By Naser Kamali
The day he left his homeland, he had never intended to leave for ever.
When people flee, they do not really make plans for “for ever”. They can barely make plans for tomorrow. All they want is to survive today.
His suitcase was not large. A few changes of clothes, several books, a handful of papers, and a portion of a past that would neither fit inside the suitcase nor allow itself to be left behind.
His way out was by sea.
On the night the boat pulled away from the shore, he looked for the last time at the lights growing smaller and smaller in the distance. He did not know whether he would return in a few months, a few years, or whether he would ever return at all.
Behind him was a country he loved but could no longer live in.
Ahead of him was a place he did not know, where he simply hoped he might be allowed to stay alive.
That was all.
No music played. No one announced:
“From this moment, a new chapter of your life begins.”
A new chapter usually begins while you are still busy reading the previous one.
Years later, he would often say:
“I didn’t migrate. Migration is when you decide to leave. I exiled myself in order to survive.”
He reached a safe country.
At first, he thought it would be for a few months. A few months became a year. One year became five. Five became ten. After that, there was little point in counting.
He found a home, worked, made friends, wrote, travelled, fell in love, let go, became attached again, argued, got angry, laughed, lost his mother, and grew old.
He also learnt another language — at least well enough to get by and, more importantly, to protest in it.
Sometimes he would say: “One day I’ll go back.”
At other times: “Where is home? The place where you were born, or the place that allowed you to stay alive?”
And on certain nights, when the discussion had gone on for far too long, he would place his hand firmly on the table and declare: “I’m a citizen of the world.”
Yet the following morning, the first thing he did was read the news from the very homeland that, only the night before, he had declared no longer held exclusive ownership of his heart.
Nobody pointed out the contradiction. Not because he would get angry. But because if they did, another argument would begin and might last until midnight.
The years passed like that.
And then, one day, he died.
His death, unlike his life, was remarkably quiet. Calm and silent. Even the doctors and nurses did not notice at first. Perhaps he did not notice either. Rather like when he was born.
He issued no statement. He delivered no final speech. He did not even have time to say: “Just one more point…”
And perhaps that was the only occasion on which anyone could be certain that Khalo would not add another point.
His body was cremated — though not before a little discussion between those in favour and those against. It was eventually agreed that the matter should not leak back into the country and should be treated like classified information.
A few days later, a man who had lived a lifetime, known prison, known exile, fallen in love, been defeated, risen again, written hundreds of pages and been perfectly capable of arguing for three hours to prove a point, now fitted inside a container that could comfortably be placed in the middle of a table.
One of his old friends stared at the urn for a while. Then, with a mixture of surprise and amusement, he said: “That’s it?”
Another man asked: “What do you mean?”
“I don’t know… I thought there’d be more of him.”
“They’re ashes.”
The old man shook his head. “When Khalo was alive, he took up much more space.”
For a few seconds, nobody laughed. Then one person did. Then another. And suddenly everyone was laughing. Perhaps it was the first laugh after his death that came without guilt.
Four things were written on the urn: his full name, date of birth, date of death, and religion: None.
And between those two dates, a tiny line.
The old man stared at it. “For Khalo, they should have made that line much longer.”
Nobody paid much attention. The real problem began three days later.
The question was very simple:
What were they going to do with the ashes?
The trustees called a meeting. Seven people sat around a large table. Three men and four women.
If you counted the chairs, there were seven. If you counted Khalo, there were eight. And if participation in the meeting was the criterion, the man inside the urn was probably still the chairman.
The table was covered with a red cloth, and the urn stood right in the centre. A red cloth had also been draped over it, bearing a yellow star.
Beside it lay three books, one on top of another:
Love
Justice
Freedom
Three words that had occupied a considerable part of their owner’s life and were now sitting quietly beside his ashes.
