Travelling Light

Maria was eager to get home to see her two other children and husband for the first time, but she didn’t know how to get back. She had heard that there was a white sign in the ditch of the road near her shamba, the patch of earth where her family lived, but the place did not have an address.

She hated the smells of damp wool and coal smoke. She hated nights that began at three and days that barely raised their heads from the pillow.

When the gates open at last, Herr Friedrick Thiessen feels as though he is returning home after an extended absence. He spends almost every night there, and during the day he sits in his rented flat or at the pub with a glass of wine and a journal and he writes about it. Pages and pages of observations, recounting his experiences, mostly so he will

The air outside rumbles as planes lift into the sky, while inside garbled announcements blare over the loudspeaker. Somewhere behind me, an older woman speaks in sharp, staccato Italian. But I don’t look away from the curb, my eyes trained on the crowded sidewalk outside the terminal, searching for her, anchoring my belief—and my entire future—on t