A fragment between countries

He was aware that his city was a polyglot mixture of voices and nationalities, so as he sat outside the cafe on the street tables with his cappuccino alongside the Middle Easter men with their Turkish cigarettes and gruff voices, with a background hum of traffic and conversation it came as no surprise to here fragments of European voices. At times Slavic, at times Italian, at times Magyar. Then he picked out sounds that were more familiar – the slurred ‘s’, groups of vowels ‘with no equivalent in English……..words that he half recognised ‘noapte’ and gradually he wondered who he was hearing behind him…..could it be? He slipped into dreams and fantasies. Then as he stood up to he realised they were just projections from his dreams. “Are you Romanian” he asked, “You hear it so rarely here and it is so evocative for me” He dared not say how his heart was already on the other side of Europe.