‘There is a saying in …  in my country’.  He hesitated to describe ‘his’ country in this way; as his, as ‘mine’, as if he owned it, possessed it. It was so commonplace he knew to use such words; no one thought twice about it, or so it seemed. It seemed like he was the only one who choked on these little words. Nevertheless he continued.

‘What is important? It is the people, only the people, always the people.’ He looked around, as if sad, as if elsewhere. ‘I never really understood what it meant until now. Now I know.  All that is important, all that remains, all that makes something what it is; whatever it is, are the people. There is nothing else.’

‘Your country? Adam jumped in excitedly, thinking that there was a chance to find out more about this stranger. ‘Where exactly is your country?’

He looked at Adam squarely, the ubiquitous half-smile on his face. ‘I don’t have a country. There is no place that belongs to me, there is no land, no place that is mine.  So there is no ‘my country’. Its a possessive adjective, that’s what it is. It denotes how something belongs to someone’.

Oh no, not another English lesson!

No, just a personal idiosyncracy. There are a bunch of English words that I don’t particularly like using. Well, most actually, but there are some in particular that stick in my throat. ‘Have’ and ‘have got’, and ‘have to’ for that matter.

‘And should’ I added helpfully.

‘And ‘but’, although I do seem to be using that one a bit more lately. Not too sure why that is.

Because you have been away from us my friend.

This is true. I have, and now I’m back. We are back together.

‘But…’ I paused to make sure he was aware of the word, ‘for how long?’

The half-smile remained on his face as he answered, ‘I don’t know. I never know’.

x bhavatu sabbe mangalum x