ISSUE 48

Twenty Thousand Years Ago:

Mount Tambora, Indonesia

It was normal then for the world to be sweltering. Literally – under crusts upon crusts of core, there was nothing but rock and rock and then a huge ball of fire. It was like the sun, it was like a star. It was the core of our Planet Earth. On top of it was fire and rock conjoining to create land. As the fire and rock danced on top of each other and burnt, more and more land was created. And on that land – the child of the dance of rock and blame – on that land which was growing out of a giant womb of water, a small mound was shaping, growing bigger and bigger. The earth was puffing into one colossal shape rather than spreading itself about.

The shape was pregnant with flame. The flame was liquid and flowing and simmering hot.

The shape grew bigger and bigger until it was the size of the entire mass of land itself.

The mass conjoined with another mass which conjoined with another mass which conjoined with another. The mass upon mass upon mass would later take a shape, and that shape would be called an island.

The impregnations on top of it would be called volcanoes.

20 October, 79:
Pompeii, Italy

It was a normal day in the city of Pompeii. Right underneath the volcano of Mount Vesuvius was an idyllic and yet lavish commune, home to some of the richest inhabitants of the Roman Empire. It was a walled city of many domiciles, temples, and farmlands. A sculptor hired to chisel the likeness of the emperor was taking a break to gnaw at a plum. A slave busied himself washing the feet of his owner’s younger daughter. A mother and her mother gossiped at the baths about the questioned fertility of their neighbours. Boys played with other boys, families were out buying heavy clothes to prepare for the winter. There was life as fresh and as vibrant as life was meant to be, during the passing of life itself.

And in the backdrop of all of it was the volcano.

None was the wiser as to what was about to occur.

20 November 1998:

Plymouth, Montserrat

A mother was telling her thirty-year-old son to leave. It was on a day that was normal enough, and it was for that reason that her son did not want to leave. Plymouth was their home. They had lived there for his entire life, and he did not want to go to England.

In some ways life in the city of Plymouth was normal, but the smoke was getting worse. For the last two years there had been spouts of ash from Soufrière Hill. Clouds of superheated ash had already melted away most of the green on this side of the island, and now tephra from the volcano was falling into the city. In just a few months Plymouth was going to be covered in ash.

This old woman of a mother knew this.

And yet her son refused to leave.

They fought over it as they had been doing for the last few months. And because he was stubborn and convinced he was right, the mother finally gave up. She decided the destruction of Plymouth had been rumoured for the last two years and yet nothing had happened. They could decide to leave everything to start off in a part of the world where they knew no one, only for it to amount to nothing.

Thinking this way the old woman decided to not leave. And because of this they both stayed home at Plymouth. They both loved their home. They both loved everything about their island. And they both had each other and what they had made for each other despite their lack of opportunities.

They chose this love over the possibility of a new life.

They became two of the nineteen people who died during the eruption.

22 May, 2021:

Goma, The People’s Republic of the Congo

There was a giant sonic boom. And then there was a giant puff outwards. A giant ball of flame birthing itself to the world. This was coming from the top of a crater, inside a green crust of earth curving inwards into a bowl. It was in the middle of the night. And yet red clouds formed in the sky, fire and lava spattered out.

The forests near the humble city of Goma were luminescent.

Soon everything caught the flames. The tree, the houses, the animals, and some people. Lava flowed into the suburbs. And then smoke swirled from on top of that. Soon the night was red, and the land was glowing.

The people of this city would have to find another place to live.

21 January, 2022:

Matahau, Tonga

A warm sun is eclipsing the day. There is a need for an eclipse on this blessed Sunday. The entire land has been sheathed in ash. A ring of warmth penetrating the cloudiness, that is what would be most welcome.

Mother stands out to greet the sun. She is wearing a mask. This is not because of fear of the coronavirus. Mother gleefully went with her face bare for many months and years while the rest of the world feared the pandemic. She has to mask herself because she cannot breathe without a mask. Even with a mask on she is constantly coughing. She only has to see the ash still falling from the sky, as though the volcanic eruption still ongoing, happening in front of her, to feel her lungs constrict again.

