transtrion

I've been having dreams the past days, mostly during the nights to be fair, dreams about one of the men we met on the train through Siberia. We met a lot of men on that train, some of them who I'll think will be with me for a long time, but this man in particular is by my side. I see his face in a crowd sometimes, I can feel his eyes when I close my eyes, I can sens him when I think about him. He haunts me. Even now, almost two months later.

I had asked him about his hands on the train, they were covered in scars, and he'd told me it was from the goldmine he'd worked on. Then he told me that he was divorcing his wife and that he missed his little daughter. He was a broken man, a man in pain. Maybe he was looking for answers, maybe he was trying to forget them. He told me his mother had passed away. He was a man on his second bottle of Vodka. Whatever the reason was for his drinking were we somehow in his way. First he became angry and indicative, then he became violent.

We had problem sleeping that night, we had managed to kick this broken man out eventually but we didn't quite feel safe. He'd hinted a few times that he wanted wanted us dead, sometimes as obvious as asking if he could kill us, but sometimes vaguer like repeatedly knocking a glass bottle against a metal edge. The door had been locked, but in the middle of the night had it been fiercely opened with a man standing outside. I remember it with a thunder illuminating his outline, and eyes filled with fury gazing down upon me. Eyes wanting to hit, to hurt. I see them sometimes when I close my eyes.

A few weeks later were we lost in the south of China. While trying to find a way to the train station did a girl in her early teens ask us if we were lost. Well, yes of course we were lost, but we hadn't expected such a young girl to help us. She was determined to help, we were skeptical. We couldn't for the life of us see why she took such an interest. First she tried to put us on a bus, but we were uncertain. Then she stopped a taxi for us, but I guess it was our pride that stopped us from taking that. We almost didn't notice that she tried to pay the driver for us, and that did definitely our pride stop. It puzzled us greatly that she was spending money on us, and we grew more skeptical.

She managed to convince us to take a bus, she joined and even managed to pay before any of us could find our wallets. Our attempts to pay her back was futile, she was laughing and talking to people on the bus, writing notes in her notebook and smiling to us. We almost awaited a massive robbery at this time, but somehow we ended up at the train station in a sudden anticlimax. She gave me a note when we stepped of and somehow made me understand that if we ever got lost should we try to call her. On the note was a lot of Chinese words and a few numbers, ending with a blue teddy bear. I think I'll keep that note forever.

I want to be like that girl. She looked like fourteen and was probably seventeen, however does her age not matter. She seemed much happier then anyone on this trip, possibly happier then anyone I've ever met. A public hero, a savior and a lighthouse for lost souls like my own. Then we have the man from the train. The broken man, the violent man. I see a lot of that man in myself. I would like to say that he was crushed by society, by life and circumstances, not like this lovely girl from the south of China. We met her in SanYa to be precise, and I call her Amelie. I call her Amelie de SanYa.

//Nisse