Vol de nuit

Territories of the mind I ponder while flying the length of France with memories too numerous to sum up, then Italy where Pasolini strangely comes to mind of all things, Sicily, Greece, the Aegean Sea, Tunisia, Egypt and Louxor’s famed pyramid somewhere out there over the left wing of the aircraft, the Nubian desert in the distance now, the Sudan and its immense darkness conjuring up memories of Burton and Speke looking for the source of the Nile, Ethiopia and the Italian brigade of my grandfather stationed there, Abyssinia where Arthur is forever “trafficking in the unknown”, Kenya where baroness von Blixen changes her name and pens her masterpiece in another language, Tanzania where Roshi Peter Muryo Matthiessen forever sleeps in the shade of the tree where man was born. It goes on, but we are nearing our destination now, eastbound toward Dar Es salaam and the Comoro Islands before descending upon Madagascar, the silver fuselage cutting like a scimitar through accumulated smog and thirty thousand feet of inner geography dissolving at once when the plane lands at midnight sharp in the Capital City of Antananarivo.

Hours later I hear the muezzin’s call to prayer struggling to sleep while the wild names spotted on the map along the journey still reverberate through the crazed jet lag keeping me awake: Zanzibar, Mombasa, Khartoum, Meru, Assouan, Tobruk, Messina, Naples, Vaduz... until sleep finally comes.

April 2019, Antananarivo, Madagascar