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  • Azila

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    CHARACTER PROFILE

    • GENDER
      Female
    • PLAY-BY
      Sophie Okonedo
    • SEXUAL ORIENTATION
      Asexual
    • RACE
      Veil-crosser
    • JOB
      Botanist, gardener, landscape designer
    • 'SHIP:
      De facto widowed
    • LOCATION
      NYC
    • FACTION
      Factionless

    Profile Fields

    • Primary
      Ibrahim Asimu Tanko
    • All My Characters
      Body language - other peculiarities:

      Azila doesn't shake hands. Normally, she doesn't stretch out her hand in the first place, but if another person does try to shake it due to some misunderstanding, she may take serious offense. The act of rubbing fingers and palms is sexually charged and has a profound intimate meaning to her, and, as such, is a form of foreplay or at least special gesture to be reserved for her mate. She and Initran would massage each other's hands on a regular basis and eventually turned it into a unique private ritual of their own, almost an art - a dance performed with their hands only. Since Azila remains faithful to him to this day, she isn't keen on the thought of repeating that gesture with anyone else.

      In the most likely scenario, she will perceive an attempt to shake her hand as making sexual advances on her - perhaps nothing short of outright sexual assault. She will throw off the other person's hand, in a rather violent way, and respond with an angry "Leave be!", "Hands off (us, this body)!" or just "Hands!" - her tone and manner will make it quite clear what she is referring to.

      When addressed, she doesn't turn around or look at the other person or acknowledge their presence in any other way, which makes it difficult to determine if she'd heard one or not. Those who were familiar with her knew they had to continue talking and not pay any attention; the best strategy was to start doing something alongside her and speak as one worked, without raising one's head. Just standing there and waiting for her to respond may provoke a rude-sounding question like "What do you want?", "What are you doing in here?" "Why are you here?" or a statement like "So, talk" because she will see one as a strange, disturbing, undesirable presence. If you continue to linger, expect to be escorted out in the most unceremonious manner imaginable and have the door slammed behind you.

      On the other hand, when overcome with strong emotion or excited about the topic, she may stare directly into one's face. She looks at the middle of the forehead or at the lips and the tip of the nose, not into the eyes, and doesn't really see the other person, being too absorbed in what she wants to say. The same happens if she tries to establish artificial eye contact because she's been told it was more acceptable; she can't tell when to start or stop and holds her gaze too long, which often feels uncomfortable. Hence the accusations of "staring people down".

      Ironically, it's her who feels humans are staring her down. Initially, eye contact was such a traumatic experience she had a meltdown when she saw her own eyes in a mirror, and though she has grown a lot more used to it over the years, other people's eyes are still frightening - she perceives them as bottomless pits or vortices that threaten to pull her in. She makes extensive use of her (excellent) peripheral vision to avoid it whenever she can (which comes across as "squinting" or a "sly/suspicious sidelong glance"), or, when she can't, looks at the other parts of the face instead.

      If she wants to concentrate or is about to say something significant, especially in the emotional sense, she stares down at the ground or over her shoulder, or, in some cases, turns around, takes a few steps away from the other person and talks with her back turned to them. Far from being a sign of contempt, this is an indication that one has her full and undivided attention and she wants to filter out any potentially distracting or confusing signals that might distort the message.

      At times, she may not greet the others if she is the first to enter a room, or return someone else's greeting. She knows that this is one of the accepted rules that must be followed, and reminds herself to do so, but from time to time, she may forget because it's unnatural to her. She has no innate sense of when this has to be done, and her internal instinct tells her it's pointless - someone has come in, apparently for a reason, otherwise they wouldn't be there, she has heard and smelled them approach, so why announce oneself once more rather than start talking straight away? This is one more reason she is thought of as rude and unresponsive.

