Alessandro Baricco wrote, that a man who had been lost at sea and then rescued, is not a saved man. Because in the grip of desperation, he has seen the truth. And such a man is, to the depths of his every instant, inconsolable.
Pixi too had once suffered a sea-loss. She had seen the truth through her own undoing and desperation. And she is neither lucky nor hero for surviving. She'd have said 'Pah!' in the general direction of such a notion, if she had enough breath to save from so many deep and sonorous sighs. No. Salvation is a thing of fairytales. And Pixi, beneath her layers, her deceptive calm, her violent love for her family, and her manic moments of absurd madness, is inconsolable. Undeniably and irrevocably.
But it's ok. Or it was ok until someone else came along and got caught in the cross-fire. This someone else was Glorious, and though Pixi loved him, she was doomed to hurt him from the outset. When that time finally comes Pixi realizes the consequences of her inconsolability, and wonders if betrayal is a thing you pay forward. Why else could one so hurt, hurt another?
And the worst kind of hurting, that long drawn out hurting of unsurity that Pixi underwent, is what she puts Glorious through. She knows this emotional terrain too well because she's seen it all before but on the receiving end. Her distracted on-edge-ness, her impatient anxiety, her sudden outbursts, her slipping into herself...they all belonged to her ex. They are her inheritance from him, and when she catches a glimpse of self-reflection, she despises herself for them.
After a year of things being needlessly complicated, it all comes to an end before Glorious flies to Niger and his luggage to Mali. To salvage the pieces they make a pledge to return to the beginning again, to that ideal friendship Pixi reproaches herself compulsively for endangering. The result is painful. Messy. Full of slip-ups, hang-ups, lapses, and flinches at little hurts that are inevitable because you are trying so hard to avoid them. It's that tip-toeing, that is what hurts the most.
On the epic journey to Syria, Pixi and Glorious dwell in this insecure space. Under the veneer of normality they are everything but. And because Pixi is and has been so preoccupied with her Djinn-Boy and also her recent loss, he feels more alone in the heart-ache. As an outlet, he attempts to shoulder her load, and makes her problems his with so much willingness it is almost a need.
So when Pixi eventually reveals her plan to do the Turkmen’s bidding and travel to Turkey alone, Glorious is crushed. This, to him is the real beginning of the end. The first sight of her ruthless independence, which he has struggled so much with thus far, now taking a stand with her new freedom. This is the place from whence they must start to do some things sepperately. This the realisation that there is too much they can and will never be able to share.
From here on out, it's not such a long way to some rainy late-summer night in Ramadan, when Pixi will call Glorious out of concern for him, and be told that he cannot pretend the friendly shoulder she offers can be sufficient any more. It will be Pixi that is crushed then...who, sleepless after Sahoor, stays up Googling 'Indian Summer' only to find that the expression is utterly irrelevant to this monsoon-like weather they are having with its warm humidity burrowing its way into everything including the pit of her throat.
And then when the Googling fails to distract from the pain, Pixi will lie awake listening to the rain and wonder if Glorious is listening to it too. In her head, she will keep hearing him say to her over and over, 'you're not my Pixi anymore.'
But that night verges us a tad off topic. This, after all, is about inconsolability. Pixi's. And inevitably Glorious's in the making.
It begins to be made when Pixi goes to Sakarya alone. And nearly 3 weeks after the life-altering events in the Middle East come to pass, leaving everyone involved a little wiser and also a little sadder for the wisdom, Pixi takes another lonely trip to Jordan for her Big-Sis and Kalahili’s engagement. She Returns to the place of those happenings, which are still too raw with steely nerves. She burrows into the warmth of her family and rejoices in the celebrations like everyone else. Then when it’s over, she says goodbye to everyone, and goes back home by herself.
On the Alitalia flight from Rome to London, the inconsolibility remembers itsself when her plain encounters some turbulence. Two cigarettes courtesy of lovely Romanian girl in dingy smoker’s room, and then two thirds of Bi Feiyu's Three sisters -a straight read. They'd done well to stave off a tumultuous outburst throughout the thirsty and hungry 5 hours spent in a freezing airport lounge waiting for her connection after the Amman-Rome journey. But this is as far as they can hold out. Pixi turns the volume up on her iPod as the plane begins to shake ominously. She shuts her eyes, and with a heart utterly empty, tightens her throat muscles in an attempt to hold back desperate bawls. From the corners of her closed eye-lids, fat, hot tears stream down the length of her face, along her jaw, finding their way trough the rim of her scarf to resume their journey down her neck. They probably eventually collect in the hollow of her collar bones. Probably. And Pixi resigns herself with an inviting anticipation for the plane to plummet to its demise any moment.
As the shaking and turbulence gets worse, the harder Pixi cries. It is a crying that swells from the pit of a terrible desire to not be. And this danger, any danger or possibility of termination, is to it like a long lost friend or lover. It is a crying that is full of yearning and nostalgia. The kind that asks,
'Where've you been? Are you here now? I've waited too long for you.'
Rewind.