One of the women was dressed entirely in red: red clothes, a red scarf and a red cap bearing a red star. Another was the treasurer: neat, precise, bespectacled, equipped with a notebook and pen that made it clear from the beginning that she had no intention of allowing even somebody’s death to interfere with proper accounting.
The third woman mostly listened. The fourth was younger, one of those people who, whenever a discussion became excessively serious, asked one simple question and suddenly revealed that half the meeting had no idea what they were talking about.
The three men had each known Khalo in their own way. One was an old friend. One was an elderly nationalist who insisted on Khalo’s attachment to his homeland. And the third was a quiet man who knew better than anyone how many different opinions Khalo could express on a single subject during his lifetime without those opinions necessarily resembling one another.
The meeting began.
The woman in red formally opened proceedings. The nationalist old man, convinced that justice was on his side, spoke first.
“In my view, it’s obvious. We must return him to his homeland.”
The woman in red asked: “Why?”
He looked at her in astonishment. “Because it was his homeland.”
“In his later years he said he was a citizen of the world.”
“Khalo said a lot of things.”
The quiet man said: “That’s our first problem.”
Everyone looked at him.
“I knew this man for years. If we collected everything he ever said about his own death, we could organise three completely different funerals.”
The woman in red looked at him with mild irritation. The younger woman laughed.
The nationalist said: “Let’s not joke. He repeatedly said that one day he would return home.”
The woman in red replied: “Alive. He never said we should send his ashes back.”
“What difference does it make?”
The younger woman said: “Almost everything.”
The treasurer lifted her head from her notebook. “Before making any decision, we need to know the regulations and costs involved in transporting ashes to another country.”
The old man said: “Let’s not talk about money yet.”
The treasurer replied: “Usually, the people who say, ‘Let’s not talk about money yet,’ are the same people who send the invoice to me at the end.”
The woman in red laughed.
The old friend said: “He once told me to keep his ashes until the next revolution. Then, when things changed, take him back and bury him in his own country.”
The nationalist immediately said: “That settles it. His own wishes.”
The younger woman asked: “What date is the next revolution?”
The old man stared at her. “Revolutions don’t come with advance dates.”
“So how long are the ashes supposed to wait?”
“Until it happens.”
“It might take ten years.”
“Fine.”
“Thirty?”
“Fine.”
The treasurer asked: “And where exactly are we keeping him for thirty years?”
Silence. Everyone looked at the urn.
“The foundation office,” said the old man.
“The foundation office is not an ash-storage facility.”
“We’ll give him a shelf.”
“What if the office moves?”
“We take him with us.”
“What if the trustees change?”
Nobody answered.
The younger woman asked: “What if the revolution comes in fifty years and all of us are dead?”
The old friend said: “Then they’ll have to appoint a new board of trustees to decide what to do with the ashes of the previous board as well.”
Several people laughed.
The treasurer said: “A bank safe-deposit box is an option.”
The old friend immediately objected. “No.”
“Why?”
“He spent his entire life railing against capitalism and imperialism, and now we’re going to put his ashes in a bank vault?”
The younger woman said: “If he has a soul, he’ll climb out of the safe on the first night.”
The woman in red looked at her with a mocking expression. “He didn’t believe in souls. So he hasn’t got one to jump out of the box.”
For a few moments there was silence. Then everyone burst out laughing. Even the treasurer could not contain herself.
The younger woman initially looked at the others in surprise, then realised what she had just said in the middle of a serious meeting about such a serious matter. She began laughing too.
“All right. I withdraw that remark. Please remove the soul from the minutes.”
The treasurer adjusted her glasses. “Fortunately, I hadn’t put the soul in the minutes.”
This time the laughter was louder.
The old friend looked at the urn. “You see, Khalo? We still haven’t decided what to do with your ashes, but they’ve already settled the question of your soul.”
The treasurer picked up her pen. “I accept no responsibility for souls. I’m only discussing the cost of the safe-deposit box.”
