The Moroccan reaction was the one that undid me, and it was the opposite of the English one in every way that counts. It was not asking whether I was worthy. It was not asking anything. It was hope, and it arrived within the hour and it did not come in headlines, it came in clips.
A café in Casablanca with the telly turned up and a room of men gone quiet.
An old fella in Rabat stopped in the street by a reporter, saying my name back to the camera slowly, carefully, like a word he wanted to get right.
Kids already in the red shirts, already, arms folded, chins up, doing the we told you they had borrowed off a video they were too young to have seen the first time.
Emma sent me one of those without a single word attached, which is what she does when a thing is too big to put a message on. Just the clip.
