Dêem-me café, vou escrever!

A Rough Guide to Skyrim, Pt. II: The Things They Carried

2011-11-16T19:56:00.000-05:00

Earlier this week I discussed how The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim feels like a game about travel. Since then, I've explored and played a bit more, and I've learned a few new things.

First, though, check out this site and the absolutely, mouth-wateringly gorgeous shots they've published of the game running on bumped-up, top-shelf PC settings (I have the bog-standard Xbox 360 version).

Dead End Thrills: Skyrim++

Here be dragons. Lovely, lovely dragons.

Done yet? Ok, pick your jaw up off the floor and let's press on forwards. At this point, I've explored a bit more of Skyrim's forty square miles. It's important to know that Skyrim does contain a bit of the Coastline Paradox - the scope of the map is greatly increased by its wrinkliness. As any hiker knows, 10 miles over rough terrain is a lot more than 10 miles across a flat plain.

So, like any good traveler, I've picked up a lot of souvenirs. They range from the mundane (soup, cheese, butterfly wings) to the wildly exotic (fragments of ancient cursed amulets, dragon scales). One of the most engrossing bits of Skyrim is actually manual labour, though.

Dotted across the landscape are mines that you can delve into - some are filled with wights and bandits, while others are functioning bits of the local economies. You can dip into these at any time and mine ore away to your heart's content (OK, well, 'Press A to Mine' sort of thing). Different mines hold different ores, from iron to quicksilver to exotic materials like 'moonstone' and malachite. Carry these ores back to a smith's facilities, and you can smelt and forge them into ingots and then actual weapons and armor.

Baking a tasty mammoth steak.

It's all pretty abstracted - you just select what you're making from a menu and the game spits out the finished product based on your skill numbers - but it's enough to create a sense of ownership around the goods. Then comes the good bit ... enchantments.

Any RPG player worth his or her salt (something you can also find in the game) knows that enchanted items are always best(unless they're cursed and steal your soul). Skyrim offers plenty of these, but it also gives you the ability to smash and dissect any magical item you like, learning its secrets in the process. Once learned, you can imbue any item you like with a selection of these learned enchantments, as long as you have a soulstone with a trapped soul inside.

This all ties perfectly with Skyrim's tourism-encouraging ways. You can and will fight and defeat an undead king in a forgotten ruin, trap his soul in a gem, steal his flaming sword and use its secrets to give the Elvish bow you crafted with your own hands arcane powers. It's a relatively subtle touch compared to fire-breathing dragons, and none of it is too complicated (Press A), but it creates a sense of ownership and history with your gear. In addition, you get to name your own enchanted items, which lets your imagination run wild - right now, my Breton archer-mage is rocking the bow Death's Arc, the Elvish armor Cloak of Shadows, the Helm of Thought and a bunch of other custom-made gear.

Sir Ian, Sir Ian, Sir Ian...WIZARD THOU SHALT NOT PASS...Sir Ian

It's the fantasy RPG equivalent of a bespoke Savile Row suit...and it's awesome.

Two Roads Diverged in a Wood: A Rough Guide to Skyrim

2011-11-14T16:51:00.002-05:00

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is a game about travel. At first glance it might appear to be a game about claiming your mytho-genetic heritage, or slaying dragons, or playing errand boy to a staggeringly diverse range of characters who can't be bothered to shift themselves 50 feet from the pub to drop off a satchel of supplies.

There's a strong argument to be made that Skyrim is really about progression: about using and reusing your skills, from cooking to conjuring, until you become a Michelin-star worthy sorcerer-chef who wields fireballs and cookpots with equal dexterity. Indeed, you'll spend a lot of time in Skyrim - most of it, I'd wager - leveling up your character, chopping up bandits and skeletons and packs of walruses (yes, really), and then dutifully returning to town with your spoils. These might take the form of battered and rusted helms, great slabs of meat and ivory or enchanted staves and dragon scales.

A game about traveling...without Goretex.

All very true.

More than anything, though, what you'll find yourself doing is traveling. All those dungeons, hunting grounds and markets are separated by one of the most vast, changeable and treacherous environments ever created for a videogame.

Skyrim is just the latest in the Elder Scrolls series of games. These have always taken openness and player choice within a vast landscape as their core design directives. In fact, the worlds of the latter three games - Morrowind, Oblivion and now Skyrim - are exponentially smaller than those of the early Daggerfall game, which boasted 487,000 (procedurally-generated) kilometers of terrain with 3/4 of a million characters and 15,000 locations.

Sure, it's ugly...but there's a lot of it.

Skyrim, by contrast, boasts just 41 square kilometers of terrain. But what a terrain it is...

We'll no longer burn to be brothers in arms.

Loping through these fog-shrouded forests and clambering over the rocky cliffs, I was tempted to play Dire Straits Brothers in Arms (these mist-covered mountains...) but the dynamic music that cues changing weather, nightfall, the presence of enemies and the passage of time remained too engrossing.

This is becoming a sloppy paen to the merits of Skyrim's world, but there's a decent reason for that. It's a deeply flawed piece in a few key ways, but it's one of a small handful of games that actually caused me to stop, gasp and stare at...nothing. Well, not nothing, but something that wasn't a pre-rendered action sequence or bad-ass triple kill.

In this particular case, I emerged from the ruins of an ancient temple, having battled a handful of bandits, a few reanimated corpses, an ancient, axe-wielding lich king and some highly unpleasant spiders. I'd learned a new epic Shout (a kind of primeval draconic magic spell) and found myself laden down with goods for sale. When I stepped out of the cave (waiting the requisite 15-30 seconds for the game to re-render the world (you can walk from coast to coast without a single pause but for some reason, the smallest hovel requires a loading screen)) and stopped dead. I actually called my wife over to see the screen.

Night had fallen on the alpine mountainside that I stood on, along with a light dusting of snow. The pine trees creaked in an eerie wind, lit by a massive, pale moon. From horizon to horizon, an aurora (may as well call it the Aurora Borealis) blazed across the starry sky, in sheets of curving, shifting color.

Look upon Bethesda's works, Sir Edmund Hilary, and despair.

I knew that computers can easily render an aurora (there's even a screensaver). I also knew I was staring at a cheap virtual representation of a real-world wonder. But in that exact moment of gaming, I recalled why I love the damn things so much. At their best, they transport us to another world and suck us in so deeply we dream of them.

As worlds go, Skyrim is one of the very finest.

One more anecdote. Last night, I set out (on the advice of several townsfolk and a sneering castle mage) to find the magical College of Winterhold, set in the far, far north of this icy land. I'd only explored a small area around the central province, but I set off north, following the stony road.

Moments before a dragon landed on her head.

Immediately, I encountered an obstacle. While hunting an elk that wandered across my path, I stumbled into a nest of bandits working an old mine. My compatriot (a temperamental warrior-maid who consented to follow me after a brief bar brawl) and I made short work of the compound's guards, but in the depths of the mine she fell in battle while I barely held on to my life.

Though I regretted her fall, as she'd helped me slay my first dragon, I gathered up as much iron and treasure as I could and immediately hiked back to Whiterun to sell and buy supplies. Because there was too much to carry, I was forced to make a second trip to the mine...where I was immediately set upon by a wandering dragon. Again I had to retreat after mounting a brief and futile defence. Forced back down the hills in the dark of night, my archer-mage dodged blasts of ice and cast spells over her shoulder. Luring the beast towards the city guards, I turned and fought, slaying that dragon too and retiring afterwards to rest until (virtual) morning.

Pro-tip - you will never, ever, ever catch that deer.

Slightly richer but worse for the wear, I set out again for Winterhold (on a regular day's commute, the greatest setback is usually forgetting my keys). I made it further this time, before another ill-advised chase after wild deer put me off the trail. Trying to get my bearings, I hiked to the top of the highest mountain I could find, where I came across a stony shrine to some unnamed, long-dead Nord warrior, ringed about with valuable artifacts and golden offerings.

Well, a little grave-robbing never hurt anyone...

I got away with that, then took my bearings from the peak and set off for the nearest city. The trip down the mountain was relatively uneventful - which is to say, I discovered an ancient locked cliffside temple, killed a pack of wolves, fought and defeated some kind of archaeologist-bandit and read her notes for later investigation, and got ambushed by a pack of horrible, venom-spitting spiders.

When I finally arrived at the city I'd set out for, I found that it wasn't Winterhold, but Dawnstar, another Northern city with a small port and an active mine. There's plenty to do in Dawnstar, but the journey was taking longer than expected, so after some quick trading and a night's sleep, I set off north and east.

