The Shadow of the Sun
Excerpt
The Beginning:
Collision, Ghana, 1958
More than anything, one is struck by the light. Light everywhere. Brightness
everywhere. Everywhere, the sun. Just yesterday, an autumnal London was drenched
in rain. The airplane drenched in rain. A cold wind, darkness. But here, from
the morning's earliest moments, the airport is ablaze with sunlight, all of us
in sunlight.
In times past, when people wandered the world on foot, rode on horseback, or
sailed in ships, the journey itself accustomed them to the change. Images of the
earth passed ever so slowly before their eyes, the stage revolved in a barely
perceptible way. The voyage lasted weeks, months. The traveler had time to grow
used to another environment, a different landscape. The climate, too, changed
gradually. Before the traveler arrived from a cool Europe to the burning
Equator, he already had left behind the pleasant warmth of Las Palmas, the heat
of Al-Mahara, and the hell of the Cape Verde Islands.
Today, nothing remains of these gradations. Air travel tears us violently out of
snow and cold a ... read full excerpt from: Shadow of the Sun ebook
