For Three Days ..
The signal came and went. The conversations didn't.
Getting there took longer than expected.
There was no direct flight, no convenient train waiting at the other end. It was a mix of buses, taxis, waiting around, and repeatedly asking how much farther we had to go. By the final stretch, I had stopped checking maps and accepted that we’d arrive whenever we arrived.
As we got closer, the roads narrowed and the hills began to appear.
What I noticed first wasn’t the greenery.
It was the quiet.
Not complete silence. There were birds, distant voices, and the occasional vehicle passing through. But there was space between sounds. No constant horns. No traffic humming in the background. Nothing seemed to be competing for attention.
The village was simple. There was electricity and a mobile tower, but not much urgency. Houses sat farther apart than I was used to. Reaching the next place often meant a short walk. The hills stood around the village like they had all the time in the world.
We were there for a family gathering that lasted three days.
People kept arriving through the day. Relatives, old friends, familiar faces I hadn’t seen in years. Some looked different. Some looked exactly the same. Within minutes, conversations picked up from old memories and unfinished stories as though the missing years had quietly agreed not to get in the way.
Most of those three days were spent doing ordinary things.
A group of us sat together cleaning vegetables while others chopped, cooked, carried things around, or handled whatever needed doing. Nobody assigned tasks. People simply joined in.
The vegetables slowly piled up in the middle while stories moved around the circle.
Someone remembered an incident from school. Someone else corrected half the details. A third person insisted both versions were wrong. The argument lasted longer than it needed to and nobody seemed particularly interested in settling it.
The vegetables got cleaned anyway.
Evenings brought folk dances, music, and children running around with endless energy. Some people danced well. Others looked like they were making it up as they went along.
Nobody appeared concerned about the difference.
After dinner, everyone drifted toward a campfire.
Those conversations stretched far past midnight. There was gossip, laughter, old stories that had survived years of retelling, and long stretches where nobody seemed to be talking about anything important at all.
The strange thing is that those were often the best parts.
The internet signal came and went throughout those three days.
Every now and then a phone would catch enough network for a few messages to arrive. Someone would glance at the screen, smile, and put it away again.
There wasn’t much reason to stare at it.
The people you wanted to talk to were already sitting beside you.
Eventually it was time to leave.
The same roads took us back. The hills slowly disappeared behind us. Traffic started appearing again. So did the familiar sounds that usually fade into the background of everyday life.
At some point my phone lit up.
Messages. Notifications. Missed calls.
Everything that had been waiting quietly for three days suddenly wanted attention at once.
A little later, the first horn broke through the silence.
Then another.
The city was getting closer.
I looked at the screen for a moment before putting it back in my pocket.
A few hours earlier, a group of us had been sitting around a fire arguing over a story from school.
Someone was probably still convinced they were right.
The road kept moving.
The phone buzzed again.
For some reason, my mind stayed with the fire.