The old friend looked at the urn. “What a world! Khalo, things aren’t looking good. You had a problem with capitalism while you were alive, and now that you’re dead, capitalism wants to charge rent for your ashes.”
The treasurer said: “The bank isn’t interested in the customer’s ideology. It wants its rent.”
“So the safe-deposit box is out?” the nationalist asked.
“As far as I’m concerned, yes,” said the treasurer. “Not for ideological reasons. Because of the rent.”
The old friend said: “At least we’ve discovered one thing in this meeting more powerful than ideological disagreement.”
“What?” asked the younger woman.
“Money.”
And for several more minutes, the meeting lost all control.
The first meeting ended without a decision. The minutes recorded: “A final decision concerning the location of the ashes has been deferred until the next meeting.”
The old friend read the minutes. “Poor man. When he was alive, he was waiting for political matters to be settled. Now he’s dead, and his own fate has been postponed until the next meeting.”
At the second meeting, everyone arrived having done their research.
The quiet man placed several sheets of paper on the table. “I’ve researched some well-known people who were cremated.”
The woman in red said: “I hope we’re not going to compare Khalo with all of them.”
“No. Just looking for ideas.”
“From dead people?”
“Dead people sometimes have good ideas. The advantage is they don’t interrupt you halfway through.”
The old friend said: “Then Khalo still isn’t entirely qualified.”
Everyone laughed.
The quiet man picked up a sheet. “Friedrich Engels asked for his body to be cremated and his ashes scattered at sea.”
The woman in red said: “That’s not a bad idea.”
The nationalist immediately asked: “Why isn’t it?”
“The sea.”
“What has that got to do with anything?”
“Khalo said he was a citizen of the world.”
“That’s not an argument.”
“For an urn full of ashes, it isn’t a bad one.”
“He belonged to his country.”
The woman in red paused. “He couldn’t live in his own country while he was alive. Why has it suddenly become so important that he should be there when he’s dead?”
The room fell silent. Nobody laughed this time. Several decades of life lay behind that single sentence.
The nationalist spoke more softly. “That is precisely why I want him to return.”
The woman in red nodded. “I understand.”
For the first time, it became clear that perhaps the two of them had reached the same pain by different roads.
The quiet man picked up another sheet. “There’s another example. Zhou Enlai. According to his wishes, his ashes were scattered from an aircraft over parts of China.”
The younger woman said: “That’s interesting.”
Without lifting her head, the treasurer said: “No.”
The young woman laughed. “I haven’t suggested anything yet.”
“Any sentence containing the words ‘ashes’ and ‘aircraft’ is unlikely to end cheaply.”
The old friend asked: “What about a drone?”
The nationalist stared at him. “Scatter Khalo’s ashes with a drone?”
“Why not?”
“It lacks dignity.”
“An aircraft has dignity but a drone doesn’t?”
The quiet man said: “An aircraft is more symbolic.”
The treasurer replied: “You choose the symbols. The invoice comes to me.”
The younger woman asked: “What about the wind?”
“What?”
“If we scatter him from the air and the wind blows back?”
Everyone fell silent.
The old friend said: “Knowing Khalo, I wouldn’t be surprised if his ashes came straight back into the meeting.”
For several minutes, the meeting ceased to be formal.
Weeks passed. The urn remained where it was. Only the file beside it grew larger.
The ashes themselves probably weighed less than a kilogram, but the file concerning their fate was becoming heavier than the ashes.
Someone proposed dividing them into three: one part for his homeland, one part for London, one part for the sea.
The old friend immediately objected. “No.”
“Why?”
“This man was divided enough during his lifetime. Don’t divide him again after death.”
The younger woman said: “It would be symbolic.”
“Exile has enough symbolism already. There’s no need to turn a man’s remains into a pie chart.”
The proposal was rejected.
At the next meeting, the nationalist pointed towards the urn. “The problem is that you’re trying to take something away from Khalo that he himself could never separate from.”
The woman in red asked: “What?”
“His homeland.”
