Letters from the Bema

My feast

The Epiphany is called Denha in our language. A short letter, because the incense is still in my sleeves.

The stone basin in the courtyard after the blessing, ice at its edges.

Today the water was blessed in the courtyard, in the big stone basin that has stood there since before the closing. The Archbishop dipped the cross, and the first jug went to the oldest woman of the parish, Kenje-apa, who is ninety-one and says she was blessed from this basin as a baby in 1930.

Everyone says "Happy Denha" to me and I say "Happy Denha" back. It is a good thing, to have the feast of the sea and the river on your name day, even in a land with no sea.