The void

Three weeks after my first sobbing conversation with the woman who administered Fulbrights, Seth and his girlfriend drove me to Logan airport in Boston. I had a migraine, I was trembling with anxiety about leaving Seth on his own, and I was headed for an African country I had never heard of, was not prepared for, and could not imagine. I was not even sure how to pronounce Lesotho. It was a void. I’d been reading Nigeria for a year and had found hundreds of novels, plays, and non-fiction books about its languages and cultures; not even one book about Lesotho. 

The Fulbright people mailed me a thin pamphlet published by the Central Intelligence Agency, according to which Lesotho is about the size of Belgium, is one of the highest and coldest countries in Africa (possibility of heavy snow in July and August), and one of the poorest. A cover letter warned of armed robberies, break-ins, and carjackings. A “Safety Note” added, “Never leave your luggage unattended,” and “Do not walk alone. Always ensure that you are in a group of at least four people,” and most ominously, “Leave contact information for your next of kin at the US Embassy in Maseru.”

I cancelled my ticket to Nigeria and bought a ticket to Lesotho and another for Seth to come visit me in Lesotho at Christmas, but as I watched the back of Seth’s head disappear down the escalator to the parking lot, I wondered if I would ever see him again. I saw a Mediterranean-looking fellow taking leave of his son, hugging him, crying, holding his son’s face in his hands and kissing him, and I burst into tears. 

What have I done? 

I asked that question when Seth was two and I moved us to a tin-roofed shack on a Louisiana Bayou, miles from the nearest neighbor, so I could write without being interrupted.

I asked that question when Seth was four and I took him to France because I was studying the Cathares, and we had a flat tire in a borrowed car on the road to Rocamadour. 

I asked that question when Seth was seven and I fell in love with a Greek woman and went to live with her in a violent, right-wing Texas town full of men drinking beer in pickup trucks with guns hanging in their rear windows.

I asked that question when Seth was eleven and I was doing doctoral research in London, sneaking him into a single-occupancy room with me and fearing we’d be caught.

So far, each turning had been part of a grand adventure.