In the pocket of a jacket you wore on the flight to Johannesburg, you find a Trenitalia train ticket to Rome. It was a trip you made exactly six years ago on 17 December.

Everything becomes so visceral. You notice people breathing around you. Someone is eating Mentos two seats away. The guy sitting two rows in front of you is opening his extra pack of not-so-lightly-salted peanuts he had requested 963 miles ago.

The humming sound of a giant mechanical bird buzzes at a spot slightly to the right of your forehead. You cringe at the migraine, and remember it is long passed the time to swallow so as to make your ears pop.

The seat belt sign flashes shortly after a strong turbulence greets you. Outside the double-paned window, you see antiquity too precious to be seen. It is the strip of Mesopotamia, harbouring the sky of Anu and the land of Enki.

‘Do not look outside. Do not look at the in-between,’ the pilot warns in a cracked monotonous mutter. The sea roars underneath the plane. Rolling waves are dressed up with white foam against ruthless shores.

Tiny dots scatter on the waves around some orange plastic tatters - which used to be a movable temple on the way to somewhere, anywhere else. Made of prayers and tears across generations, the temple was doomed to collapse at some point.

From the gap between the window and the back of the seat, you watch the girl sitting in front of you put her ear to the window’s plastic surface. Your gaze is reciprocated as she turns around and looks at you. ‘I am trying to listen to their prayers,’ she explains. A teardrop trails down her face. Eventually, it reaches the bottom of the window and seeps into the cracks.

You close your eyes and then you hear them too.