Following the shoreline, my aspiring mage was once again sidetracked. First I had to fight off a pack of Ice Wolves, bigger and nastier than their southern cousins.

I also had to detour around some giants, who didn't attack immediately but looked more than a match for me with their giant clubs and herds of mammoths.

Objects in the mirror may be larger than they appear.

When I made it past the wolves and the giants, I saw a vast temple rising out of the ice on the very northern shore of the content. This, I thought, must surely be the College of Winterhold (Skyrim has a map but its sense of distances is, as befits a faux-medieval parchment, somewhat distorted).

I made my way across the ice floes only to find another wind-wracked ruin. I'd gone too far north, and had to follow the rocky cliffs, hopping between ice, sea and little outcroppings of beach. I was nearly back onto a road before a pack of slow-moving but nasty walruses lumbered up on me, forcing me to spend two dozen arrows against their leathery hides.

The map told me I was close, but I wasn't sure how to get to Winterhold. A guiding enchantment took me along the rugged coast, looking for a way up the sheer cliffs. A blizzard blew in, obscuring the sky in great sheets of white snow.

When I finally saw the damn place, Skyrim stunned me all over again. A massive castle perched on a spindly rock spire, with a filament-like bridge arcing between the mainland and the College. It was literally hundreds of feet above me, partially obscured by snow. As it turned out, I had to hike around the rest of the point, climb another mountain and follow another road to reach the town - and I won't spoil what happens next.

What I realized then is that I'd raided a mine, fought a dragon, hunted elk and wolves, battled giant spiders, mined, traded, cooked, slept and smithed across perhaps 10 miles of virtual terrain - and I hadn't even done it for a game-assigned quest. I was quite literally just trying to get from point A to point B, a journey that took my character across one small sliver of the country's north-eastern quadrant.

In spirit, Skyrim is perhaps most similar to Rockstar's last open-world opus, Red Dead Redemption.

Literally the saddest thing in RDR: the first time your horse died.

That game, too, won many of its best moments not through heavy scripting or fetch quests or canned dialogue, but through the sense of wonder inspired by the scale and richness of its game world. Yes, you do eventually realize you're walking through a series of random-yet-not encounters, whether it's a pack of wolves hunting a deer or an assassin's ambush. But if the world feels right enough, and the ambience is polished enough, you don't really care.

Getting places isn't really an adventure for most of us in the video-game-playing first world anymore. The triumph of Skyrim is that it makes you feel brave and adventurous and skilled...just for walking around.

I'm a rolling stone...

More later.

#Occupy - Capitalism, Marketing and The Onion

2011-10-12T20:49:00.002-04:00

Nation Waiting for Protesters to Clearly Articulate Demands Before Ignoring Them

With a single headline, the Onion defined and undercut 99 percent of the media's coverage of the Occupy Wall Street movement. That's not unusual - in the modern era, the Onion's satirical bent lets it tell the truth more effectively than most major news organizations which are constrained by the limits of covering 'both sides' of a story and regurgitating massive waves of corporate and political propaganda. By bending the actual truth, the Onion can cut through the bullshit.

It's not that there aren't smart, well-reasoned, intelligent and incisive pieces out there about the Occupy movement - they can be found anywhere from The New York Times to the Awl to the Occupy Boston Globe and other impromptu publications covered by David Carr in the Times. But a couple of regular drumbeats emerge from the mass media. Where are the demands, they ask. Where is the concrete political platform? Who will you vote for? Whose side are you on?

The Onion didn't answer those questions, but it did explain why they're being asked.

Why such urgency, however? Why is it so important that Occupy Wall Street, Occupy Boston, Occupy DC, Occupy Chicago and the rest of the 120+ encampments around the nation produce policy proposals?

Right now, the Occupy movement doesn't fit into established or institutional narratives in many ways. Its leaderlessness is one reason . Not only is it difficult to pin a certain person - a Martin Luther King, Jr., a Gandhi, a Mao, a Sarah Palin - to its head, it's also just practically difficult for a reporter. If everyone's voice is equally weighted than, logically, a good reporter has to talk to everyone to get the full story - which isn't possible even for an extended feature, let alone a deadline for the City desk or the 10:00 p.m. news.

More importantly, the movement doesn't fit into the structure of capitalism. That seems like a broad statement, so let's nail it down piece by piece. Though the spread of the movement has lead to a rapidly diversifying set of priorities, demands and agendas, from raising capital gains taxes to decolonizing the United States, it retains a few core principles everywhere: Occupy Wall Street (i.e. the financial sector's) turf. Return wealth, land, prosperity and hope to the "99 percent majority." Give everyone a chance.

Capitalism, at its, heart, is about the accumulation of capital. Karl Marx very effectively defined it on its own terms in Das Kapital: "M–C–M'[buying in order to sell dearer] is the general formula of capital as it appears prima facie within the sphere of circulation."

That is to say, the capitalist advances money (M) to purchase a commodity (C, which can be a physical good, a service, labor...anything) in order to sell it again for more money (M'). You can even be more efficient, like a banker or a financier, and employ the nigh-magical power of interest: M-M'. Capital increasing itself.

Only the most lunatic capitalist would attempt to deny this simple truth. Where, then, is the contradiction with the Occupy movement?

First, off, there's no reason for the ardent capitalist to return anything to the 99 percent, other than to keep them from storming his property. That's M'-M - why would any capitalist reduce his capital? It makes no sense.

The immediate objection might be that, to paraphrase Milton Friedman, "We are all capitalists now." But we aren't, really. Nearly everyone you meet in life is working to make a living, which means exchanging labor (a commodity) for money (capital) in order to buy various other commodities (shelter, food, iPods, stuff from Anthropologie). We might invest in some small way or have a 401(k) or a pension plan somewhere, but that largely exists so that we can just buy more commodities once we are no longer willing or able to work.

In addition, a pretty fair proportion of the people at Occupy Wall Street and elsewhere either have no capital, by virtue of being unemployed and/or homeless, or have negative capital thanks to massive student debt, mortgages and medical bills.

That raises the second point - the Occupy movement generally wants to reform, reduce or forgive the modern structure of debt. Finance is in large part built on debt, and it consumes an ever-larger proportion of both the national and the global economy. Can anyone actually imagine an administration - any administration - or a Congress telling the banks that all mortgage or student or credit card debt is forgiven? The idea is outlandish - which is exactly why they could dismiss the Occupy movement if it rallied around it as a single concept.

This doesn't mean the Occupations are necessarily hostile to markets, a concept all to often conflated with capitalism. Markets predate capitalism by a huge margin, exist independently of it in the modern world and will probably outlast its collapse (assuming we aren't dragged into a nuclear hellfire). Though donations and freely exchanged skills and labor maintain most of the Occupations' needs at the moment, every member is necessarily a participant in and beneficiary of various markets, from food to cell phone service.

The contradiction is really between the demands of the Occupations - redistribute, forgive, make things fair - and the underlying logic of capitalism which is simply to accumulate. The capitalist will reply that the rising tide lifts all boats and that even as the 1 percent accumulate vast riches, the poor and middle-class have as well. That line might have worked more effectively before 2008, but the global economic crisis since then belies the truth.

As long as the Occupy movement emphasizes its processes, its democracy, its physical existence in space, it defies demands to take up a defined slot in the hierarchy of capitalism. There are plenty of participants who don't identify this way - many calling for iterative reform, increased taxes, even just a job. I've met people at Occupy Boston who've said they support capitalism.

Capitalism, however, doesn't support them. And it's just waiting for a chance to pigeonhole them so it can proceed to ignore them.

Occupy Boston - October 10, 2011

2011-10-10T23:10:00.000-04:00

Watch Here

You might know Occupy Boston as a minor media frenzy centered on the area around South Station, a nuisance in your daily commute, a quickly growing protest movement or just a Twitter hashtag.

I've spent the last 10 days checking in and out of the occupation in Dewey Square and what I've seen has inspired, confused, worried and challenged me in equal measure. I'm trying to compose more coherent thoughts based on some interviews I've done and pictures I've shot over the last few days, but I have a feeling that a major moment will go down tonight and I wanted to share some of what I've seen and learned.