She leaned back slightly. “I’m not trying to take his homeland away from him. My question is: how do you define homeland?”
The old man said: “The land to which a person belongs. The place from which their language, history, culture and shared memories come. Nobody is born without roots.”
The woman in red said: “I don’t deny roots either. But nationalism begins when attachment to nation and territory becomes a central part of a person’s political identity. I’m saying a person can love their country, love their language and remember their history without defining themselves solely within those borders.”
“And you call that cosmopolitanism?”
“If you like, yes. Or internationalism, although the two aren’t exactly the same thing.”
The younger woman asked: “What’s the difference?”
The woman in red thought for a moment. “Simply put, cosmopolitanism says that before belonging to a particular country, a human being is a member of the human community. Internationalism places more emphasis on cooperation and solidarity between the peoples of different nations. One says borders should not determine a person’s value. The other says nations may exist, but people and their shared interests should not become prisoners of those borders.”
The nationalist said: “That all sounds very beautiful, but people don’t live in thin air. Everyone has a language, a past, a country.”
“Of course. Does being a citizen of the world mean erasing your past?”
“Sometimes it seems that way.”
“Then that is a misunderstanding. If I say that all human beings have equal value regardless of where they were born, it doesn’t mean I have forgotten my mother tongue.”
“I never said people on the other side of a border are worth less.”
The woman in red smiled. “Then we’re making progress.”
The old friend said: “Please make progress more slowly. If we solve nationalism and internationalism tonight as well, we won’t have anything left to discuss at the next meeting.”
Without lifting her head from her notebook, the treasurer said: “I have no objection. Fewer meetings mean lower costs.”
Several people laughed.
But the nationalist remained serious. “If this man was a citizen of the world, why was he so preoccupied with his country until the end of his life? Why did he follow its news? Why did he write about it? Why did every event there affect him? Why, unlike so many people who claim to love their country, did he never agree to wave the flags of foreign powers?”
The woman in red said: “Because being a citizen of the world does not mean being without a homeland.”
She continued: “You say that because he loved his homeland, he was a nationalist. I say a person can love their homeland deeply and still believe that borders should not determine human destiny — and believe that borders should be removed so people can live wherever they feel at home.”
“But he wanted to return.”
“Of course he did. He hadn’t left his country voluntarily to go travelling around the world. He had been forced into exile. Missing home is not evidence of nationalism.”
The room became quiet.
“Someone driven from their home can spend the rest of their life longing to return and, at the same time, understand that people cannot be defined solely by where they were born.”
“Then what becomes of homeland?”
“It remains. In your language. In your memories. In your mother. In your childhood. In the people you loved. Being a citizen of the world is not supposed to take those things away from you.”
The quiet man said: “Perhaps we’ve been asking the wrong question from the beginning.”
“Which question?”
“Which country did Khalo belong to? Perhaps we should have asked how many places in the world belonged to Khalo’s life.”
Nobody answered.
The woman in red looked at the three books beside the urn: Love. Justice. Freedom.
Then she said quietly: “I don’t think Khalo was a nationalist. He loved his country. He did not deny his past. His language and his people mattered to him. Exile wounded him too. But he did not place homeland above humanity. If I had to choose one of these definitions for him, I would say Khalo was a citizen of the world.”
Silence.
Only the nationalist refused to give way. “Call it whatever you like. I still say a person cannot live without a homeland.”
The woman in red looked at him and merely smiled.
The old friend looked at the urn and muttered: “You died and left us here to sort out the fate of the world. And your ashes are a nuisance too. In fact, you were a nuisance when you were alive.”
And the meeting continued.
A few days later, an envelope was found inside one of Khalo’s books.
In his own handwriting, the envelope read:
“About my ashes — open only after I am dead. Don’t be nosy before then.”
The old friend saw the handwriting. “That’s him all right.”
An extraordinary meeting was called. The seven of them sat once again around the same table. The urn stood in the middle. Beside it were the three books: Love. Justice. Freedom.
