Curator of Lives

On the day before I flew to Togo, I saw two Franciscan monks sunbathing.

They were sitting on white plastic chairs, and the heavy white cotton of their habits collided with the soil.  Like fish who can’t see the water around them, the monks didn’t notice me watching.

I think I might have heard the monks chanting “Praise be you, my lord, through sister moon.  And the stars, in heaven you formed them.  Clear and precious and beautiful”.

The day after I flew to Togo, two football teams stopped their game, to allow our mini-van to drive over their red-earthed pitch.  The dust and the heat and mosquitoes didn’t take a short pause though, on that day in Lome, in the spring.  It was the day that Judith took me to get my new visa.  When we crossed the road, she casually linked arms to guide me through the traffic and I admired the simplicity of her kindness.  I needed a new passport sized photograph, and she wiped the sweat away from my forehead, with some tissue from her bag before the picture was taken.    An uncomplicated decency, a fluent courtesy.

And like fish who can’t see the water around them, she didn’t notice me see her.

On another day, we went to Agbodrafo, or the “House of the Slaves” and the curator of the museum walked us around.  Thousands of men, women and children were stored there before being shipped-off across the Atlantic for a lifetime of slavery.  The curator showed us the room where the people were bought and sold, and the cellar where they tried to sleep.  To distract me, I thought about the orange tree in the garden, and how sweet the scent was.  I wondered if the people had breathed that same flavour in?  If their last memory of home was of an orange tree?

And like fish who can’t see the water that surrounds them, the curator didn’t notice my grief.

Later that evening over dinner I asked Judith more about Agbodrafo, but she was busy greeting the guests, and overseeing the platters of fish.  Even though it was her birthday, her main ambition and desire was to secure everyone else’s comfort first.  And she had no interest in discussing orange trees.

The evening I flew home from Togo, I noticed the moon.

It was a midnight flight back to Paris and the moon was a beautiful, white, full-one, which shone and showed us the way home.   It guided us away from Judith and Agbodrafo, and from those boys still playing football.

All the way back to the place where the Franciscan monks might still have been singing:  “Praise be you, my lord, through sister moon.  And the stars, in heaven you formed them.  Clear and precious and beautiful”.