Читать книгу The Journey: How an obscure Byzantine Saint became our Santa Claus - David Price Williams - Страница 57

Just after day-break I bade a sorrowful farewell to Irene, who hugged me and cried as though she was never going to see me again. I tried to comfort her by saying I was only going away for a few months, not for ever, but she was inconsolable. To lose my father and me in the space of only a few weeks must have been very difficult and unsettling for her. But I was eager to be off. If I was going to go, it had to be now. I tore myself away from her and set off down our street, waving at the corner before walking quickly, bag in hand, down to the harbour to meet Captain Polios. I found the ship where it had been moored the previous day. The seamen were getting her ready to sail, but they said I still had about half an hour or so, so I went across the quay to a small stall selling fresh wheat cakes and rather watery tea and for a few coins enjoyed my last breakfast in Patara.

“Going anywhere nice Nicholas?” asked the stall keeper.

“Egypt,” I replied, full of a confidence I certainly didn’t feel.

“Well, enjoy the experience! I’ve heard it’s very different from here, very Greek in one way, but very foreign and strange in others. You’ll come back a totally changed person, I’m sure.”

Little did I know just how changed I would be when next I saw my home city. Had I realised just how much I would alter, maybe I would never have started out in the first place. When you are young how can you possibly calculate these things?

DAVID PRICE WILLIAMS