Eight Days on Seher's Sofa

Day seventy-nine, Turkey. Covid. I have never had symptoms like it. Aching limbs, a throat that won't swallow, ears, and on it goes, arriving and leaving like a faulty string of Christmas lights. After eight days I have worked through most of the catalogue.

Everything has stopped.

I feel wretched, I want to go home, and I am starting to doubt the whole thing. It is true that I am no longer afraid of the unknown. It is also true that there is a very long way still in front of me, that it is questionable whether I reach Kailash before the winter shuts it, and that Iran and Pakistan are on the road between here and there.

What a stupid idea this was. Remind me why I left.

I am lucky to be able to lie here at all. Seher invited me at the Namaste in Montenegro — „If you come to Istanbul, call in“ — and I did, and now I am on a sofa in Kadıköy, not moving. I don't want food. I don't want music. I don't want a voice in the room. I want to lie here.

Could I turn round? Of course I could turn round. I have already got a great deal out of this. I am steadier, calmer, harder to shift.

Right now I have no appetite for deserts and strange countries.

It is worth writing down that this is what the middle of a thing feels like, because nobody puts it in the photographs.