A Moment Re-remembered

“I remember exactly where I was” she said.

Her manicured fingers grip the golden curlicued tea glass loosely. Her immaculate tinted hair, Paris fashions and liberal education seem to belie the uneven, whitewashed walls and coarse floor cushions on which she sits, legs crossed. Yet this contradiction is my hostess’s home.

The gentle desert wind shuffles the leaves of the date palms outside, stroking a star-freckled sky between each finger-like frond. Within the mud walls the kettle whiffles softly, nestled into the flushed embers of the wide stone hearth, alongside two blackened aubergines roasting for tomorrows lunch. They fill the simple room with a charred, plump aroma.

“I remember feeling glad”

The mint tea at my tongue is suddenly far too sweet. I take a mental misstep. My minds-eye backtracks and alights on a girl. About 13 years old and just home from school. Flicking from one TV channel to the next and seeing only the same eternal image reflected back in her blue eyes. The towers. A childhood imploding in dust and floating papers. A frightened, confused, naive girl whose reality has flipped inside out. The reality of everybody she has ever known has flipped inside out. They chew together on unfamiliar names and watch scenes from unfamiliar cities on the news.

My hostess lifts her kohl-edged eyes to meet mine, swishing the last drops of amber liquid flecked with tea leaves around her glass with a hand that never ceases to tremble. I try to read the lifetime’s worth of experience written into the folds and furrows of her still elegant features. Her face is all gentleness.

“At last, somebody had hit back at them. Just like they’ve been hitting out at everyone else for all this time.”

I am her 'they' just as she has been my 'they' for all these years and all these miles. Yet to see us sitting here in this simple, tasteful room, knees almost touching, bodies a mirror image, you might almost think we were just two women. One old, one young. Sharing tea and memories.

“I remember, I thought ‘that will teach them’” she said.

And if I don’t quite understand, I am changed.