5 February 2026
The stove takes kindling first. Three pieces of pine, split thin, arranged in a triangle. Then the firelighter. Then wait.
I learned patience in cold places. Winters in Kandahar where the diesel heaters coughed black smoke and you slept in your boots because taking them off meant twenty minutes of pain getting them back on. I remember a translator named Rashid who kept his hands in his armpits between sentences. We all did. You could see your breath when you spoke, which made lying harder. Breath gives you away.
The narrowboat is fifty-eight feet of floating metal. In February, without the stove, it's the same temperature inside as out. You wake to ice on the windows, patterns like ferns. Beautiful, if you're the kind of person who finds cold beautiful. I'm not anymore.
The kindling catches. I add coal, two lumps, then close the door to a crack. Too much air and it burns too fast. Not enough and it dies. There's a narrow margin. Everything worth doing has a narrow margin.
By six the cabin is warm enough to make coffee. By seven I can take my sweater off. By eight I've forgotten what it felt like to be cold, which is the problem with comfort. It erases things.
Rashid died in 2014. Roadside device outside Lashkar Gah. I got the email on a Tuesday. I was in London, complaining about the rain, wearing a jacket that cost more than he made in a month. I didn't go to the funeral. Told myself it was too dangerous. Told myself a lot of things.
The stove ticks as the metal expands. A sound like a clock, or like cooling. I check it twice before breakfast, once after. Old habits. In Aleppo we checked everything twice. Doors, windows, the street below. You develop rituals. They keep you alive, until they just keep you.
The coal will last until evening. Then I'll do it again. Three pieces of pine, the firelighter, the wait. There are worse things than routine. There are worse things than being warm enough to forget.
The Stove • Opuss № I