The Occupy movement is thoroughly egalitarian and democratic - perhaps to a fault - though of a necessity it's guided and shaped to a large degree by those who appear to have experience organizing radical street action. Still, a quick tour of the camp last Tuesday introduced me to a diverse cast of characters, from a local ironworker and union member who told me he put down his tools to come join the protest, to a pair of apparently homeless men who explained that the living conditions in Dewey Square beat what they were typically used to. Students, long-time organizers, bloggers, parents, nurses, communists, socialists, Lyndon LaRouche devotees and Catholic priests mingle amongst the masses of students and other tattooed youth.

People were cagey around me, to be sure - I can't blame them, since I showed up straight from work in a suit and tie looking like a G-Man. At least one guy asked me if I had government affiliations. But with the threat of infiltrators and agents provocateurs ever-present, I don't blame them for an instant.

Now, Occupy Boston is facing its most challenging test. I joined the march from Dewey Square for about an hour today as it looped around Atlantic Avenue, Purchase Street, Winter Street and Downtown Crossing. I had to leave as it turned towards Government Center and the Charlestown Bridge by North Station, where protesters confronted police officers and were ultimately turned back.

After over a week in Dewey Square, however, the size of the occupation grew and became problematic in the confined space for health and safety reasons. Acacia Brewer, a spokesman for the occupation's Media working group, told me last week that they might have to expand on to the Rose Kennedy Greenway, a far more developed and built-up park than Dewey Square. However, she expressed concern about what would happen once the occupation made that move.

After the unsuccessful attempt to take the Charlestown Bridge, the march returned to Financial District and the occupation of what's now called the "second site" began. After a week in which everyone I interviewed told me that the police have been "awesome," "helpful" and shouting positive slogans like "We are the 99%" from squad cars, the tone has changed. The Boston Police told the movement that they'd have to move their tents and people out of the Rose Kennedy Greenway, or the police would move in. The Occupation's response can be seen here.

At approximately 18:00 the Boston Police Department informed Occupy Boston that if they did not clear the site by nightfall, they would be forcibly removed. In response, Occupy Boston has issued a renewed call for any and all people to join the occupation as soon as possible. From the beginning, occupiers have worked tirelessly to maintain a positive working relationship with city officials. Today’s threats by the Boston Police Department represent a sudden shift away from that dialogue.

The BPD hadn't moved in by 7, but the occupation's Twitter account and auxiliary sources indicate that the new deadline is midnight and the police will probably move in around then.

I don't yet know if this will be Boston's Tahrir Square, but I think it stands a good chance of being a seminal moment in the history of Massachusetts direct popular action. If all of the thousands in the two camps are arrested, it will be the largest arrest since a massive 1968 Vietnam War protest, stated Occupy Boston's Twitter.

I can't make a clear political argument about whether or not you should join or support the movement right now, and it's still difficult to articulate a list of policies, demands or goals. However, I think it's damned important that everyone pay attention tonight to see what happens when people confront the police on Boston's land.

Project: Consolidation

2011-02-18T12:23:00.000-05:00

It's pretty clear to everyone that I have a bad habit of spamming up the Facebook news feed with all the articles I link; it's just gotten so easy, now that every page in existence has about 50 different Twitter/Facebook/LinkedIn sharing tools.

I decided that rather than using those, it would be better to consolidate all the stuff I read or pick up on during the day and share it in one convenient place, so that if you want to read one or two, you can, but I don't occupy your whole bandwidth all the damn time.

So here it is - Project: Consolidation. I mean, if borrowing, reblogging and copying content works for the Huffington Post, why not me?

- GQ has a pretty prescient article on the decline of innovation in the broader Hollywood industry; we still get Inception, Black Swan and the Social Network, but the vast middle has become a kind of creative wasteland. Yeah, it's a bit harsh on comics and other genres, but overall I think it's really well-written - and hideously depressing.

- Speaking of the Social Network, the Boston Globe has a nauseating account of some horrible new media tool called Klout, which is basically like a popularity score based on your social media presence (The Bieb has a perfect 100 score, shocking...). Sample quote:

After Valentina Monte accepts a date, the Boston University junior quickly goes online to see how many Twitter followers her suitor has. She checks her own follower count three times a day. When she meets someone who admits to following more people than follow him, she judges. “That means you’re a loser.’’
So when her Klout score hit an impressive 59 out of 100 recently, making it almost as high as Jay Leno’s score of 65, she was ecstatic. “I felt worthy.’’

Wow, I really want to bludgeon someone to death with an iPad now.

- If you hacked your PS3, get offline - the SonyCops are coming for you. (via Ars Technica)

- Bahrain is next up on the Arab Revolution Chain Reaction; Tunisia must be regretting this somewhat, as absolutely no one is paying attention to their struggle now. It seems like the Bahraini police or army is using live ammo on protesters there. I hope Bernie Ecclestone does the right thing and cancels the Bahrain Grand Prix - I'll hate waiting for the start of the F1 season but Sakhir is a boring track anyways and more importantly, it's a way to hit the government where it hurts, right in the pocketbook.

- One gets the feeling that The Onion and The New York Times are starting to switch places as self-parody and paper of record, with the former running this gem and the latter's third most-emailed article being about how some people sleep with their pets.

Let's compare and contrast. The Onion:

"From now on, people looking for helpful hints on renovating a $4 million Manhattan townhouse won't have to waste time sifting through articles on the crisis of public education," Times executive editor Bill Keller said of the new section, which will be printed in smudge-proof ink so it doesn't soil the soft, pink hands of its readers.

The ACTUAL New York Bloody Times:

Ms. Ruttenberg’s habit of sleeping with pets mirrors that of Paris Hilton, who has slept with a pig — of the four-legged variety — and was once bitten at her home at 3 a.m. by a kinkajou, a tiny raccoon-related creature. Keeping that sort of menagerie may be unusual, but the habit of allowing animals in bed is not. Figures vary, but according to a recent study published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 14 to 62 percent of the 165 million dogs and cats in this country sleep in bed with humans, with other surveys skewing higher.

Wow. 14 to 62 percent, really? You sure you don't want to be a little less specific there?

All the news that's fit to print, indeed.

Egypt and Tunisia

2011-01-27T09:13:00.000-05:00

Is it possible that that Egypt could follow in Tunisia's footsteps? The situation there is getting more chaotic by the day - but it's hard to say how much of it is born out of genuine political rage and how much is more economic...

I wrote up something on it here, but it focuses on the econ aspects of the problem. I have a feeling, though, that this will be another Iran - a lot of coverage and unfounded optimism that ends, as usual, in repression.

What I am pretty sure of is that this will keep happening - food prices are going to go up from here, and poor countries are getting squeezed.

In the wake of Tunisia's sudden, unexpected popular revolution, autocratic regimes across the Arab world are running scared. In Cairo, the U.S.-backed presidency of Hosni Mubarak has perhaps the most to lose.
Yesterday, massive crowds gathered in Cairo's Midan Tahrir, the political and economic heart of the city that's bordered by the Mogamma (the central government building), the Egyptian Museum, the headquarters of the Arab League and the Nile Hilton hotel.
The motivations behind the January 25 protest, which was partly organized through social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook, are strikingly similar to those that pushed the Tunisian people to take to the streets. While the catalyzing event for Tunisia came in the form of an impoverished vegetable seller's suicide by self-immolation to protest the regime's injustice, the Egyptians seem to have been motivated by the Tunisians themselves.

NaNoWriMo - Day 6, Part 1

2009-11-08T04:30:00.000-05:00

There were a few guests when he walked into the cafe, and Clarissa was hustling behind the counter, brewing shots of espresso. A headphone wire dangled from her ear, music blasting from it, and as Rafael walked into the kitchen he plucked it out. She jumped in surprise.

"Scared the shit out of me, Raf."

He winked. "Sorry, C. No headphones in the front, though."

She nodded, but he could almost feel the eye-roll as he headed into the kitchen. The eternal pile of dishes remained.

Rafael immediately threw himself into the work; there was a backlog from the last few days. Soups to make, meat to cut, stock to grab from the back room. He moved as fast as he could, leaning on the steel counters for support. Something else that needed cleaning. Once he hit a rhythm, he moved smoothly, the work guiding his limbs without thought or concentration. Clarissa was, for once, focused, running back and forth from the kitchen without wasting time. Maybe she realized what a state he was in, or maybe she just wasn't hungover for once. Whatever the reason, it was a pleasant change.

Midway through the lunch rush, they ran out of salt cod. Rafael kicked himself for not stocking more, before he remembered that his usual supplier had been out as well. Such was the of a restauranteur, he reflected; an endless series of fuckups that cascaded down the line until they reached the uncomprehending customer. Red wine was running low too, but he couldn't deputize the underage Clarissa to get it and couldn't risk leaving the place in her hands, either. Reluctantly, he sent a text message asking for help.