The chairman opened the envelope. At the top of the page was written:
“For those who, after my death, still have the patience to argue.”
He began reading.
Dear friends,
If you are reading this, apparently I have finally died and you are rid of me.
I hope you made sure before calling the meeting.
I would hate to wake up halfway through the reading of my will and discover that you have formed a board of trustees to decide what to do with ashes that haven’t even been produced yet.
Your main problem is probably what to do with me now.
I know you.
One of you will say, “Take him back to his homeland.”
Another will say, “Keep him until the next revolution.”
Someone else will say, “Leave him in London.”
And somebody has almost certainly suggested the sea.
If anyone has proposed dividing me into several parts, please don’t throw them out of the meeting. Just don’t give them a second cup of tea.
I have been divided enough in my lifetime.
Now let me tell you myself.
I loved the land where I was born.
If dead people are permitted to use the present tense, I still love it.
Not because that land was superior to every other land, nor because a human being can be defined by their place of birth.
I loved it because part of me was formed there.
That is where my language took shape. That is where I first laughed. That is where I knew my mother. That is where I understood friendship. That is where I fell in love.
That is where I learnt that justice is not merely a word in a book. It is something worth fighting for until the final moment.
That is where I learnt fear. That is where I saw prison. That is where I lost people, some of whom do not even have graves.
So when I speak of homeland, I am not talking about a patch of earth on a map. I am talking about a part of my life.
And it was from that same land that, one night, I exiled myself by sea.
A boat carried me away from the shore. That night I did not know where the sea was taking me. I knew only that behind me was a place where I could no longer remain, and ahead of me somewhere I might be able to stay alive.
That night, the sea was not freedom for me. It was an escape route.
I never intended my departure to last this long.
In the early years, I always thought I would return.
During the first years of exile, an exile’s suitcase is never completely unpacked. Even when the clothes are hanging in a wardrobe, somewhere in the mind the suitcase remains packed.
Then the years pass.
You find a home. You buy books. You make friends. The people you love grow old. Some die. You grow old yourself.
And one day you realise that the country where you intended to stay for only a few months has witnessed a large part of your life.
People have entered your life. Some stayed. Some left. You made memories. You laughed. You cried. You worked. You wrote.
And suddenly the answer to that old question is no longer as simple as it once was:
Where is home?
I never found a definitive answer. Perhaps some questions are not supposed to have one.
If you have found it, congratulations. But please don’t organise a seminar to explain it.
I once said that my ashes should be kept until the next revolution and then taken home.
It wasn’t a bad idea, but it was asking rather a lot.
Perhaps, at the time, some part of me still imagined that even after death I ought to wait to return.
But now I can see a problem with that.
I have spent enough of my life waiting.
Waiting for news. Waiting for freedom. Waiting for change. Waiting to return. Waiting for the world to become better.
I don’t want my ashes waiting as well.
Particularly not in a bank safe-deposit box — an institution where human beings are exploited.
If somebody has suggested a bank vault, thank them on my behalf and tell them that I spent a lifetime opposing capitalism and imperialism, and now that I’m dead there is no reason for me to become a tenant of a bank.
As for the next revolution, if it is coming, let it come without me.
If a revolution needs an urn of ashes in order to arrive, it should probably work a little harder on its programme.
I do not deny my nationality or my past.
Exile cannot erase a person’s past. Nor can decades spent living in another land simply be erased from a life.
I am not obliged to choose between my two lives. Both happened. Both became part of me.
But throughout all those years I learnt one thing:
Homeland is not merely soil.
Homeland is people.
It is the mother whose voice you can still hear.
It is the friend who is no longer there.
It is the street that may no longer look the way you remember it.
It is the language you instinctively speak when you are tired.
It is a song that suddenly erases forty years of distance.
It is the smell of food that, for a moment, returns you to childhood.
Sometimes homeland is something that no longer exists, yet remains alive inside you.
