Free Despite the Falling Snow by Shamim Sarif

the echoing concrete hallway of the school. Her everyday mind is returning as, bit by bit, the brilliant white of her imagination is being painted over with the various greys of this building. The stairs, the floor, the thick metal doors. The grey cabinets and chairs, and her own metal desk. Her grey metal typewriter. The grey skin of some of the teachers. The grey hair of the head teacher, who asks Katya, every few months, if she would not like to teach instead. If she would not like to be out of the school administration offices, and in front of a class of minds eager for knowledge.
    Not for the knowledge I would be forced to teach them, she thinks, as she shakes her head again, politely, and laughs. The children would love you, the head teacher tells her; they already do. Her heavy squat body and square rustic head nod to the young woman in hopeless encouragement. Yes, Katya thinks, but children are innocent and superficial. They like me because I am prettier than most of their teachers, and because I am young. They would have crushes on me, the small girls and the small boys. They don’t care about anything else. Do they?
    She has seen some of their eyes, the little children who come to that school, and she has seen a thirst and an adoration that shocks her. Such naked emotion in the eyes of those children. Smile at them, and they smile. Shout and they withdraw. Hit them and they cower. Such raw power these greying teachers hold. She wants no part of it, not directly. She does what she has to do behind the scenes. Curricula, timetables, state funds. As good a job as any other to earn a wage and fill her days. But she would rather not face that dependence and devotion, that innocence which has already had its new, sharp edges roughed away by state and parents.
    She hates herself when she thinks like this, but she does not often think any other way. She herself has cowered, and longed for love from too many different aunts and uncles and friends with whom she spent her own childhood and adolescence. Much of the time, she was even separated from her only brother. There was no-one who wanted to take in two orphans. Two extra mouths to share the thin soups and occasional meats at the table. Two more pairs of feet to buy decent shoes for. In her loneliness, craving the love of her parents and the companionship of her older brother, she learned to turn into her own mind and heart for the satisfaction that she sought. Hours spent learning how to fully use her imagination, teaching herself to fight through to the farthest reaches of her mind in order to remove herself from the lonely, terrifying world she now inhabited. Nights spent holding herself in, learning to be content with her own company, to push away the longing for others, and to trust only herself. A good training, as it turned out, but not the easiest way to live. Alexander is already trying to find a way into this interior life of hers. She smiles and shakes her head at the idea. She walks into the office, and smiles a hello at Svetlana, who shifts self-consciously in her seat. At her desk Katya begins sorting out the stack of letters and memos which has piled up since yesterday afternoon.
    The day is passing swiftly for once, and Katya types away, clattering fingers dancing over the keys.
    “I can do those for you,” Svetlana says.
    “I’ve given you more than enough for one day,” Katya replies. Besides, she likes the feel of the keys, and to watch the words being formed on the paper before her. She works with a soothing rhythm that is beginning to free her unconscious mind, and she is finding that her thoughts are drawn repeatedly to Alexander.
    She looks up with a start. At her open door, two round blue eyes are staring at her out of an oval face. The eyes are welling with tears. She looks at the boy. He must be five or six, and his knee is bleeding. She stands and goes to him, and kneels down beside him.
    “Did you fall?” she asks.
    He nods, and the tears