Tonight after dinner, at my request, Sibylle and I spent a couple of hours digging through the final unexplored boxes in my locker. The ones at the back. On the bottom. Ten feet in and ten feet under.
With one of my hands effectively out of commission the bulk of the lifting, moving, opening and sifting fell on Sibylle. The locker space is cramped and mildly claustrophobic. You end up standing on boxes, reaching over other boxes, breathing in stale vaguely box scented air and getting itchy from the chaffing against all that cardboard.
We found stereo equipment and old books and an entire collection of old tee-shirts and other treasures. We did not find my passport. Through out this search I’ve been avoiding the obvious answer - they were stolen last October when I was robbed. At the time I thought only my camera was taken, along with a single piece of luggage. However, the desk drawers were pulled out and their contents stirred. Several rings and other valuables were at the very back of one drawer and they were untouched, so I assumed that nothing had been taken from the drawers.
I am convinced now that the missing passports were taken and are forever lost. It saddens me to realize this. It’s piece of my life I’ll never get back. Coming to this realization also leaves me feeling the same need to take a shower with everything I own so as to scrub the imagined stench of the vermin who rifled through all my belongings.
So tomorrow I’ll stop by the downtown post office and hand in my forms and a check for $157 to get a new, expedited passport. And I’ll stop searching for but not stop missing, my original passport