It was an overcast day, my favourite weather, like Scotland in the early autumn – late afternoon in the season in Zambia where the last flowering trees are coming into bloom and everything is beginning to grow from the rain. Most of the garden was still dust-coloured, but around the arbour was both flower and green. We were drinking milk tea outside, sporadically typing and making bad jokes.
It happened often in college, my thinking “there’s no place I’d rather be in the world”. It’s happened less in Lusaka: sometimes while running, while watching the World Cup with friends, while sleeping by a pool. This was one of them. I was writing some code. I was sitting. I was recovering from sickness and there was no time, anymore, just a sort of cinema reel of the oddly brilliant photo-flashes I’d seen out of cars during my sickness, where the colours popped more and I saw, once again, with the eye of an artist, even the patterns on cement walls.
I have a feeling I’ve wasted the past year and a half in this way. I hadn’t just beenfor a long while. Or the being would come only in flashes.
“Thank you,” my friend said abruptly.
“Thank you for what?” We were sitting there as the light faded, working, not doing very much of anything that, I thought, would merit thanks. The arbour was flecked with lights, and there was a brilliant fire the other side of the garden wall.
“Just thank you”.
I understand now. I wish I didn’t only understand these things when I was leaving.