Radon is one of the noble gases in the periodic table. It is the heaviest, naturally occurring one among them. Due to its size, it is the most likely to establish compounds with other elements, compared to the other noble gases. However, its radioactivity easily breaks the bonds that are established between Radon and other elements. Thus, Radon has very few known compounds.

Radon forms in the radioactive decay chain of Uranium, which then forms Thorium, then Radium, and finally Radon. Radon condenses to form a solid that glows with yellow light due to its radioactivity. The half-life of Radon changes depending on the isotope at hand, but the longest half-life detected is around 92 hours.

Radon naturally occurs underground, and does not dissolve much in water or other liquids there. When it leaks above surface in the form of gas, it tends to accumulate in the not-well-ventilated parts of the houses, e.g. basements. Exposure to Radon gas is linked with cancer, and so it is considered as a health hazard. On the other side, the hot springs that contain trace amounts of Radon gas are used rarely to cure heart disease.

The following is an allegorical story in the form of a letter about how Radon develops in nature.

I am the only survivor from a quadruplet. One of my sisters survived only 108 minutes after birth. The death of the second one followed about half hour later. I spent my childhood with my only remaining sister. Our mother was not there either, because she had died while giving birth to us.

As we were growing into our adolescence, we shared many secrets with my sister, be them adventurous or romantic. She was a sister, a close friend, and sometimes a mom. When she died in her flourishing age, I not only lost my third sister but also lost a mom for the second time.

Since then, without bothering myself whether they are friend or foe, I let people approach me. I show affinity to them so much so that I am considered as the most sociable noble. When they start enjoying the beauties displayed on me, I am stressed by my need of privacy and security. And, I easily push everyone away by intimidating them with the very beauties they were attracted to.

So, life has been a bottomless solitude for me… Yes, being alone is part of being noble, and I need my privacy in my ivory tower. But I’d rather not have impenetrable walls between me and people.

What a discrepancy! I have a habit of intimidating people to push them away, but I am complaining from an endless solitude at the same time… Why am I like this? It feels as if there is an unknown person in me, over which I have no control, who is doing things using my body. Should I cry for help: I am stolen!

I thought about this a lot. Was it a psychological inheritance I received from the family? You know that my mother died when giving birth to me and that my sisters followed her. My grandmother also died when giving birth to my mother, and my grand-grandmother died when giving birth to my grandmother. I don’t know if it is this strangeness that makes me instinctively seek solitude, so much so that my husband could not stand me. I told him that our relationship could only survive in the polar cold places, and he said he can stay cold but not in a place where there is no one else. Eventually, our marriage ended, after which I realized that I was pregnant.

But life goes on, you know, whether you are a noble who pathetically seeks solitude, or if your mother died when giving birth to you, or if you are a pregnant mom left to herself… “The great gears of life turn with irresistible momentum. You either keep pace with it, or get smashed in it.” That’s what my mother said in her letter to me. And that letter is all I have of her. Though, however much I would like her to be with me, and share my joys of success and sorrows of failure. Maybe she would reveal precious life lessons to me, or whisper her secrets into my ear. Maybe she would reprimand me sometimes… Not a single moment lived with her, not even a smack… I wished that this not be the lot of my baby, but how?

I thought of Prophet Abraham’s wife, Hagar. Alarmed by her baby’s cries, she had rushed between two distant hills in search of finding some people to come for help. God had replied to her efforts by creating a spring in the middle of the desert, just near her, and guiding travelers there.

Following Hagar’s example, I tried taking refuge near people so that my baby would not be in a lonely world. In order not to disturb them, I chose their least used places. But people cast me out of there, lest I contract some illness. I tried fancy yellow dresses to make myself look friendly. But, instead of becoming friends, they put me in glass chambers. I tried to help people with some of their diseases, but except a few, they shunned me since I was too risky to be adopted into medical practice.

