59. The Island

A Memoir in 65 Postcards & The Recovery Diaries

I’m not sure what happened except we’d been up for a week under an eclipse and instead of going to bed about a hundred of us decided to carry on. The island was a narrow strip of land in the Zambezi River, the only way to it by canoe. We left our vehicles on the banks, I don’t remember what gear we had, I’m pretty sure we didn’t have a tent but someone must have lent us one because you spent a lot of time in it. There was a bar, and a dance floor picked out by lights and DJ, speakers marked the corners. There was a fire pit with chairs and stumps and a couple of long drops that a friend soon fell into while tripping and never really recovered. The other person who didn’t recover was you. There was a routine. Take acid around sunset and dance through the night and into the next day and just when it felt like we were straight enough to make decisions, take more acid, so we couldn’t. Day after day this ragged band growing more ragged, unable to leave the island. I had visions. It became desperate and impossible. And then something snapped in your head. The first thing I knew you’d written cunt in magic marker all over the bar and the men who ran the island wanted to kill you. You hid in your tent. Then word travelled that you’d be selling something you shouldn’t and other people, not just the men who ran the island, wanted to kill you. So my crack daddy friend and I dragged you out at dusk into a canoe and across the Zambezi with crocodiles snapping and hippos snorting and into our red car. The moon was coming up, we bundled you in the back, my friend pinned you down, I took the wheel. The tracks were sand, interweaving, criss-crossing, no idea which way to go, at speed, frightened of getting bogged or lost or chased, stranded in the Zambian bush, men out to kill you, you struggling to escape, screaming at us from the well of the back seat. I took a wrong turn, a fallen tree blocked our path, if I’d stopped that would have been it. I put my foot down, the car jumped. We landed on the other side and sand flew beneath the wheels, a song played on the stereo, when I hear it now it takes me back exactly. And when we found ourselves at a tarmac road, the full moon in the wide African sky I got out of the car onto my knees and cried. I took us to a hotel. But then you broke your foot and got out your magic marker again while we were having breakfast.