I know what a heavy heart feels like, I have one as I leave Marrakech.
Suddenly everything is more beautiful on my way home and time conspires to steal it from me.
The atlas mountains are crystal clear today, they surround me in wisps of jagged grey and white.
So high that their snowy peaks look like clouds not land, I need to check they are earth and not sky a few times, by sweeping my gaze from their base to summit.
The mystic, optical illusion continues, despite my brain telling me they are really just land and snow.
I share this small hot room on the train with 4 women in veils and long jellaba plus a small angelic boy of about three. His mother talks to him in French / Arabic and I make out a story about Tom and Jerry, he attempts to repeat their names in the wonderful, clumsy voice of a child.
The lady in the window seat puts down her mobile phone and begins to cry, my eyes well up briefly in spontaneous empathy.
The air is thick with emotion.
Next to her, a total stranger, produces a tissue from under her layers of covering and wipes her tears, she pulls her veiled head to her breast and hugs her without hesitation.
Like a womb the compartment is warm and rich with the spirits of the 4 women I share it with. They talk in Arabic to comfort her and the tears dissolve to red eyes and later to sad smiles and then to non stop conversation.
I eavesdrop without comprehension as we speed towards Casablanca.
Suddenly everything is more beautiful on my way home and time conspires to steal it from me.
The atlas mountains are crystal clear today, they surround me in wisps of jagged grey and white.
So high that their snowy peaks look like clouds not land, I need to check they are earth and not sky a few times, by sweeping my gaze from their base to summit.
The mystic, optical illusion continues, despite my brain telling me they are really just land and snow.
I share this small hot room on the train with 4 women in veils and long jellaba plus a small angelic boy of about three. His mother talks to him in French / Arabic and I make out a story about Tom and Jerry, he attempts to repeat their names in the wonderful, clumsy voice of a child.
The lady in the window seat puts down her mobile phone and begins to cry, my eyes well up briefly in spontaneous empathy.
The air is thick with emotion.
Next to her, a total stranger, produces a tissue from under her layers of covering and wipes her tears, she pulls her veiled head to her breast and hugs her without hesitation.
Like a womb the compartment is warm and rich with the spirits of the 4 women I share it with. They talk in Arabic to comfort her and the tears dissolve to red eyes and later to sad smiles and then to non stop conversation.
I eavesdrop without comprehension as we speed towards Casablanca.
Sent from my iPhone
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