From waft to waft
Images that yet fresh images beget, if only smells. This time the leap is from gorse, coconut, to orange, from South Wales to Western Algeria. It's 1962, soon after the Algerian independence war, and I'm driving through the night from Tlemcen, near the Moroccan border, to Algiers. We've been told to get someone there by tomorrow. It's a long drive, after work, and I'm on a threadbare high, between coffee and exhaustion. There's nothing else on the road, economy flat and people still afraid, the line blurred between the freedom fight and banditry, the struggle to survive. I dont feel afraid, unless it's the fear of a rabbit, mesmerised by the beam of my own headlights and compelled along the long straight road ahead.
A bit of open window helps me keep awake, and suddenly I feel myself relax.
Orange blossom, the scent from unseen orange groves is everywhere. I can feel the trees nearby in the darkness and the same sweet air running through them, the car, my lungs and heart, whatever that may mean. On the wings of a smell, all's well.
In a few months the oranges will be ripe, then overripe, in piles beside the road. The colons have gone, and with them the markets that would have taken them, turned them into money, solid food not Midas oranges.