I am back in Los Angeles. The plane was delayed for several hours taking off from Charles de Gaulle because there was a mouvement social of the cleaning staff.
On the plane I sat with a little boy flying alone to Tahiti. He was adorable, about ten, with blond curls falling in his face. He was not a reader, but polite and bored, and wriggled a lot in his seat, so after a long sleep from England to Greenland, we talked most of the rest of the way.
"You are so lucky you live in Tahiti," I said. "It must be so beautiful."
"Oh, no, Tahiti is ugly," he said. "There are too many people and cars." It turned out he lived on another island and 'Tahiti' to him meant the big city.
He was partly Tahitian, as I had guessed from his looks. "But the Tahitians don't accept you if you have this color skin," he said a little sadly. He held out his arm. "If you have this color skin, you won't be their friend. If you have brown skin like them, even if you come from the other side of the world, they will welcome you."
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