Twenty-First Stone: At the Library

At our poetry group in the local library there is new member. She is Italian, and speaks English brokenly. She sits and listens attentively to the poems and discussion but beyond some smiles and nods, says little. She is holding a book. One of the group asks her if she wants to read. She tells us it is her story. We look a little blank I suspect. Gradually we understand that it is her autobiography. She agrees to read us part of it, in Italian. She reads rapidly.
I understand odd words, mad, military, afterwards, house, danger, but not enough to make a coherent guess at what she is saying.
Afterwards, with many gestures she explains the book is about a period in her life when she was living in Togo when there was a coup. The passage she has just read is about the daily fear and dangers that after a few weeks became normality, about potholes in the road created by the military, about the danger of being white at such a time in such a place; that the whole book is about this extraordinary period in her life when she did not know if she would be killed, how to get drinking water, when leaving the house was an extremely dangerous act. We understand this slowly, but although her English is basic, she mimes and we are all listening and watching intently.
She is describing something so far away from my own experience and beyond shocking with smiles and gestures.
And they want to close libraries.
God help us.

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