All images © 1975-2025 Marc Delforge

And Polo said: “The inferno of the living is not something that will be; if there is one, it is what is already here, the inferno where we live every day, that we form by being together. There are two ways to escape suffering it. The first is easy for many: accept the inferno and become such a part of it that you can no longer see it. The second is risky and demands constant vigilance and apprehension: seek and learn to recognize who and what, in the midst of the inferno, are not inferno, then make them endure, give them space.”  (Invisible cities, Italo Calvino, Translated from the Italian by William Weaver A Harvest Book A Helen and Kurt Wolff Book Harcourt Brace & Company San Diego New York London, p. 165)

They can last only a fraction of a second (a smile – sometimes only with the eyes, like the one we had to give when we had to go out wearing masks – or even a simple hello from a paraglider), up to a lifetime (my dear brother Ibrahim) and end tragically with the death of one of us. 

They can be interrupted and then resumed many years later (like my touching reunion with Ian, whom I had known in Bangladesh, welcome in my place years later, and hugged tightly one more time long afterwards in his country, far away down under. 

Always, they are what makes us happiest “in the midst of the inferno“, and the most human.

(As these encounters are timeless, they are intentionally presented here in a non-chronological manner.)

Part one :

Part two :