Oh my God, despite all my efforts, my baby was going to come into a solitary world like her mom’s. I knew I was going to be alone when giving birth, and so was my baby. There was a sour smile on my face every time I thought of her…

But maybe… Maybe one day, God would guide travelers here, and she could join them, and prosper wherever she ends up with. Maybe she would have a stable family, and become the mother of many. And I hope, even in her well-established state then, she could still keep her lineage at heart, from our grandest grandmother all the way down to her mother: Uranium, Thorium, Radium, and, me, Radon.

What could I do to make sure that my daughter holds on to her past? Could I write a letter, just like my mother left to me? Maybe that was a good option, since I inherited from my mother all the letters left from mother to daughter starting with the grandma Uranium. Yes, I could abide by the tradition of letters, and tell my daughter how much I loved her even before I could hold her in my arms. I could tell her that she had appeared in my dark night like a bright star, although she was yet in my womb. Maybe this way, she could feel at ease when with people, unlike her mother. She could make real friends and be happy with them, even if I won’t see her once.

Yes, I won’t see you, sweetie. It is what the doctors told while giving me your glad tidings: that I had cancer, and that my body would not sustain a birth. I had to choose between carrying you and a life without you. I chose to live with you, my precious, even if that meant the end of my life when yours bloomed. When you are going to be reading this letter, I’ll be watching you with your aunts. Shine and make us smile with your beauty.

Love,
Your mom Radon

Today, those who have made it their business to identify and cure these feelings of emptiness and the consequent loneliness that is experienced by the human self have presented panoply of solutions, usually gift-wrapped in various intellectual discourses. People struggle with each discourse, hoping that maybe one will, after all, be their stamped pass through the golden gateways of enlightenment. Time unwraps each solution and lays its contents bare. History stands as a graveyard, giving testimony to the inadequacy of the philosophical critiques and theoretical discourses of modernity and post-modernity. The world is still in a state of chaos and, within this existentialist milieu, human beings still question their solitary existence.

It seems that history has selected a fistful of people who deem themselves destined to step into the arena of intellectual combat, jumping to the rescue of humankind. The common man finds themselves in a literary laboratory where they are left to experiment with the latest medicines that have been prescribed for their affliction. In a desperate attempt to break free from the onslaught of isms hurled at us by the age of modernity and post-modernity, the intellectuals of our age have come up with a new literary concoction. The era of isms has ended. It is now the age of paradoxes. There is an increasing trend of juxtaposing ironies in the guise of facts and universal truths. Language is the best-seller in the market for dressing-up contradictions with such frills; one is often left so dazzled by the linguistic niceties that they are unable to detect any lacuna in the logic presented. People develop unique dictionaries for each of these. The logic presented for this discrepancy in the repertoire of every person is simple: each person’s world is made up of their distinct life experiences, their memories of the past and their imagination of the future, as well as their comprehension of the now and their plans of action for grappling with the present. Thus, the language one employs and the peculiar meaning it entails is contingent upon one’s very own, individual privé monad. It is these self-concocted dictionaries, composed of their distinct vernacular along with their numerous subtleties, which form one’s individual mental architecture by which the affairs of one’s life are orchestrated.

This novel concept of individual dictionaries rotates round and round the dining tables of the most “progressive” of humankind. People prize themselves as being part of what is now being hailed as a grand intellectual revolution. This revolution, it is believed, gives one the ability to guard one’s pristine exclusivity. Inherent within this exclusiveness of the individual self from the “other” is the championing of the self, and a sense of security prevails, giving humankind the assurance that the esoteric nature of our pristine binaries of right and wrong, true and false, beautiful and ugly make all that we do and say a private matter. And, some like to believe, within this privacy, within this unique sphere of personal space lays the epitome of freedom that humanity has ever been able to reach.

