Empty Fields, Balangan

Behind our old place in Balangan was a big stretch of nothing. Wild grass, limestone, a few concrete shells someone had started and never finished. No villas. Not yet, anyway.

Most evenings we’d wander out there with whichever neighbourhood dogs had adopted us that week, find a rock, and wait for the sun to drop. Once it did, the nightjars came out, gliding almost silently overhead.

The light back there was its own thing: soft, hazy, a little pink. Maybe it was from the limestone, maybe the sea just past the trees. Whatever it was, it made even raw concrete look good. This one’s shot through one of those unfinished walls.

Work, a sunset surf, a walk through the fields. That was most days.

It’s probably villas now.