Erin Clancy

“Why does night fall?” The old question returns to me now. It used to strike me with such practical force when I was a little boy and the arrangement of things was in question. I asked it in order to prolong the day a little longer, sensing the futility even as I repeated it, watching my mother’s face, which, depending on her mood, was distracted, amused, or mildly irritated. And, although the question stopped, the mystery has persisted. It still comes to me when I wake in the middle of the night, when it is at once too early and too late, and I stare blindly into the dark, which seems as vast and bottomless as history. I am convinced then that, even though I am covered in a blanket, I am absolutely bare, that the night had, without my knowing how or to what end, stripped me naked.”
― Hisham Matar, My Friends