Ketavta ana, wa’eyk ana qayam *
ܟܬܒܬܐ ܐܢܐ ܘܐܝܟ ܐܢܐ ܩܝܡ

By the end of the seventies, flying to your holiday destination had become the new normal. A world apart from what we’re experiencing now. Back then, a plane trip wasn’t just transit—it was a portal to another reality. The stewards and captain seemed like high priests of some airborne temple. The meals—oh, the meals—though they often ended up in a barf bag in my case, were presented with the solemnity of a restaurant.

Upon arrival, we’d descend pale as ghosts—freshly hatched from the fluorescent womb of the aircraft—onto the tarmac, blinking in the unfamiliar sunlight. A photographer would stand ready at the bottom of the stairs, eager to capture our unseasoned, sheet-white faces for posterity. You could buy the photo, a souvenir of your transformation just beginning, after collecting your suitcase.

That was one way to mark your escape from the grey routines of school, work, and family. But my favourite ritual was far more enchanted: packing up the tent and piling into my father’s big Mercedes. We’d drive south, the car heavy with anticipation and the scent of leather seats, stopping at campsites each night as if following breadcrumbs toward some promised land. My father was particularly fond of France; I didn’t care, as long as the sea and sand were near—and, crucially, the jaw-clenched, didactic voice of my mother was far away.

She never joined us, declaring with a flourish that holidays were for commoners, “the people afoot.” We, apparently, “changed residence.” My mother’s “changing of residence” was a performance worthy of a magician’s assistant—now you see her, now she’s in Jakarta, or perhaps Surabaya, or perhaps just behind a closed door with a stack of letters from her “friends.” True to her word (and not just in her occasional dramatic disappearances from home), she spent months at a time in Indonesia—ensconced in the homes of friends, leaving the rest of us to conjure our own spells, preferably somewhere with sand between our toes and not a single didactic syllable in earshot.

Back to the real magic: those wild, free days with my father. He’d whisk me out of school, and off we’d go. I’d be saddled with homework and allowed only one comic (my mother found illustrated stories with speech bubbles beneath contempt; Asterix and Obelix were the sole exception). Yet the moment the Mercedes’ wheels began to roll, something inside me shifted. The ordinary rules fell away. I felt lighter, less bound by the expectations that usually weighed me down. My father’s easygoing acceptance was like a spell—suddenly, I could make friends, laugh, even feel comfortable in my own skin.

Last night, I stumbled upon a new series based on Asterix and Obelix. Suddenly, the past—my past—came tumbling out of the three-dimensional characters and into my living room. Scenes flickered across my mind: the sound of scissors as I cut my hip-long hair, the cold rush of a Belgian river as I fished and paddled a canoe (read inflatable plastic bed), the salt sting of snorkelling in France (and the sea urchin), the sunlit blur of swimming in Spain.

Each memory is a fragment of a larger spell.
And perhaps that’s the mischief at the heart of “abracadabra.” The word itself, some say, means “I create as I speak.” If so, then every memory I conjure here is a little act of magic, a playful trick on time and distance. Mischief isn’t just a child’s game—it’s the secret ingredient in every transformation, every escape, every story worth telling.

So I leave you here, somewhere between the past and the present, between comic book adventures and the real ones that shaped me. The magic isn’t in the destination, or even the journey, but in the way the stories we tell ourselves keep unfolding—unexpected, unfinished, and utterly alive. Abracadabra, indeed.

May Harmony find you,

Irena Phaedra

*I write, thus I remain