I want to know who cared for him every day on the ward, whose face came close to his on the day shift, the night shift, who held him and washed him in the original motions of love, and the doctor who named him Abdelaziz Ramy. Ramy – he who aims high, the archer, who pierces the transparent cloud over the mountain, the most arid mountain that ever was – the one who survives, the survivor.
'Ramy' is published in Jane Duran's collection Coastal (Enitharmon, London 2005) and reprinted by kind permission of the author. Jane Duran was born in Cuba to an American mother and Spanish father, an exiled veteran of the defeated Republican army in the Spanish Civil War. Jane grew up in the USA and Chile and now lives in London. Coastal is the third of her four collections published by Enitharmon.