The country that gave me refuge became part of my life too.
I cannot erase several decades of my life and pretend I spent the whole time merely waiting to go back.
I lived here too. I laughed. I wrote. I loved. I grew old.
I met people who became part of my life.
I lost my mother here.
And I learnt that a person can love the place they came from without treating the rest of the world as foreign.
Perhaps that is what being a citizen of the world means to me.
Not having no homeland. Not forgetting the past. Not erasing the language in which I have thought and written.
But accepting the simple truth that no border can determine the value of a human being.
So after my death, do not force me to choose between the two.
Once, while alive, I exiled myself by sea.
Please don’t make my ashes a refugee.
I no longer want to wait for governments to make decisions, regimes to change, or some promised day that nobody knows will ever arrive.
If you genuinely want to carry out my final wish, give me to the sea.
Don’t imagine you have chosen a new route for me. I have travelled it once before.
Except that time I was alive, I had a suitcase, I was afraid, and I had no idea what was waiting for me on the next shore.
This time I shall travel lighter.
And, of course, this journey has another advantage.
If one day the current carries me to a beach somewhere in the world, I shall no longer have to behave as I did when I was alive — politely turning my head away and pretending not to have noticed the beautiful women around me.
I have no responsibilities now.
If one day a particle of my ashes washes ashore beside a beach full of beautiful women, please do not accuse me of anything. Ocean currents are beyond my control.
A man ought to get at least one advantage from dying.
I only hope the waves don’t send me back too quickly.
One lifetime of exile was enough. I really cannot be bothered to get thrown off a beach after death as well.
But jokes aside.
I choose the sea, not because I have forgotten my homeland. Quite the opposite.
I choose the sea because I do not want the final decision about me to be another choice between two pieces of land: the land where I was born, and the land where I spent a large part of my life.
Both were part of my life. I deny neither.
But after death, I no longer want the question to be which one owns me.
Give me to the sea somewhere. It does not have to be anywhere grand.
And don’t hire an aeroplane.
If the treasurer is among you, she is probably feeling relieved already.
If a boat is expensive, don’t put yourselves to the expense.
I do not need ceremony to return to the sea.
I have only one important request:
Before scattering my ashes, check the direction of the wind.
I have returned often enough in my lifetime. I don’t want my final journey to end five seconds later with me landing back on your coat.
Then leave.
Don’t stand there watching to see where I go. It is no longer your concern.
This time, let the water choose the destination.
Perhaps one particle of me will one day reach the shore where I was born.
Perhaps I shall reach Africa.
Perhaps Latin America.
Perhaps Asia.
Perhaps Europe again.
Perhaps I shall spend years circling the ocean.
Perhaps I shall arrive nowhere at all.
What does it matter?
All my life I tried to understand where a human being belongs, to find the meaning of life — or perhaps to give life meaning.
Now I would rather leave the answer to the water.
If someone later asks where you buried Khalo, say:
“Nowhere.”
If they ask:
“Then where is he?”
Say:
“We don’t know.”
And perhaps that “we don’t know” is more honest than all the answers I found to that question during my lifetime.
Perhaps that is the best ending for the life of a man who spent years searching for the meaning of life.
Do not put up any memorial for me either.
If you really want something of me to remain, open one of my books.
Love.
Justice.
Freedom.
If there is still a sentence in them worth reading, let that be my memorial.
If not, plant a tree.
A tree is more useful than a statue.
And one final request:
Do not quarrel over this will.
If someone disagrees, let them disagree.
I spent my whole life defending the right to disagree.
It would be rather disgraceful if, after my death, I became the first person to abolish it.
With affection,
Khalo
Though this time I shall sign it:
H. R. K.If the meeting is still going on by the time you reach this line, end it.
I’m dead.
Haven’t you got anything else to do?
The chairman lowered the paper.
For a while, nobody spoke.
