Paper boats sailing on the sea E-Book

Sofia Vuskovic

• Herausgeber: novum publishing
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 46

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

The protagonist of this brilliant debut looks back on a lost friendship. Full of regret for his own actions, he recalls scenes from the past with Matteo, the son of Iranian immigrants. He can pinpoint exactly where he failed as a friend, where he didn't provide the necessary help. Finally, a chance find on the beach opens the protagonist's eyes. A message in a bottle from a girl who never gave up hope of a better life. Vuskovic understands how to link the personal with the political and to take a stand in a depressing way on one of the greatest tragedies of our time: the mass deaths of refugees in our oceans. A text that gets under your skin and encourages moral self-questioning.

Leseprobe

Dedication

For all the voices that were extinguished too soon.

Your names have not disappeared from the world without a trace.

They have left deep furrows.

1

It was winter.

Well, a Sicilian winter anyway.

I remember every detail of that day. How could I have forgotten them? I can still see everything crystal clear: the table that my mother loved so much, the bright sun shining through the bright yellow curtains and my unsolved physics homework. If I had been told that my life would change abruptly in just a few days, I definitely wouldn't have believed it. On the contrary: I would probably have run away screaming at the top of my voice and then laughed at this fortune-telling.

I've never been superstitious. No one in my family really is. Strictly speaking, my parents are both Christians, but they tend to have atheistic views. On Friday the thirteenth, my father went to work calmly as usual after eating his morning fried egg with toast and butter.

When a black cat crossed the path, my mother didn't cross herself, on the contrary: depending on her mood, she even stroked it.

When the old Signora Bedilla gave salt to a new neighbor when he moved in, my parents only smiled mockingly behind their backs.

We only celebrate Christmas and Easter, but this is really only to get together with the rest of the family.

The idea of a god ruling over us was therefore always alien to me and led to heated arguments with my best friend, Matteo.

Thanks to his upbringing, he was strictly religious. For him, the presence of God was the most natural thing in the world.

I was doing okay at school. I got average grades, not brilliant and not worrying. In short, I wasn't the guy who stood out. To be honest, apart from Matteo, I didn't really have any friends either.

Although I got on pretty well with most of the boys, I didn't think they were any more special than they thought I was. Only Matteo was different.

Since the day he came to our class from Naples, I no longer sat around alone at break, but had company.

Matteo's family originally came from Iran, but had lived in Italy for as long as any of us. He was rather short, with black curls on his head and big dark brown eyes surrounded by thick black eyelashes.

He was certainly one of the better-looking boys in our class, so it must have seemed strange that he was fighting with me.

We were complete opposites, and not just in terms of looks.

And yet he was the best friend you could wish for.

2

Life went on quietly. Nothing could burst the quiet little bubble we lived in, we thought.

Everyone thought so.

I was often at Matteo's house. Even today, the memory of his house fills me with warmth. His mother was often at home while his father worked tirelessly. Signora Faramashleh could bake the best pizza in all of Sicily, nay, all of Italy.

She had been a cook in a hospital in Naples before she became pregnant with Matteo. Since his birth, she still worked occasionally, but much less than before.

His father, on the other hand, was the dentist in our village and was always busy. I saw him very rarely and when I did, it was for annual check-ups or caries treatment. Although I didn't know him that well, I never felt uncomfortable in his presence. He was a lean, tall man with a friendly smile and bushy, expressive eyebrows, just like those of his son.

He used to constantly furrow those eyebrows together, as if he were reprimanding a toddler who had eaten the last piece of cake without asking if anyone else wanted it, making dignified remarks about politics as he picked at his patients.

The times I didn't see him at work, he was always in a good mood, kissing his wife on the cheek and thanking her for the dinner he had served.

In general, Matteo's parents' marriage was of such incomprehensible purity that I could understand why he did not doubt the existence of true love. The tenderness with which Signore Faramashleh addressed his wife was incomprehensible to me. I found the amount of loving attention he gave her unbelievable.

If anyone but Matteo had told me that finding true love was the goal of earthly life, I would have shaken my head and replied that it was unseemly for a boy to speak like that.

Love, women could deal with that if they wanted to.

Maybe I was trying to deceive myself.

To appease. Because when the whole family got together for dinner, there was always so much joy in the air that it almost choked me up every time.

Only then did I realize how incredibly lucky this family was.

Perhaps it was for this reason that my doubts were born.

Why didn't I have a family like that? Why didn't my parents look at me the way Matteo was looked at?

Was it my fault?

Was I not good enough?

Was I not enough?

At dinner with the Faramashlehs, I often felt like an intruder.

My pride forbade me from becoming a vice for them and staying with them forever and ever, which is why I sometimes gratefully declined an invitation to dinner, even though everything in me longed to be part of this perfect constellation.

Even if only for an hour.