On The Edge

It was the call for the fajr prayer when I woke up. I had a dream about being somewhere with two guys I met in Kenya last year. Why did I see them together in the dream? I don't remember even where I was in this dream; in Kenya or somewhere else.
After a few minutes, I heard someone knocking on the door of our house. It got louder little by little. When I looked through the peephole, there were two men in casual clothes. I immediately knew they were a kind of police. Only these have the authority to raid houses at night.

My brother was awake. He was about to start praying. Instead, he went to open the door. After a short Q and A session, they took him away. Later I found out that they were actually looking for my sister who lives with her husband and children twenty minutes away from our house. They took my brother to direct them to her home. They threatened him if he didn’t help them find my sister, they would keep him in detention until they found her. In the early hours of the day, my sister was taken away from her children and house.

At the police station, she was kept in detention with others, innocent and guilty ones. What was all of that about? In a nutshell, her name was identical to that of a woman who had committed fraud. Because of all the bureaucratic procedures they had, it took them more than eight hours to release her.
In an authoritarian country like ours that follows red tape, only the full name is used to look for suspects and criminals, not the ID or the fingerprint. If it was just my name instead of hers, it could have been me in this situation. If I was arrested and they found out my secret, my future would go down the drain.

During all that time, I wasn’t able to contact both of them or to understand what was going on. My nerves were shattered. My life was already upside down. My mother got dementia, I didn't have a job, my personal life was uncertain. This incident was the little straw that broke me down. I couldn’t get rid of my low mood and grumpy face even after leaving my country and being in Sri Lanka with other people.