The weight of the Ledger
The kerosene lamp on the wooden table flickered, struggling against the draft that whistled through the cracks in the walls. It was nearly midnight, but Ekim wasn't sleeping. She sat with a small, battered notebook, her pen hovering over a column of numbers that never seemed to add up.
Beside her, a cup of tea had gone cold, the surface filmed over. Across the room, on a single thin mattress, her life was laid out in a row of sleeping figures. Josh and Shandy, her younger brothers, were tangled in a worn blanket. Racy, her sister, slept with her hand protectively over their youngest, Asah.
Ekim’s eyes lingered on her son, Asah. At two years old, he was the heartbeat of the house, but he was also a reminder of the mounting costs she couldn't meet.
The door to the small lean-to kitchen creaked open. Her mother, Alice, stepped out, her shoulders slumped from a day spent scrubbing laundry for the neighbors. She sat across from Ekim, her eyes landing on the notebook.
"It's the school fees again, isn't it?" Alice whispered, her voice rasping.
"It's everything, Ma," Ekim replied, her voice low so as not to wake the children. "Josh needs new shoes; his soles are held together with tape. Shaddie’s cough isn't getting better with the cheap syrup. And Racy... she’s so bright, Ma. If she doesn't take those exams next month, she’ll end up in the wash-pits like us."
Alice reached out, her calloused hand covering Ekim’s. "Your father would have found a way. Since he’s been gone, you’ve carried too much, Ekim. You’re the firstborn, but you’re still so young."
"I’m twenty-six, Ma. I’m a mother. I don't have the luxury of being young." Ekim closed the notebook with a sharp thud. "I went to the agency today. The one in the city that recruits for the Middle East."
The silence that followed was heavy. Alice pulled her hand back, her face pale in the lamplight. "Saudi Arabia? No, Ekim. We’ve heard the stories. The women who go there... they aren't themselves when they come back. If they come back at all."
"They send money, Ma," Ekim said, her eyes burning with a desperate intensity. "The 'remittance girls' built the brick houses on the hill. Their children wear uniforms that aren't torn. Their mothers don't have to work until their fingers bleed."
"But the freedom, Ekim," Alice pleaded. "You won't be able to leave the house. You don't know the language. You’ll be alone in a desert with people who don't know your name."
Ekim looked back at Asah, who shifted in to theirs," Ekim said, her voice finally cracking. "I will be a ghost in the desert if it means my son grows up as a king here. I’ve already made the appointment. I’m going back tomorrow to sign the papers."
Alice didn't argue further. She simply leaned her head into her hands and wept silently, the sound lost in the wind that continued to rattle the thin walls his sleep, murmuring a soft word."I will trade my freedom for of their home.
