The hour the fan stopped

Written in Kampot, January 2024. Typed up today.

The fan stopped first. Then the single bulb in the hallway dimmed and went with it. The room kept its heat.

That was Kampot, every evening at the same hour. By the second night I stopped checking my phone for the time.

The man who ran the guesthouse would light a coil of incense and set it on the reception counter. He did not mention the power. Nobody did. A woman downstairs brought out candles in old jam jars and placed one on each step of the stairway. Wax had melted into the wood before I arrived and never been cleaned away.

After a week I did not look up either. I would sit on the bed and listen to the river through the window. Geckos called from the ceiling. The heat pressed closer once the fan stopped. I lay flat with my arms out. Sweat ran along my forearms and pooled at the elbows.

The incense on the counter smelled like the olive press in Ayvalik — that same dense sweetness, pressed from something you could not see.

On the third evening a boy rode past on a bicycle with a fluorescent tube strapped to the handlebars. It was still lit. A wire trailed to a car battery on the rear rack. He waved with one hand. The tube swung and threw pale light across the wall opposite. He was gone in a second.

I never worked out whether the cut was scheduled or just happened. I keep meaning to ask someone.

I’ll tell you the rest if I remember it.