That night, a wild storm had tor the boat apart. It had all happened very fast. The sky of the dry season was covered with black, grey and red clouds. Thunderstorms and the howling wind had disturbed the waves, raising them up. Asin’s brothers had learnt to sail the boat in calm waters and to navigate by trial and error, but to ride a boat through such storms needed much more experience. The boat had turned upside down with the whipping strike of the waves. Asin had fallen out into the sea with the first impact of the waves and her life was turned over like their ship had. Her path had become separated from Paradise, Narivan, her brothers, oud and its melancholic tunes. She doesn’t remember how she had clinged to a broken piece of the boat body and how long she was on the water until the divers of Avij had found her.

Chapter 20

Dalia doesn’t know how to take in her newly found past history. All these years, Asin had never said anything about her childhood and youth. Dalia also feels ashamed of never having asked her about it. She knew her mother was found by the divers of Avij and presumed that day was her mother’s origin. She has been ignorant like the people of the sea, having lived her life incurious and indifferent to her roots. She had no idea that she was rooted in land, although she had always thought that she and her mother never settled down on the ship, as if something was always off. And now, having seen her mother’s brother and Narivan seems to have dissipated a thick fog that had always blinded her view. Asin had said strange things, naming objects and food that she had never heard before or seen, like vegetables called mushrooms, tomatoes and corns. Asin had told her about the trees, the green moss that covered the thick ancient tree trunks. She had told her about the fountain in their village and the wells that provided them pure drinking water without having to evaporate and distil the seawater. And the women who would sit all morning by the looms waving cotton fabrics and the children that played between the farms and the trees all day long. Narivan had played music for Dalia and her uncle kept staring at her and Asin with non-believing eyes, bursting into tear from joy. She is happy not to return to Avij yet unsure about living on the island that her mother has told her about. Can she fit in there among the land people? She has been born on the sea and lived there her whole life and what she has seen of islands so far, is not promising. The Saviour Island had been too unkind to them and she doesn’t like the noisy crowded alleys of Oxan.