“Nothing sorts out memories from ordinary moments.
It is only later that they claim remembrance, when they show their scars.”
—Chris Marker, “La Jetée“
In the dream there is thunder, people shouting, the muted hissing of an intercom.High overhead a monitor displays flight times, a picture of smiling children.Twenty yards away a woman kneels on the tiled floor beside a man in a flowered shirt.As the boy watches them, his mother’s hand tightens around his.He can smell his father’s sweat, overpowering his Old Spice aftershave, hear his father’s voice breaking as he yanks him roughly away.
Then the clatter of running feet, the distant high-pitched beeping of an alarm somewhere in the airport.He stares, refusing to budge, and wrinkles his nose.There is a smell at once oddly familiar yet strange, something he is certain he has never smelled before:salt and scorched metal.For an instant he wonders if it is a dream, has he perhaps forgotten something?But then his father’s voice grows angry, even frightened.
“…come on, this is no place for us.”
As his parents hurry him away, he cranes his head, still transfixed by the kneeling woman.Her spun-candy hair glowing beneath the fluorescent lights, her mouth open as though to receive a kiss, but he thinks no, she is about to scream…
