“Did you hear that they finished the road
to Kampot. Now it takes, like 2 hours maximum” said Clementine, taking a long
drag of her cigarette and a mouthful of red wine. A plate of fried eggs on
toast arrived.
“What is this”
“Cheese on toast”
The waiter left and Aoife said “I asked for
some bread or something?! It looks like breakfast.”
I am following a few conversations at once.
“so the agent says ‘aircon in both rooms’ –
and what he means is they cut a hole in the wall between the two rooms and
stuck an air con unit in it!” Everyone laughed. “And he said ‘look, two
bedrooms, you can fit 20 people in here!” They laughed some more.
“Yeah they injected him, but it didn’t work
and now they are using US state secrets security legislation to cover it up.”
“There is a jar of Hunts pasta sauce in our
kitchen. Hello American dorm food!”
“Do you know I didn’t know Hunts made pasta
sauce till I saw it in the American supermarket here of all places.”
“So we have to blow 60 million on community
development in the next 10 years. But its not as generous as it sounds. We’ll
fit out a coupe of hospitals with network wires at cost price and then charge
it back to the CSR budget for $30 million.”
“If I could do it again I would be an
electrical engineer! Seriously!”
“It was awful! This city is no fun when you
have lots of time and no money. I would
set myself chores to do all day when he was at work. And then he would come
home and I would be like: “Look at this blue glass I bought you!” But he wouldn’t
care about the glass!”
“My dad thinks he might come out and do
some consulting in the region which would be nice.”
“It’s the only place with decent internet
in this city. And the only place that ever made me sick! I should have known
better than a seafood buffet. It could have been the booze though, its hard to
tell.”
“Why did you leave?”
“Well, Helen was prosecuting Khmer Rouge
war criminals but they were almost all dead and pretty soon there were going to
be none left to prosecute. We would have had to move to Europe for some living
war criminals. But we wanted to stay in the region”
I hold Jason’s hand under the table and sip
at the straw. The boys order another round of beer. The girls slurp up red wine
and I nurse my soda with memories of when I would have been knocking back the
wine. That’s not an option anymore. Food arrives.
We ordered tagine and salad.. I see a few
nice dishes around the table, and I feel like I could be at Kazbah in Balmain.
“So what do you miss about home?” I ask
everyone. “I am homesick and it has been but 15 days.“
“I miss how in Paris, everything is beautiful.
You can just be walking down a beautiful boulevard past beautiful cafes and
have some beautiful cheese or a cigarette and a coffee , maybe some chocolate, watch
the beautifully dressed people go past, the glasses are beautiful, little
details. Here you… you know little bits, it surprises you sometimes,
quelquefois, but you have to look!”
“Avocado on sourdough toast. Really good
bread.”
“I don’t really miss anything.”
“Asking directions from an old man in a
little Irish town and the answer being “you go straight down this road to Ned’s
house, then you turn left.”
“I miss Phnom Pen more. So easy to find
everything. That place on 7th that would deliver coffee – classic!
But last time we went back I didn’t like it as much. I think that we overglamorised the place.”
There is more waxing lyrical, lofty, a little
bombastic, humorous. They are good conversationalists, warm people, the type
who are all used to starting again and building friends around them. But there
is something about the transience of it all that doesn’t appeal to me.
Later that night I am getting ready for
bed. I brush my hair and look at Jason already sitting in bed.
“You know, its cool and stuff, living in
interesting places and moving around. But I don’t want to be any of them. They
were all too-much-an-expat now, I don’t think any of them can ever go home. I
don’t want that to be my life. I don’t want that to be our life. I want to
settle down one day, buy a house and stay in the same place.” The thought hadn’t occurred to me
before.
“I’d like that too” he said smiling.
