The Wall

The wall separating the two halves was nothing more than a dummy that creates psychological and symbolic effects.

People dragged out their cabinets and sofa to block the road. The fences erected between the houses were reinforced and heightened with debris they found around the island.

When they went out of materials, clotheslines were the most favourable item on the island as people can just tighten the strings and put bedsheets on them, often with harsh words and slogans splashed across them and a perfect wall was created.

Separated the landscapes from interacting with each other, the line, and light fabric became the most efficient tool to build a wall.

10 Ocean Street laid right on the imaginary border of the two halves.

The once cosy light blue carpet was sliced open.

The front door was sliced into half, with each panel installed what it had lost. Hinge for the west, handle for the east.

Cramped, almost suffocating, the passage to the living room now looked more like a narrow path in the mountain than a corridor to a house.

A long, slightly rusted iron pile laid on the neat-looking plywood floor, serving as a weight to keep the patchwork taut. Steve and Dave, the former best friends voluntarily donated some of their clothing and all kinds of fabric to create the boundary inside their house.

The pile started at the front door where it connected with the other wall that blocks the street, then it span across the ground floor, through the living room, kept going at the centre of the alfresco, then cut through the backyard where it met with the rest of the wall.

Rising from the pile, were T-shirts, wipes, towels, curtains and many more that cannot be named. Stitched together by strings, threads, ropes, cords and clips.

Then the cotton wall was fixed onto the ceilings, with pins, nails, and tapes.

The stairs that travelled between two floors were an interesting compromise. The curtain made a twist here in order to slice up the staircase into two. The fabric was twisting, wrenching and shape-shifting to adopt the outline of the stair steps while keeping the two worlds completely sealed from each other.

Dave was carefully moving upstairs. As an eastern resident, he occupied the east side of the house. Carrying his shoes in his hands, Dave held his breath and started tip-toeing. His back was pressed against the wall, and his nose was inches away from the fabric. He had to keep acting like this the whole time for the staircase in his house was the closest place between two oil-and-vinegar worlds.

He had no idea where Steve or anyone from the west was, and he didn’t want his location to be discovered as well. So he better not let any sounds, or even a breath gave him away. The things that the thin, light, cosy-looking wall cannot stop them from passing through.

Steve had done the same things. They, including everyone in Newcastle, became voluntary prisoners of the architecture they created.