The Last Gift

有一天，在麻烦发生之前很久，他一句话也没跟任何人说就溜走了，再也没有回去。43年后的另一天，他倒在了英国小镇上他家的前门。事情发生的时候已经很晚了，在他下班回家的路上，但也已经很晚了。他把事情搁得太久了，除了他自己，谁也不能怪。

阿巴斯从来没有告诉过任何人他的过去——在他成为公海上的水手之前，在他在埃克塞特的一家Boots酒店外遇到他的妻子玛丽亚之前，在他们带着孩子贾马尔和汉娜在诺里奇过上平静的生活之前。现在，六十三岁的他遭受了一场崩溃，使他卧床不起，无法谈论那些他认为有一天会说的事情。

One day, long before the troubles, he slipped away without saying a word to anyone and never went back. And then another day, forty three years later, he collapsed just inside the front door of his house in a small English town. It was late in the day when it happened, on his way home after work, but it was also late in the day altogether. He had left things for too long and there was no one to blame for it but himself.

Abbas has never told anyone about his past - before he was a sailor on the high seas, before he met his wife Maryam outside a Boots in Exeter, before they settled into a quiet life in Norwich with their children, Jamal and Hanna. Now, at the age of sixty-three, he suffers a collapse that renders him bedbound and unable to speak about things he thought he would one day have to.