You were mumbling when I sidled up next to you along the river. Bodies shrouded in white cloth and draped in marigolds were dipped three times into the holy water, then cremated, thus releasing the individual’s spiritual essence from its physical form, and allowing it to be reborn.

As a young man, Paul Cézanne painted directly upon the walls of the oval-shaped salon in Jas de Bouffan, the house where he grew up in Aix-en-Provence, between tall windows, allegories of the four seasons, landscapes of Aix, to gain the attention of his father. This was written on my visit there, after a series of slides were projected upon the walls.

I put my head down and scribble into my notepad, hoping no one can tell that I’m rattled. As part of my story, I’m supposed to ride with Mariam and the team on the same highway where she was attacked. But after hearing about her assault, combined with the Taliban having launched their  spring offensive, I’m losing confidence.

We drove to Nyamata, the church where ten thousand Tutsi were murdered in the place they had gone to seek protection. The below-ground crypts were stacked top to bottom, end to end with bones. Upstairs, the clothes the victims were wearing were stacked limply on the pews. On the side of the church was a statue of Mary, looking helplessly down from her perch.

I have seen Ryoanji in spring, when the cherry trees bloomed, and in fall, when their branches were bare; in winter, when snow covered the moss, and in summer, when cicadas buzzed beyond the wall.  I have been there among giggling teenagers and gaping farmers, bemused Westerners and beatific monks.  By now it has become a part of me—and it still eludes me.

There are moments on our journeys when we meet a person—alive or long vanished from the earth—and time and distance morph, bringing characters of place and past close enough to look us in the eye, and touch us with fingers that pulse with life, as when I ‘met’ Paul Cézanne in Aix-en-Provence.

Nothing makes the sun come out quicker than a night full of tales, and I know you are waiting for it--just like we are. Perhaps it is now time to finally tell our story as we want, and as we lived together before, not as they tell it. Now, after everyone is gone, leaving us here with you, we can tell it.

Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee, blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus, I would have loved to have a baby like the Virgin Mary who conceived him with the Holy Spirit, without carnal contact with a man…

“Only connect,” E.M. Forester famously advised novelists—and this is the governing principle of the International Writing Program, which brings the writers of the world to the University of Iowa for three-month residencies. In retrospect, the IWP, as it is known, was a natural outgrowth of the Writers’ Workshop, and yet at the time it seemed, in the words of its co-founder, Paul Engle, “the craziest idea” he had ever heard.