It is within this multiplicity of one’s private, peculiar lingua franca that they are able to ascribe meaning to their very existence. One’s conceptualization of the self and one’s ferocious defense of this newly-acquired perception of freedom are what form the basis of one’s interaction with those around them and the world that they live in. This sense of exclusivity leads to what Habermas has called a breakdown in “communicative action”-the absence of common relatable backgrounds to the extent that no one can any longer imagine being in another’s shoes. Without this mutual taking of perspective, the very precious element of human emotional intelligence that is known as “empathy” is automatically removed from many people’s dictionaries. Empathy is the same trait that makes a child burst into tears when another one cries in front of them, thinking that the pain is not the other’s but their own. This quality of being able to relate to, to actually understand and feel not only the other’s pain, but also their happiness, is what forms the main spring of the concept of rescue, a concept upon which entire literary laboratories have been established. If it were not for empathy, the demarcation between the self and the other would make it unimaginable for anyone to surmount those towering walls to rescue another; this would have been a thing of fairy tales and folklore. This is the point when an eagerly embracing the age of private dictionaries, with their golden masquerade of personal freedom, draws one actively into an intellectual maelstrom against the “other,” and against tolerance.

Confronted by such tempestuous times, when I look upon the glorious pasts of our ancestors in an attempt to find some point of reference that could aid in navigating, one string of events presents some relevant points to my argument. While growing up, my life, just as that of any other child who was growing up at the same time, was colored by numerous stories and legends. Over time, I managed to dust off images of flying horses and heroic men coming to the rescue of people who were being tortured by brutal potentates. But the more human memories have remained with me to this day. As a young child, I often saw my grandmother leave the house and walk over the next-door neighbors’ house with some delicious dish she had prepared. The visits had an almost ritualistic feel to them, since every single time some delectable dish was cooked and brought over to our house; I knew some of this would find its way to our house. On the occasions when I was allowed to accompany my grandmother on these visits, I would witness her place the dish on the table, and then either herself or the recipient would divulge some important piece of news, each launching off into a torrent of complaints and remarks about this, that and the other. On one such occasion, the meeting took a sudden unpleasant twist. I remember quite vividly that my grandmother severely rebuked one of our neighbors, a regular receiver of sweets and meals. The hot halawa lay on the table in front of her, sending off sweet enticing whiffs while both grownups were engaged in a heated verbal brawl. The point of contention was indecipherable to me, as grown-ups at that time had a way of skillfully employing a code language in front of children; perhaps this was part of an attempt to protect our innocence from being tarnished by the realities of adulthood. At the end of the quarrel, my grandmother apparently had the last word and made her way home with the hot dish of sweet-smelling food still sitting on the neighbor’s table. From that time onwards, there was a continuation of exchanges of harsh words over hot delicious meals or sweet mouth-watering delicacies. My young mind was at first befuddled and later exasperated by the on-going quarrel, the continuation of which was clearly contingent on the exchange of meals. I knew that all the trouble would effortlessly come to a halt if neither lady were to cross the fence that demarcated their house from the other. No ties of blood bound them and the cessation of any contact whatsoever would not have disrupted the routine of our lives. It was as simple as that.

What left my young mind baffled in the past was the persistence of my grandmother and our neighbor to maintain contact, despite the conflict; however, this makes sense to me now. People in the past had a more wholesome experience of life because it was framed within a sense of collectivity. Their dictionaries were not discrepant from others and they spoke a common language based on a certainty that their essence was unique to them not as individuals, but as an individual human race. It was their recognition of the unity of essence, shrouded within a multiplicity of existence, which enabled them to forge ties that were so tenacious. This notion of being united in essence, in their human proclivity to do good and believe in the Absolute Truth, was translated into their relationships and their persistent efforts to maintain relationships that had been forged willingly. The entire saga of my grandmother’s quarrels with the neighbor is intelligible to me now as a part of ongoing effort to remind her friend not to detract from this natural inclination towards goodness that was rooted within her very makeup as a human being. The whiffs of sweet-smelling treats were left as a message that her act of reprimanding her friend did not spring from a desire to claim a higher moral ground based on her own personalized set of rights or wrongs, but rather from an active concern for the community that she perceived herself to be a part of. The fact that the neighbor welcomed her at the door each time before the drama took place relates the moral pattern of people at that time, or at least within the confines of such interactions. It reflects a broad moral consensus of the entire neighborhood; they were actively involved in saving not just the one who was being wronged, but also the one who was doing wrong. Each person comprehended the fact that the underlying reason for the argument between the two found its source in the legacy of mutual concern, handed down to them from their elders. An active sense of empathy, of the fear that the wrong that was being committed today could be committed by them tomorrow, the fear that if it was not ended it would form a part of the legacy of their children, existed among these neighbors.

