I open my eyes.
All around me,
everything is unfamiliar:
unfamiliar wallpaper,
unfamiliar white leather sofa,
unfamiliar country.
I moved here to teach,
and here I am learning
that I’m underprepared,
underqualified,
underdressed,
and hungover.
He wouldn’t let me leave last night,
you see.
As the party was dying,
I coloured his bathroom
with oversweet Georgian wine
and washed down chicken wings
that came back up.
He decided:
I could miss the last metro,
sleep on this atrocious sofa,
recover.
Of course,
now it’s 7am,
and I have to teach a class
of engineers,
bridge builders,
about ing phrasal verbs
in less than two hours.
And I have to do it
with a hangover and a smile.
I think to myself
as I struggle with front door locks and keys
before climbing out of a downstairs window,
what a strange story this will be.
And yet waking up here,
it could be a whole lot worse
than this beautiful Baku sunrise.
He's more than 10 years my senior,
and we both are now retired. But
I shall long remember nearly 40
years ago, when from a job I was fired.
When the world all around was saying
'No' to me, he said yes.
They said, "Not enough of this or that".
They said, "Too much education, overqualified".
They said, "Not enough education, underqualified".
They said, "Too young, too reserved";
They said, "Wrong demographics".
There was always something that did not fit.
But through it all, I refused to quit.
I tell you, too little of this and too
much of that became the story of my life.
But he reached out, found a fit and said "Yes" to me.
And that "Yes" has made a world of difference in my life.
021523PS