INGULFED
(Notes for the Abu Dhabi Bar Mitzvah)Archive for highway
Into the Woods
Sri Lanka Part Eight
It was in the town of Hali-ela, where I thought I’d lost the car keys but had them in my pocket, where I had bought packets of spices that I really did lose and never cooked with, that we turned west, away from Badulla, up into hill country.
A sundried man gave driving directions: it would be two and a half hours, he said.
But the A5 — it’s an A-Class road.
“It is thirty-two miles,” he articulated, too much like a soothsayer reading a bad omen.
“Okay, fifty kilometers.”
“Yes. Thirty-two miles.”
“So… about fifty kilometers.”
“Yes. Thirty-two miles.”
The A5.
Three and-a-half hours later, we were there. If you are ever in Hali-ela, you mustn’t argue with the man outside the appa stand.