The rest of the rush went smoothly, although it was a close thing when his leg almost gave out while carrying a pot of almost-boiling stock. Only quick reflexes sliding it onto the counter saved him from being scalded by it. He had a morbid fear of being burned; as a child, the broad scar on his father's shoulder, sustained putting out an engine fire one night, had always made him feel distinctly noxious.

He poured himself a quick nip of whiskey under Clarissa's disapproving eye to steady his nerves and settle the sick tension that crawled into his stomach whenever he thought about burns. The music had stopped playing, he realized, leaving the guests to speak in hushed tones or risk having their conversations carry through every corner of the cafe. He rummaged through the CDs stacked at haphazard angles under the counter. A disc of capoeira music reggae-inflected and arranged for guitar seemed somehow appropriate for reasons he couldn't quote pin down, so he popped it in, grinning slightly at the bemused looks of a few who had never heard its peculiar rhythms before.

The winding down of the lunch rush left a Tower of Babel made out of dishes in the sink; several in fact, that he and Clarissa tackled as quickly as possible.

“How did the funeral go?” she asked, finally.

He shrugged. “A funeral. What can you expect, you know? Man goes in the ground, people cry, it's a tragedy.”

Clarissa frowned. “Wasn't he your friend?”

He stared at her for a moment, stock-still, hands immersed in the hot, soapy water. “Yeah, he was.” He turned back to the dishes. “Was. Not is.”

“That doesn't seem very healthy, you know...”

“It's not. It's a very unhealthy situation. But what're you gonna do?”

“Me?” She paused, drawing back in confusion. “I don't know...me? Do you want to talk about it or something like that?”

He laughed grimly. “No, not you, personally. Just what is one...never mind.”

He withdrew from the kitchen to pick up and run the last of the checks. More and more people using cards these days, even if just for a drink or a cup of espresso. Of course, he was guilty of the same sin. It still annoyed him from the perspective of the owner, but turning down cards or even setting a limit was bad business, now. Too many people had nothing but plastic. It was always the oldtimers, the immigrants, the working men who carried around a bundle of $100s wrapped in a rubber band or, in certain especially stylish cases, an old money clip. There was something reassuring about cash, especially, he thought, the soft, almost sensual feel of well-worn bills. Not to mention how easy it was to spend off of plastic.

By one-thirty in the afternoon, only Jorge remained, scribbling furiously in his notebook. He wrote with remarkably neat, precise script; letters formed as neatly as a schoolgirls flowing out of the pen clutched in his meaty paw. Seeing the cafe empty, and hearing the distinct blast of Clarissa's headphone from the back room, he took his glass sat down beside his last and best customer. Jorge nodded affably.

“My condolences,” he said. For such a large man, he had an oddly soft and almost childlike voice; nevertheless, there was a sharpness in his small eyes that belied a fierce, almost predatory intelligence. They were the only part of him that did not appear to be on the verge of falling asleep at any moment.

“Obrigado,” muttered Rafael. He perked up slightly. “No, but thank you. It's been a shitty week.”

“Of course. You knew him very well, didn't you?”

Rafael tilted his head to the side in thought. “Yes, and no. Since high school...no from just before. The summer before.”

“Sounds like you knew him pretty well, then.”

“Sure, yeah. I mean, he was a hard guy to know, in some ways. Mystery wrapped in an enigma. All that. But yeah, I guess I knew him pretty well.”
“I imagine the funeral must have been interesting...”

“Not really, actually.” Rafael paused to think back to the previous day for a moment. “No, not really. It was all over pretty quickly, to be honest. I got a pretty bad feeling from James, though.”

“James...?” Jorge tilted his head at a questioning angle.

“Yeah, the older brother. I guess we've never really seen eye-to-eye. On anything.”

“Any particular reason for that?”

“You know, not that I know of.” Rafael felt the lie acutely. “Well, I mean, the obvious.”

Jorge reached across the table and softly a laid a hand on Rafael's shoulder “Accidents do happen. With surprising frequently, in fact.”

He stiffened and turned away. “Even so. I can understand. I sympathize one-hundred percent with him, to tell you the truth. I'd feel exactly the same way.”

Jorge shrugged his broad shoulders and ran a hand thoughtfully across his patchy beard. “Well, I just happen to think you're being excessively hard on yourself. About the whole thing.”

“Could be. Could be.” Rafael stood and took the last sip from his glass. “Good talking to you, anyways.”

The door opened as he turned back to the bar. Jason stepped in, pausing momentarily as the sunlight poured in around him. For that second, he appeared like some gilt statue of a candomble saint, light glinting off of the silver hairs that streaked his dreadlocks. He dressed, as always, immaculately, in an incongruously professorial style; tweed blazer, complete with leather patches, and high motorcycle-style boots. He held a pair of red wine bottles in each hand.

“Bom dia, meu amigo!” he shouted in his best attempt at a Brazilian accent, raising the bottles high.

“Boa tarde,” corrected Rafael, tapping his watch to indicate that it was now afternoon.

“Well, at least I try, man.” Jason set the bottles down on the bar and sat down in one of the stools.

“Well, A for effort. Want a drink?”

Jason eyed the glass in Rafael's hand. “As long as you're having one, it'd be rude not to, wouldn't it?”

Rafael laughed. “Sure, yeah. The usual?”

“No, actually. Not really in the mood, to be honest. Just rum, if you got it.”

Rafael raised a skeptical eyebrow. “Of course I've got it. I've got a bunch, actually.”

“From Barbados? Better be Bajan?”

“Claro que sim.” He produced a fat bottle made of thick glass and wrapped in wicker, pouring a generous slug of rum over ice. Jason reached out and tossed back half the glass in a single swig.

“Much appreciated, man.” He held the glass up and swirled it around in front of a hanging lamp. “This is good shit, no doubt.”

“Do you think I'd have anything else?”

Jason leaned across the bar and flicked a two-thirds empty bottle of Ron Roberto bottom-shelf rum sitting in the speed rack. “What's this, then?”

Rafael laughed and sat down on the other side of the bar. “Well, I didn't give you that, did I?”

“Most certainly. I'd have to beat your crippled ass for that.”

Rafael took an aspirin and began fixing himself an espresso. “Very fucking funny.”

Jason cocked an eyebrow. “But seriously, man, how you holding up?”

“Oh great. The bluebirds woke me up today with their beautiful song and then I went to the meadow to pick flowers and just think about how great the world is and how much I fucking love nature. It was like a Disney movie, let me tell you.” He slammed the demitasse down on the bar with excessive force, spilling some espresso. “And then I got here, and guess what I heard? My leg never got broken and Louis was still alive.”

He never saw Jason's hand coming around, just felt the blow on the side of his head that stunned and him and nearly rocked him off of his seat. He shook his head to get the ringing out and rubbed the side of his skull ruefully.

“You gotta stop talking that shit, man.” Jason shook his head. “I know it sucks. But you gotta stand up and look at it straight. Stop getting it twisted.”

Rafael hung his head. “I deserved that.”

“Yeah, you did.” Jason's expression softened. One hand toyed with the gold bar that ran through the top of his ear. “Sorry. I hate to see ya like this, I do. But you gotta straighten it out in your head. Or it's gonna eat you up like the sickness.”

Rafael stirred his coffee listlessly. “Sure, but how? You don't know what it's like...”

“The hell I don't. I know exactly how it is.”

“How's that?”

Jason set both elbows on the table and leaned forward. “Back in Bridgetown, when I was maybe 12, maybe 13, one of my brothers was teaching me how to ride his bike. A little one, one of those 100cc things that just blow smoke everywhere and make a whole racket. So I'm riding up and down de street, just fooling, you know?

“Where's this going, Jay?”

“I'm getting there. So here we are. And there was this girl, lived next door. Most beautiful thing I've ever seen my whole life. Half-lebanese, skin like honey, little sweet braids that smelled like coconut. Always said she wanted to be a swing dancer, like on Dirty Dancing. Used to sneak out the fate when her grandaddy fell asleep and practice dancing on he beach at night. ”

“With you, of course?”

Jason laughed. “I wish. Wasn't as good-looking then as I am now, “ he said with a wink. “Anyways, I was in love like nothing else, brother. You know in that way, when you're just a boy, and there's only one thing in the world you want. So I'm riding and I see Clara. I think, man, this is your chance to impress her. So I pop a wheelie, you know. Trying to show off.”

