It was as if my entire life before hadn’t been real. Those had just been days of waiting and filling time before the real thing could begin.

But sitting with Misrak on the mattresses of our one-bedroom apartment, smoking late into the night, talking about everything from Kantian ethics to the glories of a deplumed cunt – that was life.

Listening to Nusrat, who was the soundtrack of all our days. Something in his voice scoured every nameless emotion from inside our bodies and gave it a name. He was all curvatures of sound, a spray of fine-grained grit against the face, sex and god in the same room. And we never tired of him. Misrak would get up and dance, wriggling her shoulders up and down, all frenzied and primal, and I’d spare a thought for Papi, who would have called her a watussi, for sure. I’d spear the walls with a broom, whirling and screaming, ‘Alive? Are you feeling alive, motherfuckers?’ to the neighbours, who always wanted us to keep things down.

The walls were so thin and we were so young. And I know that every one of those nights we spent in number 161 Woodland Apartments, we were shining beings. Those were moments of pure living. We were sonias – long-haired, full-bodied believers in whatever it is that was starting.

I feel so far away from that now, from the beauty and closeness of those days. Who can I speak to in this wilderness? Not Lucia, with our single-sentence conversations. Not Mallika, with my rickety, broken-down Tamil. Not the dogs.

I miss the clarity of American roads. I think of them when I’m faced with acres of landfill emitting poisonous smoke, kilometres of road without a single rubbish bin, plastic clogging up the canals and lakes, all the disfiguring of what could be pristine. I think of the many road trips we made in Misrak’s Cherry Red, and I feel nostalgic for a country that allows everybody to have everything if they want it.

Those journeys have layered themselves one on top of each other. New York, Washington DC, Charleston. The car’s air conditioner was always in a state of disrepair, so we travelled with the windows down and hot air rushing in. ‘Turn it up, turn it up,’ Misrak would say, if the radio played Tina Turner’s ‘Private Dancer’ or Prince’s ‘Purple Rain’. Those were our anthems. She would take off her top and fling it in the back seat, look straight ahead in a lacy bra, with one hand on the steering wheel and a cigarette in her mouth. Passing truck drivers would toot their horns. ‘What are you doing?’ I said, the first time she did it. But soon I was doing it too. Whipping off my shirt like a stripper, laughing as those men tooted their horns. Third-world Thelma and Louise. This is what being with Misrak made me feel.

Only once we travelled with our boyfriends. Spring break 1995.

We decided in Athens, the diner we went to on the corner of Independence Boulevard and East 4th. It used to be open 24/7, and it’s where you’d find Misrak and me at the end of a long night, in our corner booth, leaning our imminent hangovers into red Rexine seat backs.