Tuesday, 23 February 2016

Dada 22

I had eaten enough. We broke the crystal there and then. It can leave you hungry. If you are hungry to begin with it leaves you hollow. There was no point in losing the rush by searching for food. The music was my being now and made me think of the markets and the mountains of fish that need to be distributed tomorrow, a mountain of silver, streaked with red waiting for me on the morning tide. We spent long hours in the bars and coffee houses talking and laughing and then joked about going back to the waterfront where we could stay all night without disturbance.

We joked about the events of the day. Iskra said his honour was redeemed and suddenly I felt fine.  Even Dada’s death and the wake and funeral that followed him did not disturb me.


We saw the white boys trying to make it with the women. We ignored them. We were safe in our cocoon of the city. Fuck those Indos, always coming here causing trouble. They shared our island but not our home. Iskra had the pipe out again and Mo held the sticks and rice paper across his fingers like a grill. It provided a cushion for the holy rock that burned on its blanket of silver paper. What would the tourists know of our lives. The rainbow shone  within me; a  symmetry restored whose arc had been shattered by the events of the day. What was in my Dada?

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