[Hotel Rabat, room 412. Thursday 19 July 2018. 17:40.]
The case would not shut.
That is how I want to start this, because that is where I was 2 days later. On my knees on a hotel carpet in Rabat with one hand flat on a suitcase lid, in a room I was leaving in 20 minutes, and the thing would not shut.
I had come into that country on the 5th of June with a holdall and 2 suits.
I was going out of it with a case that would not close over a wooden box, a leather document wallet, a medal in a case, a folded flag, 3 shirts I had been given by men who had nothing to give, and a framed photograph somebody had put outside my door on Wednesday night without a note on it.
I took the flag out. Put it back in. Took the box out and could not do it, and put it back in, and sat on the floor with my back against the bed.
Knock knock.
"It is open."
My mother came in with her coat already on 20 minutes early, the way she has been early to everything since 1981, and looked at me on the floor.
