ALKANTARA REVISITED.

No, I haven't flown right back, it's just that more images are coming in. And not just images in the form of photos, but mind images - remembrances, vivid pictures in my mind, colours streaming in, sunbursts, scents, echoes of conversations had turning into new discussions I might have in the future, or food for thought about things I might write about later.

There's a story I could write around the conversation I had with Rosa and our host Abdel concerning characters in a book and a very strange piece of synchronicity about a strangely gifted tortoise called Cassiopeia.... but that's for another time. But for now, this, taken by Mark, is Sandhya and me just before boarding the plane home.


And this (right) is us tripping out amid the fluorescent bougainvillea again.

Now, this. This image below, when I first saw it at a smaller scale with the figure on the left seeming to merge into the background, I took it at first for some local Moroccan lady and wondered when I was shot. Obviously not when I was present. When I enlarged it I realised with some surprise that the lady in question was myself at the carpet emporium!

It was, of course, from the guided tour we all three of us took that day we went round the Medina.

Another image, (below right) taken by Mark when I was back at Alkantara luxuriating in the shade by the pool no doubt, is quite astonishing, I think. I'm not sure where it was. It may have been at the Riad itself, or somewhere they visited on their own, but it reminds me of the pose of certain goddesses carved on the outside of ancient Indian temples. Yet it has that beauty, delicacy and magical quality which comes with the play of light and shade of Islamic art.