      Azila has no sense of physical boundaries, and none of the instinct that tells us not to touch other people without their permission. This was a serious problem during the first three or four months after de-assimilation, when she was prone to what amounted to the roughest and most rude form of manhandling - she would shove people out of the way, grab them by the shoulder or forearm and force them to turn around to see the direction she was pointing in. If told to "bring someone in", she hauled them in like a sack of grain; "seeing them out" meant pushing them out of the room as if they were a prisoner or detainee, or presented a security risk. Whenever she wanted to feel the texture of someone's skin or garment, she would reach out and run her hands over their faces or hair, or grab and hold onto their clothes, rubbing the fabric between her fingers.

      When she was told that such raw physicality was unacceptable, she went to the opposite extreme. These days, is reluctant to engage in any physical contact, even when she is close to the person and the circumstances call for it, because she is unable to tell from the context whether or not it'd be welcome and appreciated and, just to be on the safe side, prefers not to do anything that might offend. On occasion, one can see her reaching out to place a hand on someone's shoulder or knee in reassurance, and then go still, uncertain of how to continue; unless she hears an explicit statement of consent, like "go ahead, it's fine, you can touch me", she is likely to pull it back. People who were well-acquainted with her would tell her outright whether they wanted to be touched or not, and in which specific situations, to make sure she knew how to act around them.

      In addition, some of her body language comes across as supremely confrontational, even when she is calm. A good example is her habit of cornering people - after entering a room, she will start to advance on somebody in rapid strides until her chest almost touches theirs, tilting her head to the side at an angle that suggested a threat or aggressive desire to prove a point, and making what seems to be sustained eye contact. The other person ends up pressed against a wall, feeling as if he or she were about to be attacked. To an observer, Azila's movements are identical to those of a cat engaged in a nose-to-nose yowling match with a contender for the same territory just before a fight breaks out and the two roll down the road locked into a screaming ball with tufts of fur flying in all directions. Another example is her walking right up to another person, almost making contact with them, and giving them a head-to-toe look as though she had X-ray vision; a little longer, one thought, and she would order one to remove one's jacket, turn one's pockets inside out and raise one's arms, and pat one down as a security guard would have done during a strip-search. Still another is her slow circling around someone else, scrutinizing them from head to toe, as if assessing how much of a security risk they posed; again, this came across as predatory and ominous, and more than one person reported sensing her stare on their back in a way that brought shivers down their spine. The unsettled, insecure feeling would usually persist until she was gone from the room; her presence was so intimidating it made one shrink into one's shell.

      After she was explained how unpleasant these behaviors were and what a strong negative response they produced, Azila has made every effort to eliminate them. However, when she is too anxious or concerned about her friends, or in some other state where she cannot fully control her actions, all her social self-conditioning vanishes and they surface again, to her own frustration and that of others.

      She has no innate sense of the natural dynamics of a conversation - where a phrase starts and finishes, or where the natural pauses are situated between phrases. When she tries to join in, she usually interrupts; when she tries to show initiative, she hijacks the conversation, bending it in a single direction (such as one of her narrow specialized interests), not letting the others contribute or talking over them when they try. In some cases, she may simply cut the conversation short, and, once she does, it's discontinued and dies. 

      She is gradually getting better at turn-taking. When she does speak out of turn, she backs down and apologizes; if the words won't come, she raises her right hand in a placating gesture that can be read, more or less, as "sorry, didn't mean to break in on your conversation, please continue". Most of the time, she prefers to listen to others, letting them do the talking and choose the topics at their own discretion, and goes along with whatever they may decide to discuss. 

      To her, our body language conveys a disconcerting message best summarized as "welcome to the realm of chaos and miscommunication". Our gestures and speech are erratic and lack co-ordination. Subconsciously, she expects our movements to be synchronized, like those of the T'elX constituents, which looked like a slow, mesmerizing underwater dance - understandably, since they functioned as a single mind and their wills were merged. Instead, our movements hint at a state opposite to the one in which she had spent fifteen years and still holds up as the ideal: we seem to be disunited, isolated, fractured on the inside, in other words, as broken as herself. Rather than talk in unison and finish each other's sentences, as the T'elX would have done had they been able to speak - they had no vocal chords and no need to use audible speech among themselves, but they thought as one and would have talked as one if they could - we throw disjointed fragments at one another, interrupt all the time, and use so much white noise it tends to drown out the meaningful parts of the discussion.