“And you hit her?”

“Well, some geezer opened the door of his car and hit me. So I spin out, you know. Lose control, head over heels, and bam.” He smacked his fist into his palm. “Bike goes right into her knees. I broke an ankle, she broke both knees. Basically laid up in bed, crippled. Couldn't dance, couldn't barely walk.” He took a long drink. “Fucking tragedy.”

“Man, that's...” Rafael shook his head. “That's pretty bad. Not really your fault, though. I mean, sure, it was stupid, but it was the guy who hit you, really.”

“Yeah. And that's my point. Accidents happen.”

Rafael bit his lip. “I guess. You got a point. Shame about that girl, though.”

Jason smiled slightly. “Well, it turned out alright in the end.” He fished in his pocket for his wallet and pulled a ragged-edged, faded photo from the back. It showed a dancer, lit by spotlights, back arched and leg thrown out in a graceful turn.

NaNoWriMo - Day 4, Part 1

2009-11-04T19:10:00.002-05:00

The dingy cream-colored paint on the ceiling swam in his vision. He breathed raggedly, hands crossed on his chest. A tightness was growing in his side that threatened to spread down to his leg, so he levered himself off the floor and grabbed an aspirin before showering. The heat of the water melted the knotted muscles a little, and he felt almost human, rather than a ball of assorted aches and pains, physical and mental.

He dressed for work early, hunting through the laundry for a black shirt and finally resorting to the pile of mildly dirty clothes in a basket by the back door. In truth, he could wear whatever he wanted, but he felt that to flout the dress code he set for his workers was bad policy. Although they never seemed to follow it anyways.

It was still too early to really leave when he stepped out in the glaring sun, blinking and fumbling for his sunglasses. He recalled that they had broken last month and sat down on the front step of his wide, rambling wooden porch. The upstairs neighbors' car sat in the driveway, mud-spackling the queer shade of maroon paint, while beside it his Triumph bike gleamed like a nicked but carefully polished gem. Clean because it sat there, as useful as a sundial in a tsunami, he thought. Between the rain and his leg, he'd be lucky to use the damn thing once this summer.

His own car needed to be washed, though it didn't have the same coating of dirt as the neighbours'. Another thing he probably wouldn't get to this summer. He sighed, limped to the car and drove to work.

For once, parking was easy to find.

NaNoWriMo - Day 3, Part 2

2009-11-03T21:42:00.003-05:00

Sun poured in through the skylight, painting the wooden floorboards in ochre shades. Its warm rays fell on Rafael's shoulders and flared in his eyes. The acrid scent of sweat filled his nostrils as he crouched listening to the melodic twang of the berimbau, the rhythm of the atabaque, the chant of the roda. Even the sunlight seemed to dance with the music as clouds passed before it. His breath came long and slow.

He touched palms with his partner and they cartwheeled into the roda. They began slowly, in time with the music, legs seeking each other out and retreating low and high, feinting and striking. At first the movements were compact, close to the ground, full of intention and trickery. The song of the roda began to pick up speed, and they evolved with the song, standing straighter, become more aggressive. Rafael feinted left and came whirling over his partner's head with a spinning left armada, only to hurriedly throw himself towards the floor to avoid the same coming from the right. Back and forth they went, exchanging blows that never landed.

The song accelerated. So did the dance, now a whirling exchange of standing kicks and 'Au' cartwheels. Rafael could feel the wind of his partner's foot passing before his face, centimeters from striking him. They played all out now, spinning in earnest yet friendly attempts to annihilate each other. His partner threw an acrobatic series of attacks that Rafael was only abelt evade with a wrenching backwards esquiva and handstand. He paused in that inverted state ofr a moment, seeing his opponent as if reflected in water. Sweat dripped from his scalp to the floor. Then he swept in with a low hasteira, moving instantly into a high strike. The sweep hooked the other man's leg and then a violent pain shot down from his knee as he connected with the other man's neck at the same moment that he lost his balance. They fell.

Rafael felt himself hit the bed as he woke. He lay motionless, sheets twisted and soaked, leg cramped and filled with agony. The light of early dawn crashed through his open windows, illuminating the armada of dust motes drifting through the air and stabbing at his eyes. He groaned and burrowed himself deeper into the covers. His fingers crawled on the dresser until they located a bottle of pills. The confusingly screwed cap defeated his groggy attempts and he tossed it aside onto the pile of swept-aside clothes.

His body refused his best efforts to stir it form the bed. He lay in a defeated, half-conscious state for some time. The dream hung persistently in his vision, in his nostrils. Every second was clear as if it were happening at that moment. The cobwebby remnants of sleep gummed his eyes. His leg pulsed.

Finally he dragged himself from bed with a Herculean effort and propelled himself towards coffee. The steel pot stood on the stove, one-third full from yesterday. He poured the cold liquid, swirls of oil coating its surface, into a mug and added a little water for volume before sliding it into the microwave. His head fell against the door of the oven as it hummed, the vibrations running through his forehead and down to his spine. It finished and he took a sip; too hot, stale, and watery. But coffee, nonetheless. It dulled the ache in his head but not his body.

Toast seemed like too much effort so he grabbed a handful of olives and a hunk of cheese and made that his breakfast. In truth, he didn't have to be up and about for hours yet, but even such a dismal morning seemed preferable to the option of returning to sleep and all its attendant torments. The taste of the coffee became unbearable and he added a little instant to fortify the flavor. Sparked with ambition, he fried a few eggs and bolted them down. Food and caffeine had restored some strength. His spirit still flagged. The temptation to simply fold himself in front of a screen and waste the morning tugged at him, but he fought back. For a while he picked desultory tunes on the guitar, but the strings strummed dissonantly and he couldn't find the will to tune it.

He turned to exercise to stem the ennui that threatened to drain him, leave him lifeless as if the victim of a vampire. Push-ups, sit-ups, weights, repeated over and over until the muscles shook and the tendons quivered like untied lines snapping in the wind. It was pain, but a good one that somehow made the other more bearable. At last he finished, collapsed, panting on the cold wood of his floor. Sweat dripped down into the small of his back and pooled beneath him. For a few moments, he felt decent and alive.

NaNoWriMo - Day 3, Part 1

2009-11-03T00:15:00.003-05:00

A few others spoke, men and women Rafael didn't know or vaguely recognized. He heard nothing, just stared down at the odd collection of keepsakes arrayed across the top of the coffin. His eyes kept coming back to the hat; he remembered as clearly as a photograph Louis' laughing face beneath the bent brim, discolored with age. His face had been so like his brothers', and yet in many ways so different; perpetually amused where Damien looked somber and James angry. Laughing, but with some dark sadness in his eyes. That face appeared more clearly before him than the scene he stood in; smiling, sighing, and silent, in the stillness of death. All three, but the last most clearly.

The last people spoke the last words; and slowly, they began to drift away. Gina was the first to go, flanked by Louis' brothers. Others wandered away in twos and threes; the priest, the mestre, Ourinho and his girl. Jason stood for a long time, and finally wandered over, laid his heavy hand on Rafael's shoulder. He jerked instinctively in surprise, but said nothing. For a moment they stood, gazes locked. Then Jason turned away without speaking and padded into the rain, so that only Rafael was left, staring into the gaping wound in the earth. He was soaked, now, but hardly noticed; his hair dangled before his eyes, dripping down his face.

He wasn't sure how much later it was that he noticed the gravediggers standing ill-at-ease beneath the willow, smoke curling from their cigarettes, waiting for him to go. Perhaps he'd only been there for a few moments, perhaps for half an hour. The empty bottle of whisky hung awkwardly in his pocket, and on an impulse, he pulled it and tossed it away, turning as he did so that he did not see it fall, only heard the light shattering of glass as he returned to his car, closed his eyes and started the engine.

The radio turned on when he did and strains of Irish pipes floated from the car's speakers. He stabbed a finger at he power switch and shoved the car into gear. The gravediggers tossed spades full of earth through the air as he drove away, rolling through the winding paths in low gear. Once again he heard bagpipes, and looked in confusion at his stereo. But no; a crowd huddled by another grave, a piper sending the plaintive drone into the atmosphere. Rafael slowed but then thought better of it, feeling ghoulish in his fascination.

