After forty odd years of wandering the world and writing about it, I had come to realize that I really seldom knew what I was writing about.
-Hav of the Myrmidons, Epilogue, Jan Morris
/nevertheless I’d like to know/what you are doing and where you are going.
-Letter to N.Y., Elizabeth Bishop
I met KhairAllah almost forty years ago under unusual circumstances and they have only become stranger. In the beginning I thought about him often and he may have thought about me, but each never knew this about the other. No letters, no calls, no mutual friends to pass spoken messages. I made a few visits to Sudan and saw him, once I missed him because he was off in the desert buying sheep.
Now he has sons who know some English and can use email. Sometimes they answer my questions about their father. If I ask them, How is your father these days? Where is he going and what livestock is he buying?, they answer me, My father sends you his greetings and he hopes that you are in good health, Inshaa’Allah. When I write about KhairAllah today, I seldom know anything for certain to be true so I stick to forty year memories of the Darb where one day was much like the previous and much like the next. No danger of falling off that trail.