Leaving Galle

Weary and bleary on Sunday afternoon I went back to my guesthouse to pack. The Festival had rented me a room in at the back of a family home inside the Fort. This afternoon the household was busy with their own event. The furniture was all pushed to the wall and mats laid on the floor and my landlady explained to me that today was the day of the annual almsgiving they gave the community, in the name of her grandmother. The had just finished cooking and there were pots waiting in every alcove.

An uncle had arrived from Colombo and he told me a little more. He said that after the men had prayed they would break fast. Then they would go to the mosque again before coming back for a fuller meal. He said everyone around would come and eat together from large communal platters. He was sad, all the same, that there were fewer families now than there had been, so many of them having sold and left their longstanding homes in the Fort. He was delighted that I'd driven down to Galle with Michael Roberts as they had gone to the same school. We talked about whereabouts in London we each had lived and worked - he as a representative of the Bank of Ceylon, I as a dramaturg.

The family invited me to a cup of kanji and a banana before I set off on my journey back to Colombo. Of course I accepted, while feeling self conscious that I was been given food while they were fasting and that today (though not on other days) I was the only woman in the house not wearing a headscarf. I took my suitcase into the lane so that the arrival of my ride would not interrupt the prayers that were about to start in the front room.

I was perfectly placed now to watch the afternoon and the week fade, while from each front door on Lighthouse Street a best-dressed family appeared and walked across to the house I had just left.