Because I understood only too well why he really wanted to get away this summer, away from home, away from the computer and especially away from another six weeks of scratching around in his own yard as we had done all previous years because of the ever-expanding family situation, I would have nodded yes to his astonishing proposal to book a week all-inclusive in a Turkish holiday resort. After that I didn’t care too much about friends who wished us success with a false pleasure, there was nothing more to do. And so we found ourselves at the hottest point of the year in an indestructible cottage in a resort right on the Mediterranean Sea, where everyone was in the pool all day.
It took a while for us to relax.
In the morning we all marched to the dining room, after that we had to search for a place in the shade, in between there was the possibility to participate in aqua-gym and in the evening I suppressed the urge to whisper Ukraine to passing Russians at the buffet. Also, the brain behind this trip didn’t blend seamlessly into the all-inclusive concept, literally not, it was the seam of his sponsored swimming trunks that got stuck behind the edge of the slide as he threw himself off it with his 5-year-old daughter (alone for her he enters a swimming pool with eighty others, only for her he hoists himself up the steps of a fluorescent castle). From behind his book about the Second World War he spoke unparliamentary language about the other bathers. In the canteen I saw him hiding behind a column with a plate of waffles from the Dutch couple we had met earlier that day at mini golf.
On day three we escaped the lethargy. Look, we don’t see the others doing this yet, we said complacently to each other when we were on our way to the local market in a sweltering taxi, no, we were not like them, come on, you wanted to see something of the area, didn’t you? But the market was disappointing, the road to it was dusty and jesus christ it was hot, the clock by the pool would indicate 40 degrees that day, red numbers, even the sparrows stared ahead with open beaks, no, we did this not again, are you kidding, we wouldn’t be lugging half a sunstroke through a souk if you could lie on a bloated watermelon?
The children, they all thought it was wonderful. Roll back, speak English, order ice cream all day long, couldn’t finish. My warnings not to take more than they can handle shook them off like wet dogs. I left it alone and, more than at home, first read the newspaper, but soon only books, because being away is also being away from war, nitrogen, drama politics.
And so we slowly got rid of shame.
Less thoughts, less need, less worry. More baklava.
At sunset, when the noise of the children’s disco had given way to the chorus of crickets, we made circles in the condensation on the beer glass and looked at the sea, blue and massive, not being able to tell whether it was mountains or clouds where they into the distance, and in that last light, in which you can no longer tell a white hair from a black hair, we were happy, we couldn’t help it.