Today, people find a false sense of security in the notion of privacy and personal space. A sense of relief is felt that no busybody from the neighboring apartment will come knocking on the door, with the sense that the gift of a sole meal or a plate of sweets grants them the moral right to correct one’s wrongs or to criticize acts. One finds themselves comfortably ensconced in this preservation of private space and thus fails to recognize that the so-called privacy that is so aggressively guarded is actually shrinking with every passing day. In the past, at least one was able to walk down a street without having some person or another trying to sell them expensive means to look socially acceptable. But the case today is the total opposite of this. The alienation that is a direct cause of protecting what we now term “personal space” has curtailed our freedom to guard our natural proclivity towards goodness which connects us with humanity. The percolating sense of otherness and spreading intolerance are just two sides of the same coin.

The decisive factor in the above discussion is that no time is in and of itself golden. It is the people who are living at that time who cast it in varying hues, hues by which the future generations will remember them. Only if people could burst their own bubble which divides them from the other and embrace the unified proclivity towards Good and Absolute that is part of their human makeup, will they be able to live up to the moral responsibility that they have, not only towards themselves and their contemporaries, but also towards their future progeny. In this hour of need what we need is not another so-called glamorized intellectual revolution, but rather a grand intellectual revival of the human estimation of one’s own self. In my opinion, expensive intellectual laboratories and large think-tanks can help, but a revolutionary revivalism of that which can help us find a positive continuity with the past and a beneficial connection to the future could play a small start. The muddy hand of a child is enough to hold up a mirror to each and every one of us, shattering any claims of uniqueness or separateness. This brief muddy treasure will remind us of what we are made of and of what we mean to one another. Within this humbling realization, I believe, flickers a great hope.

Raaza Jamshed Butt has an MA degree in international relations from the International Islamic University, Malaysia.

They took their muddy shoes and heavy coats off. Dad, looking very sad, sat down on the sofa while my mom whispered something quickly to my sister before vanishing to her bedroom. I could only catch some ominous words like, “…dead…. wake…. we got to go.” My sister did not ask any questions. In no time, Mom came out of her room dressed in black, kissed me on the cheeks, and left. Dad, who up to that moment had been silently gazing at the brown carpet, robotically stood up and followed her. On his way out, he reminded my sister to lock the door.

My sister turned the key twice as if the Big Bad Wolf might knock on the door in a minute. Then she turned off the TV-custom dictates that there is no music or laughter in a mourning house. We sat there looking at each other in silence. My sister looked pitiful, so I gave her some time to digest whatever Mom had whispered to her. Meanwhile, I started to decode what my little radar had caught.

Someone is dead-no doubt about it. Since the news was given sotto voce, it had to have been a shameful death like committing suicide or being shot while stealing. Or, God forbid, it might be an awful death like being crushed by a train or chopped to pieces by a revenge murderer. Since my parents were grieving, it probably involved somebody significant to us. Could it be one of their coworkers? A relative? At this point I grew so anxious I knew I would explode if I did not ask. “Who is dead?” I asked in a trembling voice. “Dad’s stepmother,” my sister answered matter-of-factly.

The answer took me by surprise because I did not know Dad had a stepmother. I knew he had lost his mother suddenly at age six and had lost his father ten years later. I sensed a mystery concealed before me and I could have sworn my sister knew more. The question was how I could fish out the secrets my sister’s heart held so faithfully.

My sister, an ordinary eighteen-year-old, was nice to me most of the time except when I asked too many questions and messed up her drawers. She would never repeat what she knew about her friends and acquaintances, so at times I felt my sister was a mysterious person and I imagined her heart was full of secrets.

