" THE YEAR OF MIRACLES, 1990
A young woman is on a plane coming from the Eastern Mediterranean, and is joined by a man who says, ‘Tell me what’s been happening in the world. I’ve been in the Himalayas for months, and I’ve not seen a newspaper nor heard the news. Thank God.’
‘Well now, let me see’, says she. ‘The Soviet Union has given up communism, the Soviet colonies have given up the Soviet Union. The Berlin Wall is down and Germany is united. In South Africa they have given up apartheid.’
‘Very funny’, says he, ‘and now tell me what has really happened. "

― Doris Lessing , African Laughter: Four Visits to Zimbabwe