
I came to see, however, that remaining mute did not save humanity. Knowing when quiet turned into cruelty helped to save it.
That evening, hunger turned into a reality. It turned into a personal promise, a little one yet very intentional.
I would not hide behind submission or hurry toward rebellion.
Before choosing how to oppose this world, I would study its shape.
And when I last talked, not out of terror.
It would be because too much had already been taken from silence.