“Dad’s stepmother?” I repeated it in my mind over and over trying to define what it meant to me. I knew of only one stepmother, a pretty infamous one for that matter: Snow White’s stepmother. She was mean and cruel. Some people would rejoice at such a person’s death. Yet, everybody was sad. I made up my mind to go ahead and ask my sister no matter what the consequences. My assumptions were taking me nowhere. “Where did she live?” I asked, expecting to be hushed. “In our town,” my sister answered. “Is she nice?” I asked, then corrected myself. “I mean, was she nice?” My sister nodded. Seeing her handle my interrogation calmly, I was encouraged to ask more. Mercifully, my sister spared me all the sweating by revealing the story on her own.

“Dad was six years old when his mother died. Grandpa married again right away so that somebody would take care of his little boy. He chose to marry a close relative of his first wife. Apparently, everybody was surprised that an attractive man with a high standard of education married someone so plain and uneducated. But I guess he only cared that a relative of Grandma would treat his son nicely. He had three more children with his second wife, two girls and a boy.”

I stood there all ears, almost forgetting to breathe, listening to this astonishing revelation. Not only had I a step-grandmother, but a step-uncle and two step-aunts as well. I forced myself to stop wondering and focus on my sister, who, after taking a deep breath, went on:

“Grandfather was right. She took care of Dad so well that she didn’t make any difference between her own children and him. She continued to be good to him even after Grandfather died ten years later. She never remarried. She worked hard to make ends meet, and Dad, because he was the eldest child, helped by dropping out of high school to work full time. That was when he took evening courses and learned to be an electrical repairman.

“At twenty-six, Dad married Mom. I heard that his stepmother loved Mom and boasted to her neighbors about what a fine lady her son had married. In the beginning, everything was fine and they all lived happily together in the same house. After a while, Dad started to give less and less to the family budget and spent more and more from his pay on gifts and movie theater tickets. Mom and Dad used to like to go to the movies every week in those days.

“One night Dad’s stepmother apparently complained. She reminded Dad that she was having a hard time paying the bills. Dad accused her of being interfering and jealous of his love for his wife. His stepmother must have felt humiliated because she vowed that unless he apologized and changed his ways, she wouldn’t speak to him again. Dad insisted he had done no wrong and saw no reason to apologize. Both of them must have gone to bed feeling sore and angry at each other.

The next day, when his stepmother came home from work, most likely hoping that the new day might have helped him to see things in their true color, she found that Dad and Mom had packed up their stuff and moved out. She must have felt betrayed. The sting in her heart, I reckon, made her swear an oath that she never broke. She sent word to Dad telling him that from now on she would have nothing to do with him and warned him never to come back.” My sister stopped her narration and it felt as if time had stopped, too.

“This is too awful to be true,” I mumbled in disbelief. “Did they ever speak again?” I asked, hoping against hope. My sister shook her head. “Neither she nor her children ever spoke to our parents.” My sister continued, “They saw each other almost every day on the street, in the shops, at the stadium, at the hospital, at the post office, you name it. But they changed paths or ignored each other.” She shook her head. “Pride is such a terrible thing sometimes,” she concluded, and I could not have agreed more.

“You know, you met her once!” My sister startled me with this exciting remark. “I did? When? Where?” I impatiently looked into her eyes. “Remember the day when you hurt your knee in the park and when we were on our way back home, and you were limping, two old ladies stopped us in the middle of the road?”

“Yes, I remember,” I interrupted her. Although it had happened almost five years ago I recalled the incident clearly because that peculiar encounter had made quite an impression on me. The intensity with which one of the old ladies looked at me, the way my sister looked around as if she did not want to get caught doing something wrong, had naturally not escaped my curious eye.

“I remember, one of the old ladies kissed you on the cheeks. Then she looked at me and asked her friend, ‘Is this his youngest daughter?’ Her friend said yes and then the first lady hugged me, wiped tears from my face with a tissue, and gave me two candies. Then you pulled me away. You said we were late and our parents would be worried. I followed you but I was looking behind, waving back at the nice lady because she made me feel so special. Later, when I kept asking you who she was, you hushed me. You were angry and sorry at the same time. I even saw you wiping your eyes. I thought you were crying because she didn’t give you any candies.”

