Dimple Shah arrived in Hong Kong 10 years ago and promptly decided to forego a lucrative career in Banking and Finance for the unquantifiable joys of writing. An avid consumer of words all her life, she has only recently officially assumed the mantle of producer of words and spinner of yarns. Read more about her and her work at www.dimpleshahchronicles.com,
Confiscated
The bright lights shine, like beacons of hope. They are, instead, the harbingers of doom. Our black clothes, meant to evade detection, etch our shapes in sharp relief against the low-lying shrub.
The guards are in black too, not dusty and dirty black like us but an official looking Black, with important looking letters on their chests and backs.
My heart thrums with dread. I pull Julio’s trembling little form closer to me. Cold tendrils eviscerate my gut as the harsh reality sinks in. We’ve gambled and lost. We wanted to trade in a decrepit future in the warm sunshine of our homeland for the American Dream. What we will get instead is a nightmare of bars and cages. I’m glad Julio is wearing a diaper; my bladder feels as if it could give way any moment too.
One of the men in Black approaches me; I must hand over everything I have. I see his hands run over Julio. The man is gentle, smiling even, but it seems wrong, this man patting my son who is whimpering loudly at this stranger’s touch. Whose hands will comfort him when they take me away?
I bend down to remove the shoelaces from his little feet. They join my belt and my stash of eighty-three dollars in a plastic bag marked ‘Homeland Security’. Gone for good.
A phone rings. The man in Black fishes out his mobile. “Hi kiddo,” he replies, smiling. “Daddy’s coming home soon.”