The History of Love in Afghanistan 1

Elaine was half-French, half-Irish, and I met her in a mental hospital. I'd always been attracted to foreign girls, even though I'd been brought up in a small village where there weren't any. I was a ten-year-old boy in short trousers, standing in a school playground when I saw my first foreign girl. Her clothes were different, her hair, her skin, and she brought with her the exotic beauty of the world beyond my village. But, she wasn't Elaine. Elaine came into my life much later. It was my eighteenth summer and her nineteenth. I remember the pale August sunlight, a slight breeze that rustled the leaves of the oak trees, and the clouds that hinted at the cold and rain, waiting in the wings, as it always is in green England. I remember lush lawns, darting squirrels and a blackbird, head tilted to one side, waiting for a worm to pop its head up, and I remember the mad people wandering, rudderless, in all directions.

To be contd.