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I thanked him for taking the time to talk to me, and walked back to the entrance of Alpha Bar, thinking about everything he had said. There was so much to think about ' mainly the fact that Cee and Peto had so obviously got together somewhere else before they got to Alpha ' the story that they had been drawn together by the fight was not holding water any more in the way that I had been told it, though of course it was probably the fight that was the catalyst for turning an evening out together back into a full relationship. I knew that they were probably worried about me ' if they were thinking about me at all ' I had been outside talking to Mwale for over an hour, but I wanted some time to think, so I leant against the railings and thought about what he had told me. The girl ' he called her a working girl, but that is just a euphemism, and quite a nice one ' the prostitute, Gertrude ' I thought then that she was the one I had to talk to. If Mwale was right and Peto, the Rastaman, and the English guy were all her regular clients, and they were all there, in the club, on the night of the fight, then that would have been a potential spark, something that could have kicked the whole thing off. And then there was Peto arriving with Celianne, and Gertrude already there, waiting inside the club: another flashpoint, another reason for there being trouble. In trying to work out what had happened that night and where the tension and trouble started, who started the fight, I realised as I finished my cigarette, I would have to first understand the country and the culture. I mean: for a start, this girl Gertrude ' if that really was her name ' I mean, what was Peto doing with her? Why does she do what she does? What was she doing with the Rastaman and the English guy? And after he had been with her, did Cellianne, my Cee from so long ago, really want to be with him? But then ' and this was a difficult question, a question that had started nagging at me while I listened to Mwale, and was becoming more insistent as I smoked ' did I really know Cee? Did I know or even start to understand her ' or anyone in this country ' after all this time?

Chapter 1: Craig Arrives in Zambia. I hate waking up on a plane. For that matter, I hate waking up next to anyone, however intimate I have been with them before I ' we ' go to sleep. And on a plane, you are surrounded by strangers, heading towards God knows what, in that horrifically vulnerable moment of waking. The lights come on, and you're supposed to eat, you're supposed to be able to function as a human being; but in that deliriously poetic moment between sleep and eating you are totally vulnerable. That Tuesday morning, flying from London to Lusaka, I was especially vulnerable ' I was still drunk. I hate flying, and I had put it off for ages, but I knew that if I was ever to see Cee again I had to fly ' there was no way I could take a month and a half (and to do that would have been pushing it) to travel overland to get there. So I had to fly, and to have the courage to get onto the plane meant spending the Monday afternoon in pubs and bars across London, getting on the plane drunk, and then drinking some more. And then, on top of the fact that I was deliriously, poetically, vulnerably between sleep and waking on a British Airways plane, the thought that Cee had gone back to him crept as subtly as a toxin through me; she had gone back to him but she still wanted me to come out to visit. That rather destroyed the point for me - and meant that I would have to look elsewhere for my holiday shag. There could and would be all kinds of complications. The cabin crew girl looked at me funny, but still gave me a Bloody Mary with my breakfast. I felt that it was the only way to go.

A silly world Where people are tools Full of greed And silly rules. Silly music And silly dances Silly eyes And silly glances Silly politicians With their silly wars Silly public silence

Thank you mom for having the awesome strength to put up with a thousand things you didn't like...

Maternal love and affection: Does it have borders? Borders of caste and creed, of religions?

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If your phone was somebody's life line and you'd be walking and slip in a puddle... If your phone fell out of your pocket into the water, if it became wet and out of use and you had

When she hadn't known his name or recognised him, staring through him and down the long ward of coughing women, he went out and spent most of his giro in bars and pubs, and found himself dancing with the most beautiful girl he had ever seen. Bobbing and moving in the loud sweaty darkness, he shouted into her ear "My mother's got cancer, she's in the hospital. Now.

Momigigari ( translated from the japanese: Hunting of the red leaves) The Japanese, who are crazy about cherry blossoms in spring are getting wild about red autumn leaves travelling far distances in the "hunt" of them