      This disturbs her to the core. As with most other things in the world outside the T'elX colony, she forces herself to ignore this sense of a dire lack of harmony and cohesion in the minds of individual humans and in their social structure, and to mimic their body language to fit in; but the feeling itself never vanishes and is there, at the back of her mind, and demands an ongoing and concerted effort of will to overcome.

      Some of our non-verbal signals bother her on a more basic instinctive level. We bare our teeth in what seems to be a threatening or mocking grin; our faces contort into grimaces; we wave and toss our hands around in the air in a disordered manner that doesn't make much sense. Others may look like a feeble, last-resort attempt to compensate and establish at least a shadow of a connection in the absence of a genuine strong link; for example, when people constantly turn to face each other and make excessive eye contact, they appear to be fishing for affirmation and reassurance in a rather forced, artificial way.

      One human response that appears particularly bizarre to Azila is weeping; as a biologist, she is perfectly aware of the mechanisms behind the tear production, but instinct tells her there is no purpose in shedding water from the eyes, as this much fluid isn't needed to moisturize them - and the connection to strong emotion, which is so self-evident to ourselves, is lost on her.

      Other personality traits worth noting:

      Uncompromising, categorical:

      As summarized by the popular phrase: which part of the word "no" don't you understand? In her case it's quite literal - she often uses a blunt, categorical "no" (or "never" or "nonsense") to terminate a conversation if she believes the debate is going nowhere and is a waste of time, or there is nothing left to discuss.

      Azila has been described as a person who recognizes only two opinions on any given issue - theirs and the wrong one, which is an exaggeration, but does contain a grain of truth. Her opinions are not just firm; they have a final, indisputable quality. She may take a while to formulate her position as she prefers to collect and evaluate any available evidence first, but once she does, she is virtually impossible to persuade otherwise. If one wishes to argue with her and is capable of working around her limited verbal capacity, fine - but one has to be prepared for her digging in her heels very, very deep and refusing to budge, and for having to admit defeat.

      This is amplified by the fact that Azila is often unaware of how forceful she is in conversation. Her manner of making a neutral statement qualifies to others as "pressure"; what is a cool, neutral discussion to herself appears to the rest of the participants to be an unpleasant fight at a raised volume. The resulting impression is that of a person who plows through like a tank rather than attempting to find some middle ground between herself and the opponent. Azila, for her part, expects others to respond with the same degree of force and to stand their ground, and is perplexed when they back down and feel trodden over instead. Most of the time, she certainly isn't conscious of coming across as exceedingly argumentative and assertive, even aggressive.

      In a casual conversation this can easily be remedied by pointing out that she was coming on too strong. She will be quite attentive and do her best to find out how she was supposed to act - whether her voice was too loud, what she could have said to be more polite and so on. It's this that causes a lot of daily confusion for Azila and those around her, as the trait tends to be mistaken for disrespect, a desire to dominate or be deliberately rude, and is left at that. With serious issues, however, Azila prefers her stance to be as clear and unequivocal as possible and doesn't make concessions.

      Dislike for idle or sentimental conversation:

      Azila is a woman of deeds, not words. As such, she finds the discussion of feelings, at best, awkward, redundant or inappropriate, and at worst a profanation of what the words were supposed to stand for. She believes that emotions are to be lived out, not described, and, ultimately, words can never be enough to convey them - not in their genuine depth and significance. Love is to be proved by practical action, from minor everyday assistance to major self-sacrifice; beauty is to be contemplated in reverent silence. When a co-worker kept pestering her about how wonderful the clouds looked in the evening sky without really looking in that direction, she took him by the shoulders, turned him toward the window and said: "Shut mouth and watch". Likewise, the l-word was never passed between herself and Initran so much as once, though their actions made their feelings for each other apparent.

