It never arrived.
They said it would be replaced, well it was, sort of, but it wasn’t what the islanders were expecting; my father was. All the signs had been there, apparently. Provocative words in news reports and documentaries stated,
‘The island has been damaged irrevocably.’
I had started to notice that the routine tides were unusually distant and the moon it seemed, had severed its ties with the dark sky, as it hadn’t been seen in two months. Each year the rain fell with less enthusiasm and the earth began showing its open wounds. Animals dug their own graves, desperate for water, hoping to find some in the huge cracks that stretched wider than the average river, year on year.
They told us,
“Your life is your fortune, don’t waste a drop.”
Slogans were plastered in every shop window, on every lampost and slotted in the windscreen wiper of every parked car.
I could see how we may never get life back to how it was. I was still holding out hope that the two rationed barrels that my family and others received every Wednesday, would keep coming, but part of me knew it wouldn’t last.
How I wished my father was wrong but even I was starting to wonder how the rain could just disappear.
Then those rationed barrels stopped coming and the violent protests began. Hundreds were slaughtered on the streets, gunned down by power hungry officials. Islanders clawed their way through the madness, fighting to survive amidst white cloth banners that read,
"You are killing us!"
"Why do our lives not matter!"
"We are all going to die!"
"HELP US!"
Then one day, out of the blue after weeks of fighting, an announcement,
‘We have found the solution to the water shortage, there will be no more fighting in the streets, no one else needs to die.’
Then it appeared.
In aggressive lorry loads that stampeded the streets, filling every depot and every resident’s garage were litres and litres of water that felt like a stranger to the skin. Sharp prickles that made you want to clothe yourself entirely or never wash again also bubbled unnaturally on the tongue, making me retch as I swallowed my first mouthful. This was now the replacement, they said,
“Get used to it, your body will adjust, this is the answer to your drought.”
My father died two weeks after that first load. The doctors said heart failure, but I sensed this new manufactured water had its part to play after hearing about more and more unexplained deaths througout the island. Before his passing, my father confided in me,
“I had heard this was coming son. Don’t speak of it though, to anyone, and I mean anyone. If the officials catch wind of it, they will hang you. Don’t believe everything they tell you son, they need those authentic raindrops, every litre is worth 5000 Makkas, they have it, tons of the stuff, and the power to stop the rain.
I was curious to hear more about my father’s theory.
“Who would buy the authentic rain anyway?” I said, not sure if I woud get an answer that made any sense.
“Well, we would son, and other countries who need their health back, now we've all been poisoned. Your job is to find something more valuable to them than rain and find a way to make them return what is rightfully ours.”
“Perhaps I could sell the sun?” I said, half-joking. In that moment, my father gripped my hand tightly and passed away.