Flash fiction: Hiraeth

 A yearning

Errol slammed the car door and hunched himself against the slanting rain. He crossed the bleak car park towards the lobby of the hotel, which was modern but not very, the brickwork streaked and the concrete grubby. There was a receptionist, a thin pale girl with spots.

“Can’t come in here today,” she said. “You asylum-seeker people got to stay out, coppers say.”

He showed her his warrant card. He did not wait for a reply.

Wikimedia Commons/Safa Daneshvar

An officer waited at the top of the stairs. “Detective Inspector Errol Brown,” he said, showing his warrant card.

“Good afternoon, sir,” she said. “Constable Lewis. I’ll take you to the room.”

Scene-of-crime officers in white protective coveralls were working in the corridor. “SOCOs here then,” he said.  “Have they been in?”

“Yes, but Dr Hakim’s in there with the body at the moment.” Her hair was blonde and scraped back severely, drawn together behind her cap; her voice had a gentle Welsh lilt that he found pleasing. Her stab jacket was a mass of radio and camera gear. Glad I’m not with Uniform any more, he thought. Festooned with all that junk. He followed her into one of the rooms, where Dr Hakim was completing his examination. He looked up.

“Ah, Errol. Multiple stab wounds,” he said. He eased a sheet over the body. “You can tell the media it was a frenzied attack. They do like frenzied attacks.”

“’Frenzied attack brutal murder by asylum seeker’, I expect,” said Errol.

“Actually it’s the murder of one.”

“It’s both but we know which will matter, don’t we.” Errol looked down at the bloodstained sheet. “I take it the other resident was an asylum seeker?”

“Yes.” This was Lewis. “The guests all are. Two of them said the bloke had gone a bit weird before, accused people of being Satan and that. Said he knew himself he wasn’t all right, he’d tried to get help at the hospital but was on a waiting list.”

“Paranoid delusions then. At least he’s safely in custody.” Lewis walked over to the small desk in the corner of the room. There was a pile of paper on it; she sifted the handwritten pages.

“Looks like Arabic,” she said. “Like, in verses. I wonder if it’s poetry. Is poetry a thing in Arabic?”

Dr Hakim chuckled. “Yes. I have heard Arabic poetry described as some of the best in the world.” He stood up, and stretched. “Indeed there is some from the Dark Age, before the coming of the Prophet. But that’s mainly about war between tribes. And camels. Classical Arabic has 49 words for camel. There is for instance a special word for ‘a well-tempered she-camel’.” He looked down at the papers. “Actually I wonder if I can…” Then he frowned. “No, that is not Arabic. It is Farsi. It is the same script but there are differences –  look, that’s the Arabic faa, or F, but with three dots above it instead of two, so it’s the Farsi letter V. Arabic does not have a V.”

“Do you understand it?” asked Errol.

“No. There are a few words in common, but it is a different language.” He reached for his case. ”You can move the body when the SOCOs are finished. I’ll be in touch re the autopsy.” He left.

“I think we’re done for the moment, I’ll let the SOCOs back in,” said Errol. But Lewis was looking down at the paper.

“Look sir, he’s written something in English beside one of the poems.”

Wikimedia Commons/Chemipanda

He picked it up. The Persian script was in fine calligraphy. The English, by contrast, was in block letters, in a childish, uncertain hand.

Our light is clear; the air sparkles

The breeze is like silk

The hills rise snowy topped above the city

Apricot we have

Almond Walnut Tangerine All Fruit

There was nothing more.

“I think he missed home, sir.”

Together they reached the stairs to the lobby.  “The sunsets we had were incredible,” said Errol.

“I beg your pardon, sir?”

“In the islands. And when you came by ferry the wooded top of the island was bright green, but sometimes it was capped by white clouds.” 

He buttoned his coat. “Goodnight, Lewis.”

 But as he went down he heard her say something. He stopped and looked up at her. “Yes?”

“Hiraeth.”

“What?”

“Hiraeth, sir. It’s a Welsh word. My Welsh is a bit crap really, be honest with you. But it means a sort of longing for somewhere or someone, something that’s gone, maybe won’t come back. Wonder if they all feel a bit like that, really.”

 “Hiraeth,” he repeated. “Yes, I suppose they do.”

He nodded to her, and went down the stairs across the lobby. He did not say goodnight to the girl at the desk.

More flash fiction:

Cold
Everything is cold here

Homecoming
A sort of love story

Solitude
A Cold War story

Rhodri Hactonby's Maps
On human geography

Strange Places
A spirit in the sky 

A Sideways Journey
Things might have been different

Displaced
Encounter on E94th Street

Belonging
Do you? Where?

Leaving Home
A house has memories

Mike Robbins’s latest book, On the Rim of the Sea, is now available as a paperback or ebook. More details here. Follow Mike on Twitter, Bluesky or Facebook.