Manoukian, Author at The Pure Life of Dreams

April 20, 2023May 2, 2023

Attacked by a Drone in the Old Fort

Attacked by drones in the old Moroccan fort.

Siobhan, Liam, Lizzie and I went on holiday to Morocco or a place like that and after we had arrived and settled into our hotel, we went wandering around the souk. It was nearby and still filled with people in colorful costumes so we took lots of candid pictures.

The souk was quite open plan but still dusty, and had rich ornate rugs swung over the wooden frames of the stalls to protect the shoppers from the sun’s dusty glare.

The locals’ costumes were many striped, in reds and orange, golds and blues, the colors of the rainbow, and you had to be fast to get the pictures but I played with the iPhone buttons instead of the app button and snapped them really fast. I was not even looking to frame each picture so that even if a head got in the way I would still snap it.

I looked at one photo and sure enough I had frozen it in time. The focused head of a man captured through a blur of people. I was proud to have gotten a good picture just like the kids showed me.

And later on we walked over to an old fort which had a broken wall and an old blue door; you could walk around the right side of the wall, to the other side without opening the door. Behind the wall was a moat and a series of steps that went down to the water line and then came back up again to the rear side of the door. And intersecting the moat was another wall that acted as a bridge, that you could walk across the top of, that was quite wide and able to accommodate all four of us side by side.

We walked along the bridge and a drone flew by; and the drone was bowl shaped and black with a yellow trim up by its wings. It hovered briefly over the water before snapping out of sight.

And once we turned back and were returning to the fort’s front wall we noticed the water level had risen, perhaps because of the tide, and the drone was back again. This time it was a bit more menacing. It flew closer to us, just missing Lizzie and I, and then it went after Siobhan who had walked ahead. She was up by the intersection where the bridge and the wall’s steps met.

Siobhan ducked down to avoid the swoop of the drone and dived into the water which now covered the steps. Then she surfaced where the steps rose up close to the door. Only her head and right arm visible, she was holding onto the top step, but also she looked dazed.

Liam and I ran back along the path and I thought to walk down the first set of steps and up the second to where she was. But then I would have gotten my camera wet because all but the top steps were covered in water. I didn’t think it would survive that amount of time in the moat.

Then Liam had an idea. “Why don’t we try the door from the front?”

And so we walked back around the wall. And the door was old with chipped paint and we weren’t sure we were allowed to open it. I turned the heavy round silver knob of the door and we stepped through.

No one stopped us.

“Good idea, Liam,” I acknowledged as I closed the door behind us.

Next to the door sat an old cart leaning with its wheel barrow handles on the path. It was right next to where the steps began, where Siobhan held on.

But there was no trace of Siobhan.

A few bathers were paddling out in the moat but she was not one of them. We looked out across the water, and briefly one woman in the same dark brown bathing suit as Siobhan surfaced, but she had long dark brown hair.

Perhaps she had slipped unconscious while holding onto the step.

We peered into the water but it was murky and there was no way to see anything deeper than a few feet. And this time I thought to dive down to see if she had drowned.

Then Liam cried out.

“Mama,” he wailed in a plaintive voice.

Photo from Wallpaper Flare

April 14, 2023April 14, 2023

Floating towards the End of Days in Guatemala

It was our last day in Guatemala and it was clear we could not carry on.

Alexis and I had argued for most of the holiday and we would split up upon our return. It was a fait accompli.

That day I decided to go off by myself on a two-hour walk to the next beach over. We would have one last dinner upon my return.

I headed out through the mall, passing first through Harrods, and I thought it a shame that they had these same stores here now, that the world was becoming so homogeneous.

And at the end of the mall, I came out onto a rocky beach and realized then that I was barefoot and maybe I should have brought my shoes. The rocks were hard on my feet but it was too late to go back and fetch them. I would have to manage.

As I continued on I thought back at how we had agreed on Guatemala. We had spent many evenings at the hotel restaurant but even though she was a good traveler we had always argued about some such unimportant thing or other, and we knew we couldn’t continue.

I stepped up and over huge flat beige boulders buried partially in the sand. Pools of seawater collected in the natural dips of the rock. It was a shame we were splitting up but there was no way we could continue.

