Sick in Algiers

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Birds have taken charge of Evensong outside my bedroom window tonight. It’s still not dark, but I’ve been lying here a while to rest my aching back, and as soon as dusk began to gather so did the birds. It takes me back to being laid aside in sickness many years ago in Algiers. In the grips of a grim delirium, I sweated through three days and nights (though it seemed more like 40 at the time) in a yellow room with nicotine-stained gauze curtains that floated in the breeze at the large window. Outside the window was a solitary tree where crows used to gather at dusk; and in the heat of afternoons made dark with cruelly strong sunshine, women sat under the shade of that tree, cackling more raucously than the crows. In the distance I could smell the sea, and at night the sound of ships horns called to me through the summer mist, and on those long, fever-ridden nights I longed for the coming days when I could join the young people I knew on the beach to swim, kick a ball about, and eat oranges in the shade. This I recall in response to @looeyville 's earlier question about being sick abroad. There are many more instances.