Kipilefti

Listening to music on the plane, staring (sparingly) out the too-bright window. Two successive endless landscapes in different color palettes, first the red-tan of the Sahara, dunes in graceful curves that tell you that the birthplace of Arabic looked like this, too. No signs of humans. Then the reflective ripples of the Mediterranean, sun bright, the shadows of small clouds like holes in the sea.

I feel that I should write of those I leave behind, before memory plays its cruel tricks and wipes the slate clean, but here I’ll only list their names: Mama Ismael; Mama Mgongolwa (known to us as Posta Mama in deference to her tricky-to-pronounce name); Mama Jully; Mama Vero; Mama Ezekia; Mama Morisi; Mama Chuma; Mama Iluma. All the other women, and the few men, who I greeted on a daily basis and who, for me, were Makete.

It hits me, as I’m watching the distant Italian coast pass, looking like some sunlit story:
I’m not going back.
I hug myself, holding my elbows, and plane keeps on going, all unknowing, and I keep watching as, minute by minute, I grow farther away from, and closer to, home.