      Part of this is that there had never been any need to voice feelings among the Tha'i'n - they were just there, freely circulated among all the co-constituents and experienced in the most immediate form imaginable. As a consequence, the very act of articulating her emotions feels wrong, and, when she does have to discuss them, if only because she and her group can no longer read each other's minds, she is unbelievably tongue-tied and may use startlingly poetic-sounding turns of phrase, which aren't figurative in the slightest - they are a direct description of the complicated synaesthetic sensations or mental imagery that comes with the given emotion.

      Sentimental romantic conversations anger her and give her the psychological equivalent of the indigestion and heartburn one may get from too much refined sugar. So do most conventional signs of romantic affection. Once again, it's all about talk - with the participants throwing around a word whose true meaning they do not know and won't bother to find out - but there are no visible results. She is also convinced that sentimentality thrives where there is no genuine strong emotion and people conjure shallow, fake feelings out of thin air - most of the time, they will start a storm in a teacup, magnify it to the level of a class 5 hurricane and wallow in the consequences, none of which is sensible.

      She regards small talk as a thorough waste of time. It's a luxury she can't afford, as she barely manages to make herself understood even on crucial matters, much less chit-chat about everything and nothing. She knows the value of words too well - among other things, because she has to struggle for every single one of them, and because each clearer, more coherent sentence is a challenge and a minor victory to be won. She would rather they had maximum weight and significance, if they do have to be used, and not be thrown around in vain. From that point of view, talk for its own sake appears to be an act of gross disrespect, almost a sacrilege.

      Direct, open to discussion:

      Almost too much. This is one more trait that adds to her perception as difficult and annoying. In the past, her incessant questions about ordinary everyday realities everyone else finds self-evident and her curt one-word requests, which sound more like commands ("repeat", "rephrase", "clarify", "explain", "elaborate"), have produced many raised eyebrows, rolled eyes and fingers twirled at the temple.

      Upon some reflection, though, one realizes that this does minimize miscommunication. Azila's reasoning is clear: since no-one in here can read minds, thoughts should be spoken out loud, which will allow the parties to make allowances for their respective species-specific peculiarities and compensate for whatever crucial element of human communication she can't comprehend. If one is prepared to do just that, the result can be surprisingly good.

      Owing to this, despite her reputation as rude, abrupt and unpleasant, Azila can be easy to work with, provided one is just as forthcoming and prepared to ask and answer plenty of questions. She prefers nothing to be left unsaid, and thus unresolved, and is glad to co-operate even when this means considerable stress or frustration tp herself, as long as everyone else does the same.

      Whenever she finds herself in a novel context, she will ask a lot of questions to establish clearer boundaries - for instance, to see which distance she should maintain from the others or which volume of her voice would be the most comfortable, and, in general, to determine which behaviors would be acceptable and desirable or objectionable. If she is assigned a task, she will try to find out as much as possible about the exact details: what, where, when, how, with whom. If something doesn't seem clear enough, she will request an explanation; if that doesn't suffice to eliminate the ambiguities, she will go for a second opinion and then a third; if she disagrees, she will argue her point. When she artives in a new working environment, she always tells her co-workers that, should they have any feedback, such as wishes, complaints or remarks, they should state them outright. If she finds someone's motivation dubious and is concerned that there might be deceit or coercion involved, she will say: sorry, don't understand, state your intent more clearly or/and in more detail or leave.

      Sexuality:

      The "asexual" tag at the top of the profile is not quite accurate, as Azila is capable of a healthy, mature sexuality, but only when she is in season. Once in every five years, she has a period of intense, uncontrollable hormone-driven sexual activity that lasts several weeks. The first one occurred when she was in a relationship with Initran, but had to be suppressed with heavy doses of medication because the massive hormonal upheaval was too dangerous for her nervous system; otherwise, she would have wanted to pursue a full physical relationship with him. Initran, for his part, saw that she didn't want anything beyond foreplay and did not pressure her to go further.