The gates now stood open as he left the cemetery and headed for home. The cafe would keep for now, on a rainy evening like this. He drove too fast down the empty roads, hugging the curves and feeling the tires strain under the load. On at least one turn he felt them lift and had to modulate the clutch to keep the car under control, wheels spinning out silver tails of water. Down the straightaway, around the rotary, clipping the grass and fishtailing slightly on the downhill curve, he roared homewards.

Before long he was in the driveway, panting slightly, foot aching as it held down the clutch, engine purring. Adrenaline lifted his heart into his throat, pulsed his veins against the skin. He turned the car off and limped hurriedly inside to the medicine cabinet, where he grabbed the first orange canister and dumped a pair of pills into his palm. In the mirror, he caught a glimpse of himself; hair chaotic and damp, eyes bloodshot and sunken, collar twisted. He turned away in disgust as he swallowed the pills dry. A pile of unfolded clothes lay on top of his tangled sheets, and he had to shove them half-heartedly aside before slipping into an aching and troubled sleep.

NaNoWriMo - Day 2, Part 1

2009-11-02T08:59:00.005-05:00

The cemetery gates stood shut when Rafael arrived, and he had to leave the car and push them open. They groaned and flakes of rusted black paint floated to the ground. He drove down the winding lanes with a growing sense of trepidation; somewhere in a tree, a dove answered the rain with a plaintive call. An old man shuffled among the graves, a broad umbrella protecting him as he moved along a twisting path.

Ahead, he saw a cluster of cars parked under a spreading willow, among them the long, low shape of the hearse. A small group stood by them. Two men were opening the rear door as he pulled the car onto the verge. He saw the faces turn toward him but for the moment, he remained seated, watching. Finally, he left the car and joined the rest of the group.

A silent nod was all he offered in greeting, and all he received in reply. He walked to where Jason and Ourinho stood, grabbing the hand of each in turn and clasping them around the shoulders. Silver beads of water dotted Jason's dreadlocks, dripping on the fabric of his black suit. A few tears dotted Ourinho's golden lashes, and he brushed them away with a gloved hand. Ze Carlos and brothers Damien and James joined them and together, the six men lifted the casket out of the hearse. Raindrops drummed on the black lacquered wood and rolled off the gilt edging.

They moved slowly; without his cane, Rafael gritted his teeth against the shocks that ran up his leg with each step. He could feel the eyes of the small crowd boring into him as they bent to set the coffin on the metal frame which would lower it into the earth. The six men stood and stepped back almost in unison. Across from him stood Gina, Louis's fiance. Former fiance, he reminded himself. She was in black, of course, from head to toe. A veil fell just to her mouth, but he could still glimpse her eyes, burning beneath. What was that expression..hate? Pity? Or just sorrow. Her long, brown fingers worried at the gleaming gold ring with the canary diamonds.

Damien and James flanked their brother's fiancee, arms around her in condolence. Their faces shared the same high, almost arrogant brows, deep-set eyes and sunken cheeks that had given Louis the look of some mournful chieftain, but physically, they could not be more different. James had a prizefighter's body, with shoulders seemingly twice as wide as his younger brother's taller, lankier frame. Louis had always seemed the golden mean of the two, Rafael thought. Damien did not look at him, but gazed downwards at the casket, focused as if staring into an infinite tunnel. James' eyes, though, bore into him like drillbits, burning darkly from the carved mask of his face.

Beside them stood Ourinho, shorter than all three, his dark golden curls sodden and running down his back. He had the face of a Raphaelite angel and another, even more angelic figure stood by his side. His latest girlfriend; was it Caroline? Or maybe Karen, Rafael couldn't remember. Though he was sure they'd only been together a month, he wept openly in front of her. Near the head of the coffin Jason slowly shifted his weight from leg to leg, looking menacing and incongruous with his long dreads and immaculately tailored suit and raincoat, towering over everyone nearby. He watched Rafael as well, his eyes a piercing, peculiar grey.

Mestre Ibrahim stepped forward and softly dropped a silk cordão casket, the green and gold shining on the black wood like some kind of tropical serpent. His suit fit oddly on his small frame, his old tweed flat cap was ragged, and his shoes scuffed and worn. On the street, he would be easy to overlook, but many in the small crowd stared at him with reverence. He crossed himself, work-worn hands moving in a swift motion from shoulder to shoulder and chest to aquiline nose. The mestre murmured a brief Portuguese prayer and turned away. Others stepped forward and dropped mementoes into the grave; a gold cross, white flowers, a worn leather bible, a tattered Red Sox cap.

A priest began to speak; Rafael didn't recognize him. The words flowed past him leaving no mark, bringing no meaning; platitudes, invocations and prayers. Gina sobbed silently beneath her veil. James' knuckles clenched white. Rafael listened but heard nothing, raindrops drumming on his head, his shoulders, cascading down between his fingers. He could feel the eyes boring into him. The priest finished his speech. Rafael licked dry lips.

Damien began to speak. "He was a brother to me, and to a lotta other people. He..." The words choked in the tall man's throat. "We're gonna miss the hell out of you, Lou."

He stepped back and shoved his hands back into his pockets, shoulders hunched, face to the ground. James pulled his arms from Gina's shoulder and edged towards the casket.

"You left us too soon, brother. All of us deserved to go before you." As he spoke his gaze drilled into Rafael's. "You were a good man, you were a good brother, and I know you woulda been an even better husband and a father. Rest in peace, brother. They ain't gonna make no more like you."

Another moment of silence, and then Rafael stepped forward, drew a slim bottle of Jameson from his pocket and upended it over the casket, watching the twisting amber stream cascade downwards, tumbling and blending with the falling rain. The acrid smell of whiskey touched his nose. He might have been shedding a tear, but he couldn't tell with the water pouring down his face. The last drops fell from the bottle and he put it back in his pocket.

NaNoWriMo - Day 1, Part 1

2009-11-01T14:09:00.004-05:00

Yes, National Novel Writing Month. The literary equivalent of a marathon, except at the end people don't congratulate you, they just wonder why you haven't showed your face in the light of day for an entire month.

Here's my profile:

http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/user/575010

The goal: 50,000 words; quality/consistency/plot unimportant. That works out to 1,666.6(repeating) words a day. Of course you can work extra hard on the weekends to average it out. I'm VERY good at that...

Anyways, here goes.

NaNoWriMo

Rafael watched the water pouring steadily through the cracks in the window. Instinctively, he knew he ought to get up, throw a towel down, maybe try to fix the thing, but he couldn't be bothered. The rain hammered at the windows, cascading down the ancient, bubbled glass. Every so often, a car would rush by, splashing the panes with grime from the street that soon washed away into the deluge.

Twenty days of rain in June, a flood of biblical proportions. A truck rolled through the puddles, sending a tidal wave against the windows. The trickle surged into a flood, and with a heavy sigh, Rafael pushed himself away from the bar and limped across the room to throw a few towels down to mop up the growing pool of dirty water. It was only five in the afternoon, but outside the headlights of the cars flashed across his eyes like searchlights, briefly illuminating the yellowing walls of the cafe. He grimaced at the thought of having to paint them.

He jammed more towels into the window sill and, his leg aching, sat down heavily in the chair by the door. The wood creaked as he leaned back, ancient nails complaining at the strain. Another thing to fix. A stab of pain shot up through his knee and he winced, digging his fingers into the joint. Sailors always used to say that rain made their old wounds tighten. After a month of rain, though, surely that stopped? He fished in his pockets for an aspirin but only came up with an empty tin of mints and crumpled packet of cigarettes. There was one left, but he set it on the table. Maybe the rain would stop in the next hour.

At the other end of the cafe, a fat man snored and shifted in his sleep. Rafael leaned around the pillar to stare at Jorge, dozing fitfully in front of a half-demolished plate of sardines. The edge of the table rose and fell on his swelling stomach with each sonorous breath. A half-empty glass of beer slid back and forth with each movement, like a drunken crewman on a boat pitching in heavy weather. Rafael sighed, and dragged himself across the room to rescue the plate and glass before the inevitable happened.

He eased himself into the chair across from Jorge and watched the glass slide back and forth, each time coming closer to the edge of table. Bubbles spiralled lazily up through the amber brew as it tilted back and forth. Jorge slept on, oblivious, as was his habit. Nearly every day he came in, and nearly every day he slumped into the same nap, same chair, same position. His wispy Fu Manchu mustache and beard, gold-rimmed glasses, serene demeanour and brightly patterned silk shirts gave him the appearance of some latter-day Confucius, dreaming peacefully after a long day of doling out proverbs and golden nuggets of wisdom. A battered leather diary lay open in front of him, stained with coffee rings and grease prints.

