This evening we got a message in Turkish on the WhatsApp group for our building – there was water leaking from our flat, it was urgent. We dashed over, and of course were completely incapable of understanding where the water was coming from, or of understanding the neighbour who reported it. Fortunately it was the sweet, quiet patient man. I got him to speak to our architect and there was a long phone conversation which the architect later summarised as ‘someone turned the water on, it was not us’. Not very helpful, but at least it was a simple fix, ie turning the water off at the mains. It made me miss having a landlord when such problems were not ours.
I finally finished an unsatisfactory draft of the report I was working on over the weekend – unsatisfactory because the comments received on the first draft took it away from the initial outline. But at least it’s gone, and I can turn to something else that has been lingering.
It is an anniversary today, and a reminder also came of one of the most difficult meetings of my life, taking a friend to visit someone who had the same illness she did, but who was not as shattered in mind and body. He died a few days ago, having outlived her by more than six years. On both counts I resented him, but the disease took him in the end, so all resentment is gone as he suffered from something I wouldn’t wish on Abu Lahhab himself.