      Out of season, she is capable of nothing but a subtle sexual feeling toward a significant other, which is tinged more by emotional closeness than anything else. Her relationship with Initran retained a subtle erotic shade throughout the three years they were together, and involved a lot of physical affection. In general, though, she is completely insensitive to sexual triggers, even the most blatant ones, and has no sexual drive whatsoever. She knows no lust. Physical contact remains is comforting, but doesn't cause her to become excited even if her (bare and sensitive) thighs are caressed. Indecent or suggestive imagery doesn't inflame her imagination or cause any sexual sensation; most of the time, she simply shrugs her shoulders at how excessive and odd it is when viewed through a sexuality-free lens.

      Similarly, she doesn't know any self-consciousness, shame or other inhibitions connected to the body. She doesn't care or notice how much, or how little, of others' skin is covered by their clothing and can strip in the presence of a stranger without second thoughts to bathe or change; she feels nothing, either about the stranger or her own nakedness. She doesn't usually do that in the presence of third parties because she is aware that public nudity but she doesn't have the internal barrier that normally prevents one from doing so. In fact, during the first post-deassimilation year, she could have come out into the street stark naked and taken a walk through the town, wondering why everyone was staring at her. Neither did she quite understand the preoccupation of Hawa's native culture on modesty and dress codes, or the controversy over the modern mass media being inundated with images of half-naked or scantily clad females - she doesn't see the point in putting them there, but neither does she feel what makes them so provocative. To her, nudity is thoroughly neutral, a mere matter of undressing when it's warm enough and no extra clothing is needed to ward off the sunlight and heat, and bears no sexual significance. At the same time, she may admire a beautiful male - or, for that matter, female - body for its features or proportions, as she may have admired a flower, without any arousal or desire to possess that person sexually.

      In season, her mind grows clouded, she might not comprehend or so much as recall her own feelings afterward, and may assault anyone she sees as a prospective mate or an obstacle to her search for one. In effect, she acts like two completely different people in and out of the mating periods.

      When the second mating period began after the Resonance, when she had found herself in this dimension, she was able to procure some hormonal and anti-psychotic medication from a nurse she knew and barricaded herself in the basement of an abandoned house. During the third one, which is somewhat overdue and may start at any moment, she will probably do the same. The state poses too much of a risk, and even if it didn't, Azila is a monogamous person at heart and finds the thought of sexual activity with anyone other than Initran repulsive. While their relationship was not consummated, in the sense of their not having had sex, she honors the commitment, which in her mind equates to an unspoken marriage vow; needless to say, she doesn't want to betray Initran behind his back, however unintentionally, all the more so that he is gone forever and wouldn't be there to find out what happened and forgive her.

      All in all, her attitude to sexuality is sober and rational. It's a a natural phenomenon, no more and no less - biological, social and psychological necessity dictates that people form family units, have offspring, use sexual unity to enhance and complement their emotional connections. Why so many are obsessed with sexuality, often with a morbid and unhealthy twist, and are bent on bringing it into every other sphere of social life is beyond her.

      She won't notice the subtler indicators of romantic interest due to her insensitivity to non-verbal signals. If the attempts at flirting are so apparent she does recognize them, at which point they will probably resemble molestation and stray into the realm of the unacceptable, she will reject them in a forceful and unambiguous fashion. In other words, the male will be shown where the exit is, in the most direct sense of these words, and, in the event that he has trouble finding the door, he will be taken there with or without the optional verbal message: Mate gone. No need for new one. Out.

      Prominent quirks:

      - Likes to lie half-buried in the sand (which, to others, may be ice-cold or burning hot). This reminded her of the past, as a hefty portion of the Tha'i'n organisms burrowed and she may have had to do the same and to spend some time in underground caverns.

      - Has odd preferences when it comes to scent, taste and flavor. She likes the smell of tar, creosote bushes or wet leather, but vanilla is more or less like gasoline to her. That said, she can use vanilla in her cooking because she is good at determining what it does or doesn't combine with, and is able to distance herself from her own dislike toward the flavor. Likes foods commonly thought of as disgusting or inedible.