Resisting the temptation to read the sleeping man's work, Rafael carefully gathered up the dishes and brought them back to the kitchen. A small tower of dirty dishes leaned at a precarious angle in the sink. He peered around the kitchen, searching for Clarissa. An unshielded lightbulb flickered in the back corner, illuminating the twin white cables of her earbuds. She sat with her head down on a countertop, hoodie pulled over her head, heavy metal blasting out of the headphones. A cafe full of the unconscious. Rafael considered waking her and decided against it. She'd spent twelve of the last twenty-four hours in the place anyways. He pulled a stool up to rest his leg and began rinsing the dishes, scrubbing half-heartedly at the crusts of bread, congealed pools of oil and dried grains of rice.

The water began to spurt fitfully out of the spigot, and he gave the pipes underneath a firm kick. Another thing to take care of. He pulled a sticky note off pad tacked to the wall and pressed it to the u-bend. It joined a collection of such notes appended to various malfunctioning appliances; the flickering bulb, the flaky pilot light on the back burner, the broken back door latch held together by a rusted fork, and the wheezing pump on the back of the prep refrigerator. Clarissa claimed that it was giving her cancer, and Rafael was hard pressed to find a counter argument as it slowly bled out coolant day by day.

The dishes done, he hobbled back to the bar and reached under it for the bottle of Jameson he stashed behind the . The first two rocks glasses he pulled out were dusty and distinctly marked with fingerprints, so he tossed them in the bar sink and grabbed a wine glass that dangled from the brass rack above the bar. He poured a slug and then, thinking it looked lonely swirling around in the bottom of the glass, added a handful of ice cubes and topped it off. He rummaged through the drawers for an aspiring, reached into his pockets before remembering he'd already done so, and took a small sip. The whiskey stung his chapped lips. Why were they chapped, when it had been raining for a month? He drank glass of water to soothe them.

His eyes wandered across the rows of empty tables. The chairs stood in haphazard lines, but he couldn't bring himself to the go and straighten them. All the lights were on, at least, although in the back corner a metal lampshade seemed to hang at a particularly precarious angle. Some of the faded sepia photographs and line drawings of Rio, Salvador and Olinda had been knocked subtly off the level; he reached out to straighten the nearest one. A faint buzzing sound leaking through the speakers reminded him that the stereo was still on although the CD had finished playing. He conducted a desultory search for the remote, then dragged himself over to the system and stabbed spitefully at the power strip with his cane, shutting it off with a harsh electronic squawk.

The cane was preferable to the aluminum crutches he'd been dragging himself around with, but it made him feel like a relic, a piece of driftwood washed up on the beach and bleached in the sun. Not that he'd seen the sun for days. It was an antique; like the cafe, he thought. Like himself, in some ways. It was made of Pau-Brasil and had an ochre sheen to it. The top had been carved into some kind of animal years ago; a bird of some kind, or was it a fish? Age had battered it beyond recognition; his father had had a bad habit of dropping it, and once left to roll around the bottom of his boat for over a month. His grandfather had apparently stolen it from a colonel in Bahia, a story which Rafael was almost positive was fabricated - he had probably stolen it, but more likely from some old farmer passed out in a bar - but liked too much to dispute.

He took a handful of olives from the bowl set out on the bar. They were good olives, from the Armenian store; he made a mental note to get more. They were addictive, these things. As soon as he'd scraped all the meat off of one, he felt compelled to eat another, until the woody taste of the pits forced him to spit them out. The whiskey and olives had made him thirsty, and he downed another glass of water. Outside, the rain kept falling. Bored, he turned to espresso machine. Every time he got bored, he made espresso. He'd had a few today already...two? Three? It put him on edge but at least he didn't fall asleep like Jorge and Clarissa.

He filled the portafilter with espresso and tamped down the grounds with practiced flicks of his wrist, moving with the unconscious grace of muscle memory. The feeling was oddly satisfying, like turning a key in an oiled lock or cracking knuckles. A thin jet of boiling water sprayed out of the portafilter as it brewed and he quickly leaned all of his weight against the handle to jam the leak shut. Another thing that needed fixing. He slammed a Post-It on the machine and swirled the espresso around in the demitasse. It'd brewed too thick and dark, and he could see a few grounds suspended in it, but he didn't care enough to fix it. He sucked it down black, no sugar; he liked it better with sugar, but sometimes he drank it black out of some obscure obligation. The whiskey and the coffee gave him a dizzy, hyperactive feeling. His leg throbbed, and he realized his phone was ringing.

When he fished it out of his pocket, he stared for a moment at the animated church bells dancing on the screen. Five thirty in the afternoon. It took him a moment to remember where he had to be. Before he left, he set an eggtimer in the kitchen to wake Clarissa in a few moments. Truthfully, she'd probably pick herself up the instant he left. Could she really sleep with that noise blasting into her eardrums? He nearly knocked the coat rack over as he grabbed his jacket. He'd almost made it out the door when he remembered his wallet and had to limp back to grab it from the kitchen.

Outside, the rain slid down his collar despite his best attempts to turn it up against the downpour. His meter had expired when he arrived at the car. He hadn't received a ticket, though; an amazing piece of luck. His knee stiffened as he eased himself into the driver's seat, and for a moment he sat, biting his lip, eyes closed, leaning against the window. An ambulance roaring by with sirens on full startled him from his reverie.

With a groan, he turned the key in the ignition. Time to go to the funeral.

Triumphant Sun PDF

2009-09-29T10:58:00.003-04:00

In the interests of keeping things up to date, I have created a PDF of Triumphant Sun, edited for clarity(and so that I can remember what's going on!), and I'm going to post it here.

Then maybe I'll, you know. Write a little.

Riches Among the Ruins

2009-09-01T10:11:00.006-04:00

Yes, it's been quite a while since I've posted - but that should change, now that I have something resembling a full-time position.

I'm working for an author in Boston at a company called Turan Corporation, helping run the website, blog and general communications for this book:

As such, I'm going to be researching, writing and posting about the book, emerging markets and economics on blog.richesamongtheruins.com.

I was genuinely surprised by the book - I have neither economics expertise nor much knowledge about emerging markets. Essentially, my entire exposure to economic policy is reading a few blogs (like Pat Garofalo's economics column at Think Progress) and the Economist every week.

However, the book lays some complex financial arrangements out in simple, comprehensible terms. Furthermore, it's a genuine, real-life adventure story that reveals, at least to me, how crazy business in the various dark corners of the world can get.

I don't recommend things simply out of obligation or because it's my job (although it is my job!), but if you are interested in geo-politics, economics, or just travel, this is a pretty fun book and something I'd recommend picking up.

Hopefully, I should have some time to update here as well.

The Holy Land, Pt. 1

2009-06-22T00:00:00.007-04:00

Recently, Sathi, Nick, and I took a trip through the Middle East to celebrate the nuptials of our good friends Joe and Hilla. Aside from the strangeness of people starting to get married (what next, bloody kids?) the trip was a smash hit from beginning to end. I'm not sure if the happy couple want me to put their wedding photos up here, so I'll just focus on a few of the other highlights of our voyage through Israel and then Egypt.

The Church of the Holy Sepulchre - as nice as it is, one has to wonder whether Jesus really wants the place where he was crucified to be quite so...blinged-out. I'm fairly sure that this is an Orthodox shrine, although the 'INRI' makes me wonder if it could be Catholic. The Sepulchre is a site with a number of different faiths laying claim to various areas and sections, but the Eastern Orthodox seem to be winning out. It is basically their headquarters/secret lair/hidden castle, after all.

More Sepulchrous(sic.) Church - the tricky thing here is that some clever monk ran up there and opened that door to let in the godly shaft of light. Apparently one of the holiest sites in Christianity isn't above a few cheap parlor tricks...

The Dome of the Rock - Closed, unfortunately, because of some religious observance/protest/just general annoyance. The entire Dome/Al-Aqsa/Temple Mount complex is somewhat tricky to get into and an area of some controversy, and since it was both Friday and Shevuot, we had to content ourselves with taking photos from afar. A pity, since the Dome is probably the most recognizable landmark in all of Jerusalem. I'm pretty sure kaffir like me are completely banned from entering it, however.

Sand Witches - a major concern in desert climes. One minute you're sitting, enjoying a nice falafel, and the next you're a newt. And you don't get better, because it's a desert. You frakking bake to death and die.

BUT

I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain.

