DIARY ENTRY
25/01/2025
Today I went back to writing. There has been very little time to work on the text accompanying the book in the last few months. Re read notes, retracing steps – yet again. I close my eyes and everything is there in front of me. The only thing I do not remember any more is how long things took. I remember the sequence but the images all appear in mind as if at the same time. The iphone images have the time in their data, I can retrace the moments and the seconds there.
W G Sebald wrote: “We, the survivors, see everything from above, see everything at once, and still we do not know how it was.”
Rewriting …
I walk towards the house. There is nothing real about what is going around me.
I am calm, – I feel Clio and my mum are safe for the moment. I have left them
with a baby raft and a chair by the beach. I found some clothes and changed Clio.
She’s less lethargic. Her body temperature must be normal again. The air has cleared out a little.
There is absolute silence. Everything is dark, black, burned out cars, and scattered
low fires burning.
An elderly man, with his wife beside him. Part of his body is burned. We bring water.
They are calm, silent, patient…
I walk further up.
The house is on fire.
The sight is breath-taking. I turn around and leave.
How could I have just left?
I was told later that I called out for my father. I have no recollection of it.
Maybe in my head, I lost my father again that day. I feel I did. And, I called for him,
the same way I called that day when I realized that it was he, that was lying in the
tarmac in front of me hit by a motorcycle.
I remember asking “Why, dad?” Another why. Again, a why.
I had this childish superstition that his spirit would have protected the house
– along with everything that was left of him – and us. I guess he did what he could.
He protected us.
But not everyone was lucky.
Little did I know at the time, about what had really happened?
Little did I know that I walked past bodies of people that had been caught up in the
fire; little did I know that the smog had concealed sights of indescribable suffering
and death; little did I know that that the horrendous sound of the fire and the
explosions had concealed their screams of fear and agony.
I still don’t know; what I saw.