      - Enjoys cooking and is good at it, but only interested if she can make a meal for someone else. Gladly samples the food offered to her and is obviously curious about the flavors and their various combinations, especially if they are unfamiliar, but thinks of cooking for herself as a useless indulgence and a waste of time, effort and quality food.

      - If she can help it, she doesn't venture outside without an mp3 player and a pair of headphones, which are an item of necessity for her, rather than a non-essential leisure product. The music serves as a buffer between herself and the immediate surroundings, and, as such, helps her focus on her thoughts and tones down some of the worst sounds in the street, which would have otherwise produced an acute reverberating pain ripping through her body and may have triggered a meltdown (house and vehicle sirens, horns, motorbike engines, wheels splashing through the torrents of water after a downpour, the shrill beeping signal that sounds when en entrance card is used to open a secure door or when the doors of a bus are about to close).

      Prefers classical music, a-capella folk songs or Gregorian chanting, all of which remind her of the joint "song" woven from the thoughts of the T'elX constituents. Chooses large around-the-ear headsets, which can be used to dampen sounds even when the music isn't on.

      - Her intense curiosity and fascination with her surroundings manifests in the most hands-on way imaginable: she has a compulsion to touch various things with her finngers, to feel them, trace the edges or outlines with her fingers. She will take small objects into her hands, turn them this way and that, stroke them, examine them from closer up, and it's not uncommon for her to sniff or lick them to sense the smell and taste or to feel the texture with her tongue. At first, this included others' faces and clothes, before Initran told her that she shouldn't touch them because most humans would see such behavior as insane and a gross violation of boundaries.

      This seems to offer her enhanced and disordered senses a greater certainty about the environment, helps her feel more focussed and establish firmer boundaries between self vs. non-self.

      Seshaewin once said with his usual good-natured humor that she could be just like a three- or four-year-old, in that she cannot be left unobserved because there is no telling which inedible or toxic thing she might well lick or put into her mouth next.

      Being indifferent to the cold or damp and not susceptible to the usual discomfort at touching the bare soil, she likes to sit or lie down on the ground while out of doors. Tends to look completely out of touch with her surroundings and lost in her own world when she does, which is an illusion; the postures have a spontaneous, random, childlike quality and are something you would expect to see from a 7-10 year old. May climb into the lower boughs of a tree and sit there or lie down and let her limbs dangle.

      Has an unusual reaction to extreme swinging or spinning motion that lies at the limit of her body's capacities. Instead of the more commmon thrill or unpleasant sensation (prolonged and serious loss of equilibrium, vertigo, vomiting, disorientation), she experiences a deep sedative effect. At least in part, this is due to the fact that the neurons in whole areas of Azila's brain are in a state of permanent agitation, along with her reduced sensitivity to vestibular stimuli, which appear to work together to produce a paradoxical response. The overall result is a marked, though temporary, improvement in her emotional and neurological condition.

      Azila is fond of gravity rides featuring some form of rotation and upside-down turns (roller-coasters with different inversions) or those based on rotation around a vertical axis (twist and/or pendulum varieties), and approached the authorities at least once with a request to use a training centrifuge for pilots and persisted until she was granted access. She emerged feeling almost serene for the first time in months, as well as pleased to have found a way of alleviating the chronic anxiety. When no such special opportunities are available, she is content with an ordinary children's swing, which she can use for hours at top amplitude and speed.

      She finds any rocking motion on the whole soothing. Initran's favorite tactic for bringing her out of a meltdown was to hold her as tight as possible, sometimes after a struggle, and to rock with her back and forth, humming the refrain from a song his mother had used during his own outbursts when he was six or seven. The repetitive movement and sound would dull the acute dread, reduce the panic, make her surroundings more stable and comprehensible, and, in general, created a greater sense of security and calm, as did the sensation of his warm arms wrapped around her, which reminded her of being inside a cocoon (she would usually bury her face in the folds of the robe on his chest or under his arm to enhance the feeling).

