There
are people who settle into your life with the languor of a summer Saturday, and
Pris is one of them.
She was the third
girl in the House of Sin, and she had the room beside mine, on the second floor.
She was (and still is) a habitual nibbler, in her wake leaving cans of Coke
three-fourths finished and boursin with little craters on the corners. She is
the only person I know who’s been to Morocco. When her tour bus stopped for gas,
the station owner talked to the driver and offered to buy her for the grand sum
of several thousand dollars and 10 cows. (This figure, by now, has changed in
the telling – we all make beautiful myths around the people we love, and there
are times I double or triple the figure, as I believe she is worth many, many
cows, and even a couple of camels.)
Teye
and I went home after our expat stint, as did Pris. Unlike us, she flew out
again, this time to Bangkok, where she has a neo-Zen apartment and a
refrigerator full of exotica to nibble.
Pris abides by her heart, and her road
hasn’t been easy. But her willingness to taste life, to fling herself into
experience, to once and for all, understand: she folds them all, with sunglasses
and a nice book, into a handwoven silk sarong. And she glides on.