“No, silly,” my sister tried to laugh, though I sensed that the same mood of anger and sorrow had overtaken her. “I was crying,” she explained, “for all the things we missed. Every day I came home from school with our neighbor’s son, passing by their door, stopping by just to breathe in the wonderful smell of baking bread and to envy the big smile of his grandmother, knowing quite well that a cold and empty home was waiting for me to turn the key. I was angry with Dad because his pride was depriving us of a God-given right-the wonderful presence of a grandmother. Why did everyone in town just stand by and watch this tragedy? Everyone was pretending to mind their business. No one had the courage to intervene and bring it to an end.”

My sister started crying and I felt pity for us my eyes watered too. Who knows what beautiful bedtime stories she might have known, who knows what delicious meals she could have prepared, and whether she would have had the ear to listen to me-the ear my mom, who worked full time, never had.

“But why did she kiss me twice and give me two candies?” I asked, almost to myself, fearing that my sister would reprimand me for such a stupid question. “She…,” my sister sniffed trying to collect her voice, ”she worked in the only day care our town had. So she practically took care of me and our big sister and big brother as a part of her job for four whole years each. When you were born she had retired. I guess she was sad that she never got to hold you as a baby.” I could hold the tears no longer. Her soft kiss on my cheeks and her compassionate, intense look lingered in my mind. She would have made a wonderful grandmother.

The doorbell startled us, and we hurried to open the door, wiping the tears on our way. Surprisingly, my parents had returned in much worse shape than they had left. Usually close relatives of the deceased stay at the wake until dawn. My parents had been gone for barely an hour. This time Dad, soaked to the bone with rain, his face swollen red from crying, went straight to their room. Mother looked distressed too. She sat on the coach and took several deep breaths.

“What happened?” asked my sister when she realized that Mom was not going to tell us without prompting. “We were not wanted there,” Mom managed to say before she broke down in tears. I shivered as I imagined someone yelling at my parents, “Get out of here!”

“Who told you that?” my sister demanded.

“Her son,” Mom said. I could not help but note that “her son” would have been our uncle, had all this not happened.

“He shoved us out,” Mom continued, sniffing. “He told us that it’s useless to honor the dead when we had shown her no respect in her lifetime.” That made sense to me as much as I wished it did not.

“What did Dad do?” asked my sister. I was becoming annoyed with Ms. Detective. I was afraid of what was coming next. “What could he do?” Mom took a deep breath. “Your Dad stood there speechless for a few minutes. He couldn’t confront his stepbrother. No one at the wake came to his defense, so we left the house in humiliation. He wept all the way home,” Mom said breaking into tears again.

A deep sadness flooded my heart as I realized that our step-grandmother had taken with her to the grave any chance of reconciliation and that I would never come to meet my uncles and aunts. I left Mom to my sister’s questioning and went to check on my dad. The door of their room was ajar. He was sitting on the bed, his back bent, his gaze fixed on the floor. I wished I could read his mind, but more than anything I wished I could console him. But how could I?

There sat my dad, a middle-aged man, proud father of a son and three daughters. There sat my dad, a diligent follower of politics who never missed the evening news in the election season. There sat my dad, a faithful patron of the coffee shop, and a big fan of soccer who could never get enough of the Brazil team at the World Cup. There sat a man sobbing like a child with his head between his palms. I wondered if he felt like a loser. For some unknown reason I could not side with him, although my heart was breaking with pity. And suddenly, I realized that I had spent the whole afternoon utterly fascinated by my sister’s account of my parents’ sins. Immediately, I felt sick and afraid. Did disloyalty flow in our veins? Was that to be the inheritance in our family?

Right at that moment Dad raised his head and looked at me with an expression pleading for something neither I nor anybody else breathing on earth could grant him: forgiveness. Avoiding my reproachful look, he raised his fists and started hitting his graying temples, shouting painfully to himself, “Ungrateful, Ungrateful!”

I could not stand watching him any longer. I backed out and closed the door. And at every rapid beat of my heart I prayed to God to have mercy on us all for what we had done to our parents and to show us a way of atonement.

Mirkena Ozer had her major in Turkish language and literature. She lives in Atlanta, Georgia.