https://youtu.be/4I-GGTCV0K0

Trigger Warning: Apartheid, Political Persecution

The dream arrived like a whisper from another realm - a marketplace suspended between reality and memory, where colours breathed and fabrics shimmered with untold stories. In this exotic landscape, possibly etched from the intricate maps of Asia or the luminous markets of North Africa, I found myself wandering amid swirling scents and phantom touches.

And then, he appeared.

R, emerging from the crowd like a mirage, tall and ethereal - more a memory's wishful reconstruction than a precise recollection. He smiled, waved, his image flickering like a firefly's uncertain light, beckoning me across the vast landscape of forgotten time.

When I awoke, the dream clung to me like gossamer, its threads pulling me toward an inexplicable search. The internet became my divining rod, tracing fragile connections across decades. A newsletter, a signature that seemed to pulse with familiarity - was this real or another dream's fabrication?

His departure had been marked by necessity and principle. In the brutal landscape of apartheid South Africa, R had made a profound choice - refusing conscription into a military system that would have demanded his participation in cross-border fighting in Angola. The weight of political resistance had pressed upon him, forcing an exile that was both a personal survival and a moral stand. He had left the country, seeking political asylum in the United Kingdom, a journey that would stretch years into decades.

I reached out to the school, my message a delicate bridge spanning years of silence. They forwarded my query, and soon a response arrived - R himself, transformed by time yet fundamentally unchanged. A photograph from the 1970s materialised, Cape Town's memory captured in silvery grains, a testament to our shared history.

Serendipity danced around us. He was preparing to journey from the UK, traversing continents, his path leading him through South Africa and onward to North Africa - as if the very dream that summoned him was now orchestrating our reunion.

Two days ago, we met. Really met.

Yet beneath the joy of reconnection lay the unspoken truth - time had irrevocably separated us. Despite promises whispered in younger years, despite intentions to wait, the expanding landscape of political exile and personal survival had created an insurmountable distance. What once seemed a temporary separation had calcified into permanent displacement.

The encounter was a meditation on time's mysterious alchemy - how moments can compress and expand, how memory can be both precise and phantasmal. I was acutely aware of the improbability, of the gossamer threads connecting us across years and geographies. Awestruck.

Pablo Neruda's words echoed in my consciousness: "...one cannot measure the road which may have had no country..." * How true. Some experiences defy measurement, existing in a realm beyond language, requiring only heartfulness to comprehend.

In the evening's soft light, as shadows lengthened and memories intertwined, another of Neruda's verses illuminated my reflection:

> "...but do not ask me the date or the name of what I dreamed - I cannot measure the road which may have had no country, or that truth which changed, which the day perhaps subdued to become a wandering light like a firefly in the dark." *

A firefly. A wandering light.

This chance meeting, this unexpected reconnection, was precisely that - an ephemeral illumination cutting through darkness, revealing connections invisible yet profound. Time dissolved, memory reconstructed, and for a moment, the impossible became gloriously, radiantly real.

*Reference: Neruda, P. (2000). Memoirs of Isla Negra (A. Reid, Trans.). New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.*

Photo courtesy R.
Akin Cakiner Photo on Unsplash.