      Self-medicates during the bouts of melancholia by going to the seaside and listening to the waves crash into the shore. The steady rhythmic sound reminds her of the thoughts of the Tha'i'n constituents, which were like a loud, melodic, overwhelming chorus, ebbing and flowing in waves; it calms her down and brings her at least a little closer to her old self. On a quiet evening after a storm, when the sea hasn't settled yet, the beach may feel almost like home. Ordinarily, she is sensitive to loud sounds, but here, on the contrary, the volume seems to enhance the calming effect, which is the most prominent when the sound becomes a deafening roar and rips through her body.

      Loves classical choral music for the same reason: it reminds her of herself and her co-constituents weaving their thoughts together into a single "internal song". Mozart's "Requiem" became a revelation to her - the emotional force and beauty of the music was comparable to the mental chorus she had lived with, and contributed to, for fifteen years, and the mood mirrored her own now that she was far from home.

      While one cannot say she is claustrophobic - in fact, she finds dark, tight, small enclosed spaces comforting - she is uneasy indoors due to the inorganic environment, which screams "wrong" or "foreign" to each of her senses. After all, she spent fifteen years in the Tha'i'n colony, where the walls literally breathed (and, sometimes, photosynthesized) and the floor underfoot could be a source of food. Likewise, the geometry in human-made buildings seems strange and primitive to her compared to the sophisticated "gardens" of organic structures back home.

      - If she can help it, she doesn't venture outside without an mp3 player and a pair of headphones, which are an item of necessity for her, rather than a non-essential leisure product. The music serves as a buffer between herself and the immediate surroundings, and, as such, helps her focus on her thoughts and tones down some of the worst sounds in the street, which would have otherwise produced an acute reverberating pain ripping through her body and may have triggered a meltdown (house and vehicle sirens, horns, motorbike engines, wheels splashing through the torrents of water after a downpour, the shrill beeping signal that sounds when en entrance card is used to open a secure door or when the doors of a bus are about to close).

      Prefers classical music, a-capella folk songs or Gregorian chanting, all of which remind her of the joint "song" woven from the thoughts of the T'elX constituents. Chooses large around-the-ear headsets, which can be used to dampen sounds even when the music isn't on.

      Psychological issues - trust these to be systematically and, to use Mbuta's words, obnoxiously swept under the rug until she has a complete nervous breakdown:

      - Social anxiety

      Suffers from crippling social anxiety, which rises when she has to deal with more than two people at a time and/or to talk to strangers, and peaks if she has to participate in an event along with a large group. It's not the presence of others that makes her uneasy; if they were able to communicate on her terms, she would have been at ease in the middle of a crowd, but the problem is, they can't or won't. As a result, social occasions offer her little in the sense of establishing any genuine connection, but a lot as far as sensory overload and embarrassment are concerned. She knows that she is expected to follow certain rules and wants to do so; at the same time, she isn't sure what most of them are, or, if she is, she is unable to apply them. This causes a constant concern and preoccupation with whether she is doing the "right thing" and with what she may be supposed to do instead.

      If forced to interact outside the prescribed rules, in a novel situation where the "protocol" is unknown, she may go into a state of internal shutdown where her feelings fade into a white void and she loses track of herself or her surroundings and just stands there like a statue. At first, she would "vanish" or get shorted out like that several times a day. Later, these states became less frequent, but she still has moments when her head is swept empty, cleared of thoughts, and she is left at a complete loss what to do or say (what Kraetschmer used to call "standing frozen in your tracks in the middle of the road with your arms hanging at your sides, like a living question-mark").

      Understandably, she hates public speaking, both because of the anxiety and because she is all too aware of being poor at articulating her thoughts. A situation where she needs to address an audience of three or more is bound to produce a full-blown panic attack, complete with the vegetative symptoms (palpitations, sweating, sudden weakness, shaking, rapid shallow breathing). In spite of all this, is known to have delivered at least two public presentations and maintained such excellent composure throughout that she seemed to be just "edgy" or "slightly nervous" on the outside. She took great care to prepare in advance, learning the text word-for-word and creating outlines with strategies to return her to each point if the train of thought breaks due to extreme tension, and endured the fear by disengaging from the emotional component and treating the rest as if it were a transitory physical ailment.

