Stanley Market is a favourite with the children. A veritable rabbit warren of small lanes and dark alleyways lined with narrow, open-fronted retail outlets, they beg us to bring them here to spend their pocket money. The shops snuggle together cheek by jowl whilst the hanging wares intermingle at the entrances as they flutter in the breeze; clothes, linen, jewellery, lanterns, souvenirs, toys, shoes, sports equipment, handbags, hair slides, pashminas and paintings.My little girl takes me by the hand and points, “Want pretty dress.” I can’t fault her taste. She tries it on and marches confidently out of the shop while I pay, marvelling at the bargain for a genuine label or a genuine label copy. At that price who cares?
We follow her into the crowded lane. It is crammed with browsing tourists who move like sluggish brack water along the street. Keeping sight of all the children is hard. It is some minutes before I realise I can’t see my daughter. I press on, calling her name and peering into the shops as I pass. My husband retraces our steps back to the dress shop. The older boys catch on and run ahead to conduct their own shop by shop search. I hope they won’t get distracted by Pokemon cards but they return and to my dismay say she isn’t there. I take my four year old very firmly by the hand. It would be just my luck to lose two children in one day. We meet my husband coming back the other way. He shakes his head. This is every mother’s nightmare; it’s been ten minutes, maybe more. My blue-eyed, golden-haired girl is gone, and I have lost her in a street market with a hundred tiny shops and a thousand concealing pashminas.
In the shop where we bought her dress I grab an identical one and implore the assistant to remember if she has seen the little girl who left wearing this dress. Another customer hears and says they saw her heading down the lane but in the opposite direction to the one we took. I fling down the dress, command my boys to move from the spot on pain of death and run. Pushing through the crowds, shouting her name. How long does it take to lose a daughter? No time at all.
Faced with a choice of streets, I choose the way we came. I am wrong. Blank faces look up to see a desperate mother fly past calling for her daughter. Too much time has passed. Panic is rising in my chest. How to raise the alarm in the streets of a thousand shopkeepers when I don’t even speak their language? Someone catches me up and points back the way I’ve come, says something about the police. I run back and see a crowd of anxious onlookers. In their midst is an officer and in his arms, smiling away, is my baby girl in her new dress. I fold her into my arms and weep tears of relief and joy into her warm little neck. "I thought I’d lost you." I say. "Was gone. Was lost." She tells me. "Where were you?" I ask, hoping for a clue. "Clapping at lanterns," she beams.
5 comments:
that must have been so frightening for you. It can happen in a instant, one minute they are there, the next they are gone. Thank goodness it was a happy ending.
Gill in Canada
Every mother's worst nightmare, as you say... Poor you.
I can just imagine. It's such a rabbit warren there; not the place you want to lose sight of a child. In fact I can vaguely remember being chasisted by my mother for running off in Stanley market - it was such a fun place to explore. Do they still the the jeans shops with piles of denim higher than your head?
Heart stopping. Have had this too. Somehow it feels worse abroad, because you don't understand anything, or know what and where etc is safe or not, how people behave etc. Lack of cultural cues and familiarity make oen feel so much more vulnerable I think.
Love the name Iona, by the way. Do you have any connections to the place? I went there when I was expecting our first, and it was on our list of names, but he was a boy. That connection seemed a bit tenuous 7 years later by the time we had a girl.
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