DAY 36

It’s approximately 229 steps to cover every possible permutation of route in my tiny flat. I go to the window (don’t really look), I go to the bathroom, I go to the bedroom, I go to the kitchen. In the kitchen there is literally no food. No food to eat that is. I have flour, sugar, a lot of herbs and spices. But nothing I can just put in my mouth for food. I’m hungry.

HUNGRY.

Because I’ve showered and dressed today I can make it down to Tony’s for a packet of expensive Italian biscuits and some juice. I like Tony, he doesn’t ask me how I am he just smiles, says ‘good biscuits’ and pops a custard apple, which looks like a pangolin, in the bag for me with a wink. Back in the flat I stare at the kitchen and see that I might need to apply myself a bit more.

I’m not a natural tidier; those people who have carved careers out of bleaching everything they own, uploading videos of frothing concoctions lovingly smeared over oven doors, they terrify me. How clean do you need to be? How do you breathe?

Still, I wash up the dishes, mop the floor and wipe the worktop, scrub the sink, clean the (empty) fridge. It’s dark by the time I’ve finished, sat on the kitchen floor, eating the custard apple; which tastes like my childhood, the one I am hiding from. Although it gets closer each day, finding me, despite the hide and seek I’m still counting down from.

FOUND was written by Abi Zakarian
Co-directed by Emily Carewe and Jessica Rose McVay
Sound design by Anna Short
Illustrations by Katie Gabriel Allen
Website by NIMA

Ziazan - Jessie Bedrossian
Mama - Nathalie Armin
Lou - Rose Wardlaw
Reena - Amy Trigg
Kai - Emily Steck
Bunny - Gabby Wong
Mateo - Mika Onyx Johnson
Alejandro - Pedro Leandro
Man on Foreshore - Josh Finnan
Stevie - Ché Francis
Lena - Lilly Driscoll
Mary Lacy - Natasha Magigi