Just after I had indulged my head and heart into the megalopolis of Clocolan in the Eastern Free State, I flew out to the Kenyan island of Lamu. (This one liner seems so windgat that it brings bright colours to the bleak winter plains of the Free State.) Rather delighted that we did not crash on takeoff, I placed my book on my tray to read on the flight: The Tattooist of Auschwitz by Heather Morris.
My neighbour in the aisle seat gazed at the book’s cover at length, his eyes deeply set, shining from a face held together by year-lines and wrinkles. He turned out to be a Jewish financier from Miami who had travelled the world and recently met Donald Trump. We got on like a plane on fire. During the 4-hour flight to Nairobi, he expounded his views on the US electoral system, the Civil War, Vietnam, the CIA, Mao Zedong, Mossad, Vladimir Putin, the Russian oligarchs, Simon Wiesenthal, trade embargoes, Iran, the Saudis, and the plight of Israel, so dangerously surrounded by hostile Arab neighbours.
Somewhere on the flight, probably over Tanzania, I told him about a little town called Clocolan. Here then, via a Jewish gentleman whose father had died in the gas chambers
