The Thanks-Giving Scheme
Fest-December Story
It is a town of immigrants, immigrants even more in their absence. Those who could escape already did. The ones who arrived did not come by choice; they were simply placed here. Money paid for the journey — boat, truck — and money paid for a square metre where they would sleep. Money paid for silence, for unnoticing at one border first, then another. So that they might live. So that they might be erased from statistics to be added to another set. So their children could go to school with a memory as light as their luggage upon arrival.
Hostel, flat, maybe even a xane, that is a house.
Everyone will benefit from the scheme, the town is told — immigrants will receive the support needed to rebuild their lives, and residents are assured that funding will improve the services they rely on.
The programme begins, and the places get filled, as they always do. So they all gratefully say “Mersi”, “Shkran lak”, thanking in whatever language genuine gratitude operates.
They are welcome. So they are told.
Volunteers with small futuristic metallic badges begin a procedure of cleansing: stamping the soles of immigrant shoes into a foam of antiseptic, for a flu that hasn’t arrived yet, but might. In return, the volunteers stamp the immigrant families with a smiling sun that glows faintly. It is nothing, they say — just a brief prickle on the skin, softer than a sun-kiss, gone before you think. Who would pause for such a feeling when the real fight is for work permits, for school placements, for the right to remain?
Every newcomer gets one. No exceptions.
Maybe it tracks us so we don’t escape? Maybe it updates our language acquisition level: pre-entry, entry 1…?
Psychopathology of ingratitude, local people should whisper. Because laughter does what it does best: hides fear.
Yarhamuk, though, is serious; he makes friends: girls with missing front teeth with a peculiar habit of stuffing bread rolls in their coats for an unseen future. His mother hangs damp washing over radiators and whispers prayers into sleeves, hoping warmth might help wishes evaporate upward.
For a while, the sun-stamps remain just… stamps.
Harmless.
A reward system appears:
Shops offer discounts for those with the sun engraved.
Teachers praise the children singing in unison Past the Bethlehem Star.
But they don’t believe in other-religion guidance, so how?
The song goes on until aweeps through the borough, plunging the settlement blocks into silence. Guided by an invisible silver hand, a family from that land of big-bellied orphans moves suddenly on a Christmas Eve. No camels. No gold; no frankincense; no embalming oil of myrrh. Dishes still drying on the rack.
On Christmas Day, a mother and her son, the one who crossed hidden in a truck full of animal dung. No stable. Just the smell of slotter by metallic knives.
Isolated cases. Arrived with “no language”, no documents. No phones except the old Nokias they came with— non-trackable. Who would track anyway?
People who arrive quietly tend to leave quietly. People who came with nothing leave with nothing.
A couple of nights pass in a chorus of fireworks, glittering hope above lives still waiting to begin, tabula alba, so to speak. Then New Year’s Eve arrives, the last night before the new beginning, and with it, darkness. The estate falls silent, as though celebration was some kind of Janus’ Silver Moon and Twelve Sons Glitter Party.
Dim at first — like fireflies waking — then brighter, hotter, wrists ignite, pulsing as one.
Children cry and claw at their glowing skin.
Then someone — not just someone — a boy with a name no one would take seriously tries to scratch one off as his sun turns orange-red. He pries at the scratch until flesh breaks. There, underneath — a little piece of matter, slightly dull, but surely silverly metallic, drops to the floor like a silent tear. His breathing stops as he is waiting for alarms, community officers, and punishment.
Nothing.
But the next morning, people see him.
Truly see him.
The shopkeeper sneezes, lifts his gaze to Yarhamuk’s unbranded wrist, and mutters: ‘Oh. Yarhamuk Allah’, as if he was saying a mundane ‘bless you’. Yes, his name is used everywhere all the time, and any time he passes, they sneeze.
“May God have mercy on you”, he replies each time, as if he is teaching them not only the new language but the real significance of his presence. The neighbours who once shouldered past him pause, letting him go first. It is as if the moment the sun falls off — mercy matters again…
Yarhamuk shows his metallic sun to his friends.
“Don’t wear it anymore. They don’t remember you when you do.”
“But what if they take us?”
Remove it — But can’t cut it out. — The resolution doesn’t take off.
A sound rises in the estate walls — like hundreds of drills eating concrete.
A black van rolls in.
Windows blinded.
Engine silent.
Suns brighten again with compliance.
Doors slam. The van leaves with no headlights on.
Yarhamuk’s thin piece of matter is still warm in his hand. No friends. The parking lot remains. Cold. Empty. A smell of ozone lingers. Something metallic.
In the following days, silence only thickens. Flats stand unlocked, dishes left drying by empty sinks. School desks — vacant islands. Local news blames “voluntary evacuation.” Officials tell everyone to calm down, or a lockdown may be enforced…
But there are moments — glimpses — when someone sees movement behind sealed curtains. A face pressed against the glass. A palm smeared down the inside of a fogged window.
Those who left are still here.
Somewhere. In corridors — long as highway codes— lined with rows of metal pods. Inside each: a sleeping body connected to thick cables — They are being transferred…
— resourced to the Cloud — in process — reads the panel
“Damn memory”, curses Yarhamuk upon his late arrival.
Officials, taken over by a febrile flu, insist: “They are placing the collective memory into i-tanks. May God have mercy on us”.