That evening in Kampala I lay in the darkness and thought about my own parents. That was only natural. Obviously, they were important to me when I was growing up. But in quite different ways. My father was the one I lived with. Without his ability to notice me, listen, be positive, I don't know how I would have turned out. He more than made up for the fact that my mother was present only through her absence. She didn't exist except as a figure in photographs that were hidden away and kept from me. My mother was a strange shadow when I was little. I can't remember how old I was when it finally dawned on me that there was something peculiar about my mother. But I remember asking my paternal grandmother, who lived with us, why I didn't have a mother. I don't recall her answer, but it was evasive, I did notice that. That is something children learn at an early age – how to interpret the way adults answer questions. They soon learn how to tune their antennae to distinguish between the truth and a lie, what is a clear answer and what is evasive.

Then, when I was six, I started searching in secret for traces of this mother of mine who had disappeared. I found several photographs. Including one of me sitting on her knee. They were taken in a photographer's studio on my first birthday. I can still remember my heart pounding when I saw my mother's face for the first time. She had disappeared at such an early stage that I had no memory of her. Now I could see what she looked like. I was surprised that she was so unlike my father. Didn't people who had children have to look like each other? Then it struck me that in the photograph she was looking at me as if I were a child she didn't know. A changeling or something the fairies had brought.