Heroe

Months ago I travelled to Netherlands. In the plane, just after taking of from Jomo Kenyatta International Airport, I looked around me. I could not believe my eyes! Was this… just behind me…? I checked the picture of his book, that was in my bag (not by coincidence). Yes! It was him! Ryszard Kapuscinski! One of my heroes. The famous writer/Africa journalist. I looked him in the eyes. But he didn’t see me. I wondered how i could get into contact with him, less than two meters behind me. It took me hours, but if you are that near, you can feel as small as… So: I did not get into contact. When I left the plane about eight hours later, I went through the customs. Suddenly somebody was knocking on my shoulder. I turned my head and I looked in one of the happiest faces I ever saw. ‘Are you…? Is it really…?’, a shy and happy face was asking me. ‘Do you know this book?’ I looked at the book in his hands: it was the guide book I wrote some years ago about Kenya, Tanzania and Zanzibar. ‘Yes,’ I said ‘..it is a very nice book, a very good good one, actually the best I know in Dutch language. Isn’t it?’, I said to the happy eyes with a blink of my left eye. ‘Yes and are you really the writer?’, the person in front of me asked. ‘Yes, I am’ I said with a big smile. ‘Can I please get your autograph?’ I gave him my autograph and wrote him something nice in the book. We shook hands and the man left. I looked around me. Kapuscinski was nowhere to be seen.