The History of Love in Afghanistan 3

"All right".

The watch on her breast pocket moved.

I hadn't expected her to say yes.

Neither of us smiled. It was, if anything, a moment of extreme gravity. My head, until then empty of everything other than memories of school and family, suddenly flooded with future possibilties.

Some of the patients stopped to watch us; two continued walking towards the trees at the edge of the lawn.

"How about going to the pictures?" My voice seemed to have found a higher pitch.

"All right." Hers was so calm.

"What time do you finish work?"

"Six, but I'd like to go home to change first."

That first encounter was so matter of fact and innocent. In the light of what has just happened, that seems almost shocking.

To be contd.

The History of Love in Afghanistan 2

Amidst the aimlessness, Elaine appeared so definitely: jet black hair and deep blue eyes. Already an assured woman, her walk was confident and purposeful. I approached, unsure of myself, still anything but definite, somewhere between a boy and a man; hair neither dark nor fair, eyes somewhere between green and brown. Some Grade Ones were watching us now. Unlike the Grade Twos, they had some awareness of the real world.

"Will you go out with me?"

I noticed something move fast to my right: the blackbird had just caught a worm.

Elaine's beautiful lips started to part.

To be contd.

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.