      When plagued by anxiety-fuelled obsessive mental imagery, her mind resembles a faulty video player that has become stuck on the same section of the tape: it plays the same images over and over again, and, try as she may, she is unable to press "pause" or "stop". Often, her mind will go over the visual "record" of a situation she believes she handled in an awkward or wrong manner, first playing back what she said or did in actual fact, then what she might or should have said or done, and repeating the whole sequence again and again. The same may happen in the initial stages of a depressive episode, while her thought processes remain more or less active, in which case the images are connected to the most meaningful moments she had shared with Initran and Mbuta, their deaths, and the hallucinations she remembers from her delirious periods.

      Depression:

      The T'elX term for Azila's condition had two shades of meaning: extreme nostalgia - an unconditional and irresistible yearning to be back home, with one's fellow constituents - and the neurological syndrome caused by the severing of the connection with the collective entity. No clarification was made as to which of the two was terminal; each, on its own or in combination with the other, was recognized as such.

      From the perspective of our psychiatry, she could be said to have what used to be called classic or vital melancholia (known as "black melancholia" in French or "green melancholia" in Russian). The core feelings that define this state are a deep sense of loss, sorrow and longing that are unconditional and not connected to any external events; they exist simply because so does she. She longs to see the colony and to hear the chorus of her fellow constituents in her mind. The guilt for the deaths of Initran and Mbuta and what she perceives as her failure to do her best by them, or her betrayal of them, grows to inordinate proportions. The feelings of internal fragmentation and deficiency increase to a point where she views herself as thoroughly useless, even for simple mundane tasks like cooking or doing the dishes. In addition, there are prominent physical symptoms, such as shortness of breath and pain or/and pressure in her chest, comparable to having her upper body clamped in a tight steel vise, being strapped to a bed with a wide leather belt, or having a large nail driven into her midsection.

      Taken to the extreme, all this produces physical and mental paralysis. Azila becomes genuinely incapacitated; the flow of images in her mind grinds to a halt, she can't focus and feels hollow, devoid of thought, comprehension or emotion. Her movements become slow and lethargic, and eventually cease altogether.

      The condition never lifts completely, but it tends to worsen over periods for three to five months at a time. The onset of these episodes is sudden and occurs "on its own", without a traceable connection to the events in Azila's life. One day, she may be relatively well, but within the next 24-48 hours she can hardly move. They tend to resolve just as quickly, with rapid, almost overnight improvement.

      She is reluctant to tell anybody about this state, and, even if she did try, and would be unable to articulate it. If pressed by a friend, it's the somatic symptoms she will describe first, adding that everything is not as it should be, or used to be, that things smell, taste, look, seem "wrong". On occasion, she has said that she could not think or concentrate, that she was weak as water or felt empty, and compared the way she felt to being turned to stone or frozen on the inside.

      Decompensation/response to stress and increased feelings of vulnerability or internal fracturing:

      Becomes belligerent, insists on proving her point when no-one has intended to argue about it in the first place, acts on the principle of “attack is the best defense”;

      Grows more volatile, has brief, but intense outbursts of anger where she may actually shout others down;

      Unintentionally shows more emotion than usual, most of which is negative or non-definable and feels invasive, threatening and/or overwhelming to others on a subliminal level;

      Becomes even harder on herself, focuses on mistakes or misguided decisions (or what she believes to be such) and obsessively dwells on them while refusing to share what is on her mind;

      Suffers from an uncontrollable influx of thoughts and mental imagery connected to potential problems, obstacles or possibilities of failure;

      Becomes exceedingly critical, judgmental and closed-minded;

      May become intensely negative and succumb to a dark, desolate vision of the future.
    • Typist's Interests
      literature, literary criticism, pastel/pencil graphics, cross-stitching, postcolonial theory, feminist theory, cooking, home economics, cats, biology, wildlife, xenofiction, collectivism, photography, linguistics, foreign languages, cultural studies
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