Cough cough.

There was a day about a week ago on which Mother awoke from a nap and was suddenly covered in ash. It was as if haze had exploded, and thrust itself all throughout the island. Only the sound was much worse. It was atomic, it was cataclysmic. Mother went out, and saw people frightfully running about, people being tossed around by the force of the eruption, people watching as the land that was once so green, so fresh, changed colour in the span of seconds.

It felt as if someone was bombing the island, only no one knew why.

A day of sun is better than ash all around. At least it is a sign that things are getting better, or at least Mother can begin to hope. She should in fact feel blessed. At least her house is intact. There are people whose houses have concaved and contorted into oblong shapes, who have backyards which look like the entire trash of the island was dumped onto them. Mother’s cottage is just extremely ashy. She has to clean almost every day. The ash that she throws out largely gets thrown back in because of the wind.

On this particular day Mother does not want to clean. She wants to focus. It is the second Sunday on which she should be at church. It was too fresh the first Sunday. The volcanic eruption happened on Saturday evening. The whole island was too awry to think about where to go and when. And then when Mother woke up that Sunday morning and saw the pavilion of the church completely blown over, the grey-white building completely covered in soot, she sobbed and grieved as if she were witnessing the death of a loved one.

On this Sunday the church is still closed. If it were a normal day the palm trees would be right outside of her cottage, glistening, freshened by the breeze. The church would be right in front of her. She would walk only a few minutes, on a path almost carved out of sand, green grass on all of its sides. She would talk to her neighbours, she would meet her best friends, they would eat out, they would make merry.

These were the sorts of days Mother took for granted, and never thought back on.

Now that the palms looked forcibly shaven, now that the green of the grass was tinged completely grey with ash, now that Mother felt she was living on the surface of the Moon rather than on anything that resembled Earth, the thought would kindle a tear once in a while.

This was her remembering how great life was when it was at its most banal.

Mother did not need a building to worship. She kneeled, crossed her arms, and bent her head down.

Green green grass, covered to the heels with ash.

Cough, cough. Coughing, coughing all around. Not a single neighbour, wandering about, asking Mother from her porch how her day was going. Not a single person in movement, not a single person making a sound.

Where will the food come from? The yams and the cassavas have been polluted at the root, the coconuts have been smacked out of their branches, the fish are flailing in the ocean only to rise up, sideways.

And the water. It has this strong metallic taste. Mother drinks from whatever bottles she has left because she vomited the night she drank what the Tongans normally drank. Father said that the water was not toxic. It was polluted but still suitable for drinking. But Mother remembered that thrusting feeling in her belly, and she could not drink any more. The water in her bottles was finishing. And the stock of water bottles was running low.

Mother kneels below this beautiful sun, the only source of beauty in an otherwise decrepit landscape. Mother used to pray to have her son back.

Now she just wishes it could be a normal day.

Sometime in the twenty second century:

Olympus Mons, Mars

A man will look out from his window someday, staring at piles of red rock, and beyond that a speckled mound of land. The size of the mound will be stupendous. It will engulf the size of the mountain known on Earth as Mount Everest. It will not be close; it will in fact by rover travel be incredibly far. And yet the man will stare at it, day upon day, because there will be nothing else of the landscape to stare at.

The volcano consumes all.

He will be in a dome designed to withstand the dust storms. He will sip his coffee grown in his dome, and he will think about how he wishes his daughter would study harder, how he hopes she has a future, how he has done everything for her.

He will suddenly wonder whether or not this volcano, that has been inactive for two million years, will suddenly become active, erupt, and destroy everything that he has built for himself and his family.

And then this man will laugh. He will think to himself that so much has changed, just as so much will change, and continue to change, no matter whether he exists there or not. He will leave this view, leave the volcano in the stasis that it has been in for millennia. He will go back into the other room and teach his daughter, because that will be one of few things that he will be able to control.