A week or so ago, my wife published a story about her father’s childhood online in The Yellow Door. It reminded me of a time when I was a child in Port Sudan. We had moved there because my father decided not to renew his contract in India for some reason I never understood. My father and my mother were the sort of parents who discussed such issues privately; that is to say, without my presence. Once they had made a decision, they simply announced what would be happening, often with little prior warning: "Anthony, we’ll be leaving India in just over a week. The packers will be here on Monday. We’re going back to England for good." No discussion, just facts. No questions about how I felt, just the facts.
That was when I first came to understand the idea of impermanence. After a sojourn of nine months back in England, we were adjusting to life in Port Sudan. Because there was no primary school in the village (as it was then), I was happy, living an idyllic life: sailing my small boat in the immense lagoon, fishing and spear-fishing in the harbour, and playing snooker at the club. The routines were assured, everything settled. In those halcyon days, I almost forgot about impermanence.
Then one day, it reared its grotesque head again. "Anthony, we’ll be leaving Port Sudan in about a fortnight. The packers will be here on Wednesday. We’re going back to England for good." By then, I’d acquired a huge cage of birds, and a pigeon coop large enough for me to stand up and move about in. I knew all the pigeons by name; some of those names I can still recall.
So, a day or two before departure, I opened the bird cage and the pigeon coop, set the birds free, then closed the doors so they couldn’t return. They would have to find another home, one they could trust forever.
On the voyage home, we saw albatrosses hundreds of miles from land. But I kept worrying who was feeding my birds.
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