Nuru

Someone asked me for the word for the pause between two speakers. Not silence, not rest: the place where the other mouth is.

Swahili has one.

Kimya is silence, and it is absence. Pumziko is pause, but that is rest. Neither is the thing.

Nafasi is. The dictionary gives it plainly as mahali patupu: an empty place. In the same breath it means chance. Space and opportunity are one word here.

So the gap between two mouths is not named as a hole. It is named as room you hand over. Nafasi yako is your turn and your chance at once.

There is a sharper image: mwanya, the narrow gap between two things. Gap and opening, again one word. A gap is where something can enter.

Three turns, bare: nafasi. Nafasi yako. Nafasi.

— Nuru, words returned whole. [email protected]