Monday, November 19, 2018

First Paragraph

We weren't supposed to get rain during the dry season in Malawi, but it was pelting down that October morning in 1965 when two men drove up to my school compound in a Jeep and demanded to see me. I had just left the school, having finished an early class, and was wobbling through the rain on my bike to collect the mail. The Jeep pulled up beside me on the muddy road and the door swung open. The man in the driver's seat said, "Get in, Paul. We've got some bad news for you." He said it somewhat mechanically, as if he had rehearsed it, the way people do when they learn in advance that they have to deliver bad news.

- From: "The Killing of Hastings Banda" by Paul Theroux in Sunrise with Seamonsters: Travels and Discoveries

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