The woman in red looked at the urn. The treasurer removed her glasses. The younger woman wore a smile caught somewhere between laughter and tears. The nationalist remained silent.
The three books were still beside the urn:
Love. Justice. Freedom.
The old friend finally said: “Well.”
The chairman asked: “Well what?”
“The meeting is over.”
The nationalist said quietly: “I still think he wanted to return one day, but couldn’t bring himself to say it.”
The woman in red laughed. “He never had much difficulty saying what he thought.”
“I think so too,” she continued. “But perhaps returning does not always mean being buried.”
The nationalist asked: “So what do we do with the body? Well, the ashes.”
The old friend said: “After all these meetings, we’ve finally reached one conclusion.”
“What conclusion?”
“That even after his death, we still couldn’t fit Khalo into a single definition.”
A few weeks later, on a calm morning, the same seven people stood beside the sea.
There was no flag. No anthem. No formal speech. No one tried to claim his death on behalf of an ideology.
There were simply seven people, three books and an urn.
The same sea that had once been his route into exile was now to become the route of his final journey.
The old friend held the urn.
He was about to remove the red cloth when he suddenly stopped.
The woman in red asked: “What is it?”
The nationalist raised a finger. He picked up a little dry grass from the ground and released it into the air.
The treasurer asked: “What are you doing?”
“Checking the wind direction.”
The younger woman laughed. “Are you serious?”
“He specifically asked us to. I’m not taking responsibility if he comes back again.”
This time everyone laughed.
The wind was blowing gently towards the water.
The cloth was removed. The urn was opened.
The ashes rose softly into the air.
Some settled on the water. Some travelled with the wind for a few moments.
A wave came and carried them away.
After that, it was impossible to tell which particle belonged to Khalo and which drop belonged to the sea.
The seven stood in silence for a while.
A wave came dancing in, broke upon the shore and withdrew. Another took its place.
The nationalist clasped his hands behind his back.
“Well, he got his own way in the end. We even gave his ashes to the water in defiance of bourgeois law.”
The younger woman asked in surprise: “Which way?”
The old man pointed towards the sea.
“He’s a citizen of the world now. He can go wherever he likes.”
Several people smiled.
The old man gazed at the water and continued wistfully:
“And from now on, he can visit any beach he fancies.”
The treasurer laughed.
The younger woman said: “What has that got to do with anything?”
The old man, looking completely serious, said:
“Everything. The current isn’t going to ask Khalo’s permission. This beach today, Spain tomorrow, Brazil the day after, and perhaps the Caribbean one day.”
The old friend said: “You’ve clearly planned more travelling for his ashes than Khalo ever planned for himself.”
Everyone laughed.
Encouraged, the old man continued:
“He might even be carried by a wave onto a crowded beach and accidentally bump into one or two beautiful women.”
This time the laughter grew louder.
The treasurer lowered her head, laughing.
The younger woman said: “The poor man hasn’t even reached the beach yet and you’ve already opened a case against him!”
The other two men were laughing too.
Only the woman in red did not laugh. She looked seriously at the others, folded her arms and stared directly at the old man.
The laughter gradually faded.
The old man noticed her expression and cleared his throat.
“Of course… I meant entirely by accident. It would be the current’s fault.”
Everyone laughed again.
Everyone except the woman in red.
The old man looked at her for a few seconds, then turned towards the sea and shouted:
“Khalo, do whatever the hell you like — just leave my name out of it!”
This time even the corner of the woman in red’s mouth twitched.
A wave came forward, broke upon the shore and withdrew.
There was no longer an urn among them, nor any ashes whose destination anyone could decide.
The old man took one last look at the water.
“Go on, Khalo. This time, go wherever you like.”
The woman in red immediately said:
“I said wherever you like — not whichever beach you like!”
Their laughter mingled with the sound of the waves.
And the sea, taking nobody’s side, carried Khalo away.
Naser Kamali
Nowhereland
English translation prepared with AI assistance
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