Vingette 2

Driving. Driving at night; Heidi in the back, quiet and tired. Driving through the hotel and diplomatic area. There is so much glass and in it the neon reflects, illuminating the sky in darkened reds and weakened blues. You cannot see the stars in Bahrain; at least not in Manama. Maybe in the desert. That girls voice enters my head - “they went on for ever, I grew up in Arizona and the skies were always filled with little fluffy clouds; with purple and orange and red, you don’t see that any more. You might still see them in the desert.” - And I smile remembering that at the weekend, I say my first Bahraini cloud and my first sunset that was anything other than simply that: the sun setting, slowly getting less yellow and more orange until it disappears behind the buildings first, and then the horizon: the sky becoming dark. There are no great sunsets here, not yet: Winter is still too distant a thing. I turned to the Ho as we swam in the twilight - thick and rheumy like the air after a shower - and said, look, there is weather in Bahrain.

Driving past a big hotel there is a man - black jacket off and over his shoulder, head shaven and goatee trimmed - standing on the central reservation of the highway. He is looking all around him. He is looking for a taxi. He is the same man as any in New York or London or Sydney. He is the archetypal, finished-work-late-and-gone-for-a-beer or lets-go-for-quick-beer-after- work-and-ended-up-staying-for-more man and I smile at the realisation that I have been him, I have been that man. But no longer am. And so, I speed past him smiling in my rented car, my driver humming and mumbling quietly to himself.

Back at home and I realise that the stress and the expense has all been worth it. Our living room looks lovely; the kitchen like I would want to spend time there. I want to kiss Heidi; hold on to her and never let her go. But I don’t. I wonder why that is as I am getting into bed. Moving toward sleep, I resolve to make sure that next I want to, I do. Resolve to share this new world with her and not keep it wrapped up inside myself like I always have with everything and everyone else. I realise that the world remains small when locked inside you and not shared with someone else; becomes big if more eyes than two fall upon it.

Through stilted sleep I catch glimpses of happiness just out of my reach but getting closer. I wake up more tired than I was last night but more sure of something that I still cannot describe, do not have the words for yet. One day, this vernacular will descend and envelop me - soft and warm like a towel after a childhood bath - protecting me from all that has been before.

XxX