I am sure you know this: time and space live in intimate relationship. This is why history rests always on geography.
Kanso, who likes life to be simple and quiet — unadorned, you might say — knows that sometimes peace is found only by long waiting. Tonight, when he wants some time with nothing else in it, to sit with Danshari and talk things through, he has to hold the space inside himself until the children have gone to bed, Two Hours Max and Hineni are deep into a game of chess, and the other animals have gone out in the moonlight as darkness falls — all except for Irusu who prefers dozing on the warm hearth rug in the comfortable presence of Shanti and Sophia and Auntie Jessie. Technically, Ananda too; but he's fast asleep in his chair, so only notionally present.
And now the two of them — Kanso and Danshari — are alone, with enough space around them for proper conversation.
"This war," says Kanso; "it stirs up memories."
Danshari says nothing. He can see it would. He just listens.
"There were times," Kanso says, "when I couldn't find any more courage; when I was there only because I had to be. There were nights when we huddled in sodden blankets, holding the little ones to keep them warm, all of us in a two-man tent, knowing we must be awake before dawn, because the police would come and trash everything — and we needed to save a little bread, not lose our phones, make sure we hung on to a blanket for tomorrow. I didn't know, Danshari, how to be. Or even who I had become — if I still existed, if you see what I mean. I was cold. I was hungry. I was tired beyond telling. That is who I was — all I was. I'm not sure I even felt afraid any more; fear takes energy."
Danhari breathes quietly, and he listens.
"I see people in their bomb shelters making coffee, sharing bread, keeping little ones amused, doing their bravest best to be cheerful and calm while the city explodes and burns and the buildings fall. I want so much for it to stop — for there to be a surprising intervention, some kind of a miracle, something that would mean life could be rebuilt and hope rise from the ashes."
He glances at Danshari, then looks down at the table. "I don't want them to go through it all; losing the people who meant the world to them, on the road with only what they can stuff in rucksacks, sheltering under bridges, lining up for soup given out by volunteers, not knowing where to go or how to get there. Tired and cold and damp and dirty and hungry and feeling ill — all the time, every day. Danshari, I don't want it to happen to them."
Before he lost everything, Kanso already knew the magic of simplicity; he developed the practice of it into a super-power. He knew that if you live with very little, and own almost nothing, you can extend your possibilities to an astonishing degree. When those days came in which people's homes and possessions turned themselves into weapons of the enemy — became avalanches of rubble, heaps of twisted metal, flew from their shelves on the shaking walls — having very little showed its advantages. Sleeping on the floor wrapped in a blanket feels less severe when it is the familiar everyday way of doing things anyhow.
But almost nothing and actual nothing are very different things. Simplicity is not the same as destitution. Kanso believes simplicity enriches everyone's life; he wouldn't wish destitution on his worst enemy.
Because he holds silence inside the chambers of his heart; because he has lived with simplicity so long, he is able to put his hand now on what he really means, and eventually he manages to say it to Danshari.
"I just don't think I can bear any more of it," he says.
Danshari doesn't try to appropriate anyone else's feelings. He doesn't look for comparisons in his own emotions or experiences.
He just sits in silence with his friend and sees the tears begin to fall.
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