By then I had taken off my shirt and was holding it along with a spare pair of shorts in my hand and to make climbing more efficient I bundled both into my back pocket. Even so, by the time I got to the end of the path, it was getting towards dusk and it had taken a bit longer than I expected.

And at the endpoint, I found a small red house, far end of the path, and next to it lay a short boardwalk that followed the line of the water’s edge. The boardwalk lay out to sea a few feet as if stranded by the low tide. And the path was now reduced to a bland dusty road that split a promontory of small rocks and gorse. Alexis would say it didn’t look like much, but that would be just like her, right?

The clock on the house said quarter to five and I would have to hurry in order to be back for dinner. And I could imagine her getting cross, so I set off immediately back.

As I neared the mall, the crowds started to thicken and I knew I would have to push past them.

Inside the mall I found myself stuck behind two people who were especially slow. They were young and at first, I did not recognize that they were together. The girl had a condition, a long spindly arm that required she hold onto the rail of the steps. I was back in Harrods and I had to duck under her arm to get past, and only then did I realize that they were a couple, or a brother and sister.

Still, I pushed on at a frantic pace. I waved my hands, palms together in front of me so that I could slice through each group I crossed. Speeding now, I came to a full flight of stairs in a dark ornate oak hall with curled gold finial posts at the top of the bannister, and I grabbed one of the posts and used it to launch myself in the air.

I floated high over the steps, just as the post buckled under my grip and I thought that it could not have been made of gold after all, but must have been made of some cheap plastic instead.

And I floated over the crowd, over all five steps, and gliding steadily to the floor, it was then that I thought I stood a chance of returning on time.

Photo via PxFuel

April 5, 2023June 9, 2025

The Last of the Fairground Events

As the fairground sights wound to a close, the sun hit the stalls with the setting shade. Up on the hilltop ridge, the students piled back heading home, cast in shade, shadows of bodies.

March 30, 2023April 20, 2023

Bus Stops are Dangerous

I am walking by a couple at the gym who are arguing.

The wife yells at the man, “We come all the way to this country and you have to go fuck that Algerian at the bus station!”

March 22, 2023March 20, 2024

Dad is Alive and Well and Living in Costa Rica

It is getting late and my camera is running out of battery. I am in the valley of dark orange clay mountainsides in Costa Rica. And on the road, as dusk hits, I come across a stall by the roadside. It sells various bric-a-brac, luggage, assorted stuff piled up on old white bookshelves. And on the top shelf, I see a row of secondhand cameras.

“Do you sell batteries?” I ask the shopkeeper.

He says he does, and I pull out my old SLR and show him, pulling out the battery from its encasement. It is one of the old-fashioned brick ION batteries. Sure enough, he pulls out a battery from under his counter that matches.

“That’s great! I should get a battery for the other one too.”

Only I cannot remember the type of battery my other camera takes. I will have to get back to the hostel to pick it up. But then he pulls out a mini DV battery.

“Is it this one?”, he asks, but I cannot be sure.

“No, I’ll have to get back and get it. Then I can pay for both.”

“You sure?” He says again.

And so he tells me how to get back to the hostel and it seems quite close by. I need to stay on the base of the valley, he says, but once I set off, somehow I take a turn that rises up into the hills.

I am on a winding deserted road that overlooks the valley and now I am crying, like I should have bought the battery there and then.

The road is a dusty brown path that curves up to a large house with a tall brick wall that fences it off. I see a black sports car through the gate and it belongs to the shopkeeper’s rival so I don’t want to go there.

And next to the house is a post office which is still open.

It has an old man who can perhaps help me. In broken Spanish, I ask him for the phone number of the shopkeeper with the camera and luggage stall, and he writes the number on a piece of paper torn from a yellow legal pad.

“You can go in there to make a call,” and he points to a narrow side room with big windows that front the roadside.

My dad is sitting there shuffling through some papers, like an accountant.

He’s sitting in profile, wearing his big dark green cardigan. He has his familiar look, balding, and his thin grey hair is combed back as usual, but he does not notice me so I quickly dial the number on an old rotary phone.

“Yes, I am up in the hills next to the red house,” I whisper.

“I’ll come and get you,” the shopkeeper replies quickly, to my relief.

Photo by zmachacek via Deposit Photos