Thursday, November 20, 2008

Triumphant Sun, Pt. 14

A bent, old man whose face was covered in fine wrinkles set down her coffee and her shisha with a gaptoothed grin and retreated to his permanent post before the flickering television which flashed back and forth between grey and color images. The first sip burnt her lips and she barely avoided spilling the coffee in surprise. She turned her chair so that the flash of the TV no longer hovered at the edge of her vision and puffed thoughtfully on the pipe, watching the cars tracing their chaotic paths across the square.

She'd begun to realize that she really had no leads for the story she wanted to write – no idea who owned the grand houses in Zamalek and in the wealthy suburbs. Once, her father would have known all the owners, her mother would have been to parties at each of them, but now they were as mysterious to her as any tourist. Most of them wouldn't appreciate a journalist poking into them either – they'd send her packing in an instant.

She sipped the coffee again, now cool enough to drink. The taste rolled around on her tongue, at once sweet, bitter and slightly gritty from the fine grounds. Good, but far from the best she'd had. Even in London, there had been a Lebanese cafe down the street from her office where she'd had cup after cup of coffee while trying to finish her deadlines. She fished in her bag for a notebook and her insulin and opened it on the metal table.

Swearing under her breath, she realised she'd forgotten her meter, and paused a moment before simply guessing at the number and dialing in a few units. She earned a few strange glances from the ahwa's denizens as she slipped the needle under the hem of her blouse and injected herself. By this point, she'd grown accustomed to the stares of strangers confused by the operations of her disease. Still, it felt unusually awkward on a street corner in Cairo.

Thursday, November 13, 2008

Triumphant Sun, Pt. 13.5

The heavy smell of shisha tobacco lured her towards an ahwa squatting at the corner of an intersection, somewhat less squalid than its brethren. She'd forsworn smoking, but she couldn't help ordering a pipe along with her coffee as she sat down – it was different somehow, cultural rather than addictive. She drew a few strange glances from the men in the cafe, but they bounced off of her long experience ignoring the prying looks of men.

She sketched idly in her notebook as she waited, curving English and Arabic doodles into each other like a shadowplay of calligraphy. Its blankness oppressed her, in a way – she had no story, no lead, no real contacts. Yet her nationality made her feel compelled to deliver something really arresting, a real hard-hitting news piece.

At the same time, reporters in Egypt could barely operate. She was unlikely to land some kind of Woodward & Bernstein scoop – partly because of restrictions, and partly because that kind of venal, institutionalized corruption wasn't so much a news story as a fact of daily business.

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

What Twisted Mind...

...created this monstrosity?:

This is "Clocky, the Alarm Clock," and he (she? it?) is pure satanic evil incarnate. The lovely folks over at MoMA - a museum with a $40 or $50 admit fee - have brought this to you in their infinite and malevolent wisdom.

What is it? Apparently, it's –
Now available in a chrome finish, Clocky is the alarm clock that can jump down from up to 3 feet and run away and hide if one does not get out of bed on time. After one snooze cycle, Clocky will roll and move around the room with randomly patterned alarm beeps –
That sounds...unspeakable. Nobody likes their alarm clock. I've broken a few myself, tossed my fair share off the dresser and on several occasions simply unplugged it and left it to die a slow and painful death. Man has been at odds with the alarm clock since its genesis.

But to put wheels on it? To let it run away? I have visions of this thing being subjected to brutal and repeated blows with a baseball bat, or in the more 'red-state' areas of the country simply being drilled repeatedly with a 9mm pistol.

Let me be perfectly clear here - buying this thing is an act of unspeakable masochism. Buying it as a present may actually be banned by the Geneva Convention.

So if there's anyone you really, really, really hate, and whose soul you would like to slowly erode - buy them Clocky, Alarm Clock of Death.

Because some things should never have been created.

Thursday, November 6, 2008

Triumphant Sun, Pt. 13

Samira's head felt full of sand and cotton wool as she levered herself out of sleep. Her tongue had the thick, tingling sensation that meant something was wrong with her blood sugar, and she moaned quietly to herself and shuffled across the room to her desk, sheets still looped loosely around her naked body, trailing on the carpet. The first jab of the lancet failed to draw blood, but the second jabbed too deep and bled profusely.

The glowing numbers popped out in the gloom and Samira hung her head. At 251, no wonder she felt the dragging, sickly sensation. She dialed a moderate dose of insulin and injected it roughly into her thigh, a tiny dot of blood welling up there as well. Though there was no way the drug could act that fast, a sense of relief bloomed through her limbs – a trick of the mind, to be sure, but a reassuring one.

She dialed up the water to its hottest setting and climbed into the cramped shower, shivering as the spray shifted from mildly chilling to almost scalding. The heat blasted her skin, almost burning away the sensation of sickness and lethargy. Head tilted and eyes closed into the scouring flow, she stood motionless for a while.

Her mind wandered – to her empty flat in London, dust gathering on the photographs and newspaper clippings; to her father's empty house, decaying in the middle of the ravenous city; to the quiet house in Greenwich that they had occupied after their personal exodus, with the Egyptian tapestries on the walls and the English records on the stereo, the twin scents of her mother's Dunhill cigarettes and roast lamb filling the house.

She dressed and walked down to the sprawling lobby of the hotel, a confusing sprawl filled with American Express branches and tacky shops hawking fake Pharaonic memorabilia. A vague, irritating sense of nationalism reminded her that the historical souvenirs always managed to conveniently forget the intervening millennium and a half of Islamic rule.

A glance at the absurd prices at the hotel cafés made her laugh in derision as she wound her way out onto the street to start her first true day back in the city.

Blog Library

I've just added a list of the blogs I check with some regularity - if any of you are bloggers, I encourage you to do the same. Special note to my friend Pat Garofalo over at The Wonk Room, who is a talented writer and Brandeis grad over in DC, you should check him out. He's one of a few writers there, all interesting. The link goes to the general site and the posts are broken out by topic and writer.

The Sartorialist is a fashion photographer who has been around forever - I think his name is Steve and he works for GQ right now; he takes posed & candid shots from all over the world, both of professionals and of just crazy people on the street.

RockPaperShotgun is a couple of British guys who cover games from a sort of quirky perspective. They're good fun if that's your scene.

Mideast X Midwest is Jon Guyer, a friend from Egypt - I think he's mentioned and pictured in the archives. He does some cool cartoons, although he needs to update more often.

So keep reading my stuff, but read theirs as well, and everyone needs to link to everyone else so we that incestuous cycle of Web 2.0 can continue to spin round and round...