Sharon Feinstein

The other night I had dinner with someone I hadn’t seen since we were 13, and don’t start asking how many years ago that was because you won’t get an answer.

I barely know him now but we shared a huge life-lasting experience together, with a big group of kids all coming back from camp- a train crash in the middle of the Kalahari desert.

It happened in that vast primitive landscape, the wide open African plains of scrubland,  scarlet skies and migrating animals in the distance.

That’s what I remember, the hazy heat coming off the horizon, and being afraid that bushmen I’d seen pictures of, standing on one leg, carrying spears, would suddenly appear.

The amazing thing, as Peter and I talked, was our completely different memories. He remembered looking for his cigarettes, worrying about how many he had left, and sliding out the window.

I remember chaos, twisted metal and steam coming out of the wreckage.Also those giant rock formations that jut out of the land and take different shapes like a mirage, especially when you’re in shock.

I know we were all alone without our families and that went pretty deep.

But I kept trying to get Peter to remember more and he couldn’t, he felt guilty that he couldn’t get beyond his cigarettes. And I can’t get beyond that landscape and steam and that one of us, who was a twin, died because he’d gone to the toilet while all the rest of us remained asleep.

It was a fateful journey, as with the the Air France flight, where some passengers missed the plane because they got to the airport late and had to go back to their hotel, annoyed and disgruntled, and others who fought to get seats and managed, happily, they thought, until a few hours later their time was up.