I couldn't resist posting a picture of the stunning greenhouse/garden paradise where Joe and Hilla were wed. Perhaps they will let me post more shots of the festivities.

Most pictures credit of Shahrin Ahsan.

Returned, Once Again

2009-06-09T14:11:00.001-04:00

Two trips in a row and a new job have kind of wiped me out - trying to figure out a new schedule and which of literally 1000s of pictures to post.

Stay tuned...

Ordem e Progresso

2009-04-24T11:20:00.001-04:00

Just spent a few weeks in Brasil - I'll post pictures and some stories about that a little later in the week.

Triumphant Sun, Pt. 22

2009-04-05T14:05:00.003-04:00

Evan was sitting in the lobby of the hotel, lighting a cigarette, when Samira returned from the university. He tried his best not to smirk at the look of surprise and confusion on her face when she saw him sitting at a table, tapping her key-card on the metal rim. She hesitated for a moment, poised on her front foot like a dancer who'd forgotten her routine.
“Left this in the cab. I would have called you, but...” He shrugged disarmingly.
“Oh.” The tone of Samira's voice sounded not at all amused. Nevertheless, she sat down at the table and pulled a cigarette from Evan's pack. He wordlessly handed her a lighter and she leaned back, inhaling deeply. “Thanks.”
“Not at all.” Evan stared at her through the curlicues of smoke. “How was your interview?”
“Interview?”
“Weren't you going to...
“Oh, it was fine,” interrupted Samira. “I guess. It could have been better.”
“I'm sorry to hear that.”
Evan heard the note of tension in her voice. “Any particular reason?”
“Just not very helpful, you know?”
Evan nodded. “I do. Welcome to Cairo.”
They sat in an awkward silence for a moment, neither willing to probe or break the other's reverie. The cigarettes smoldered down to crinkled stubs and Evan's coffee was reduced to grounds swirling in fractal patterns along the bottom of the cup.
Finally, Evan spoke. "So what is your story about?"
Samira stared at him for a moment with an unblinking gaze. Then her shoulders slumped and she dropped her eyes. "To be honest, I don't really know. I had one idea when I got here - I had a lot of ideas, honestly, and they all turned out to be wrong."
"Yeah, but what were you thinking of writing?" pressed Evan.
Samira sighed. "I don't know, it was something to do with the old houses in Cairo - you know, the ones all over Zamalek."
"Like the one you grew up in?"
Samira's eyes narrowed. "What does that mean? How do you know that?"
A smile crept up one side of Evan's face. "I didn't, but now I do.
Samira couldn't help but laugh. "I guess I deserved that. Anyways, I don't really know what I'm doing with it any more. There isn't really a story."
Evan thought for a moment. "You know, I have a friend who definitely has an in with the kind of people who are in those houses, if you want to talk to him."
"Really?"
"For sure. But...you have to talk to me about something."
Evan caught a flash of suspicion, quickly veiled, behind her slate-grey eyes. "What's that?"
He leaned forward. "Have you heard of General Abdel-Kareem?"

Triumphant Sun, Pt. 21

2009-03-22T16:41:00.004-04:00

Sorry about the overly-long wait. I've been working on doing a comprehensive edit of the past 20 chapters, and I only got around to putting up a new one this weekend.

Part 21:

Khalida Maalouf leaned back in her chair, sipping coffee slowly. She remained silent for a few moments.

“Congratulations, Samira,” she said finally. “That's quite an opportunity. What are you writing about?”

Samira twisted her lips as she searched for an answer. “That's the problem, ustaaza. I don't know yet. I think the editor assumed I'd hit the ground running, you know? Have contacts, have a story. I don't have anything. There are kiosk vendors who are more connected than I am.”

“And so you're here, is that right?”

Samira nodded ruefully. “I'd sort of hoped that you could put me onto a lead.”

Khalida rose from her chair, her measured movements betraying some frailty of age. She pottered about the room for a moment, searching through yellowing papers and clippings. Samira watched her in silence.

“You were here, what...eight, nine years ago?”

“Eleven this winter.”

Khalida grunted. “Well, things may different than you remember. In fact, they will be – I assume you're not living in that rambling old thing on Zamalek?”

“No, I have a hotel room.”

“Well, that's no good. You need to get out into the city, staying up in some old palace like the Hilton isn't worth a damn.” Khalida settled back into her seat and placed a stack of articles by Samira, shoving some others aside and causing a small avalanche of rustling paper across the desk. “I'm going to be honest with you, Samira. This city might not have been the best place for you. You have the wrong instincts here – your mother, your father, that history – it's not going to help you as a reporter. You have to start fresh.”

Samira felt an unexpected wave of indignation at the professor's words. “What are you talking about?”

“I'm trying to say that you were very sheltered.”

“That doesn't mean...”

“It means you might have a perspective that makes it hard to see what's really going on sometimes. You went to university in England, yes?”

“Yes. Oxford, Trinity College.” Samira felt flushed, frustrated. “But I went to work at newspaper in Manchester, straight afterwards. Court reporting, digging in the gutters, all that kind of thing.”

“The worst street in Manchester is still a bit more posh than almost any block here. Remember that. Look, Samira. I'm not saying that you're a bad reporter. If I remember, you were always a dedicated writer.”

“Then what's the problem?” demanded Samira.

“The problem is that you might be the wrong kind of reporter.”

Samira rose, snatching the articles off of the professor's desk. “You're the first person I visit after 10 years, and you meet me with this?”

“Samira...”

“Never mind. I can see what you think of me – spoiled little rich girl playing reporter? Is that about it?” She swiveled on her heel, stumbled slightly and stalked out the door, trying to wrap what remained of her dignity around her.

Triumphant Sun, Pt. 20

2009-02-22T16:19:00.003-05:00

Part 20:

Samira leaned heavily on the door of the main campus building. The wooden doors opened with a grudging squeal of hinges into the dim, arched stairway, rows of marble steps illuminated with shafts of lighting cutting through the dust filled air. It was quiet; the sounds of the city faded into a a distant hum. She padded softly up the steps, footfalls echoing under the arched ceiling. She'd always loved the High Orientalist drama of the building's architecture, particularly the high arches that absorbed sound like a vault.

A back door hidden in an out of the way nook led her out on to the roof of the building, overlooking the courtyard with its fountains and spreading trees providing pools of shade. The top of the AUC building was a strange and somewhat random mess of worker's shacks, air conditioners, skylights and a peculiar, winding path that traced its way around the entire complex. She followed it now, ignoring the bemused looks of a few of the university's laborers taking time off for a smoke. Finally, she found the door she'd been looking for and slipped inside.

She found the office without trouble. The door was ajar, still plastered in yellow, curling clips from the Times of London, Al-Akhbar, and a dozen other papers. The nameplate had fallen at an alarming angle, held on by a single rusted screw, and a folder bulging with students papers listed at a similarly perilous slant. With a light knock, she pushed the door open.

“Yaa ustaaza!” she cried. Her voice raised itself louder than she'd meant to, and Professor Khalida Maalouf started, nearly knocking over a cup of coffee. She peered at Samira over gold, half-moon reading glasses. “Remember me, ustaaza?”

Professor Maalouf blinked. “Samira? What are you doing here?” She raised herself out of her chair, brushing away the hand Samira offered in support and grasping her head for a firm kiss on each cheek. Samira felt a wave of nostalgia at the sandalwood scent of her imported perfume and the firm, dry sensation of her palms. “My god, how many years....” The diminutive woman rushed about the room moving papers and books, clearing a space in the encroaching chaos that had only reached new heights since Samira had last seen the office. A line of gilt-edged bone china coffee cups marched across an Alpine range of scholarly journals and essays like Hannibal's elephants, and she had to steady a few as Khalida shuffled paper aside.

“Sit down, sit down,” she insisted. “Here, I'll call Mehmet for some coffee.”

“Sayyida, that's not...”

“Oh, don't call me sayyida, please, it's absurd. I'm not Methsuelah,” the professor cut her off. “Mehmet!” she cried through the open door.

A tall, somewhat absurdly good-looking young man appeared at the door, the almost feminine angles of his face marred only by a patchy beard and the rough zebiba that came from excessive devotion during daily prayers. He wore a pair of ancient trousers, cuffed high in the style of devout Muslims, and, incongruously, a faded Hard Rock Cafe t-shirt. “Two coffees for Samira and myself, please,”she asked in English.”

“Yaa, sayyida.” He padded away silently on a pair of battered leather slippers that seemed to be held together more by faith than thread. “Incorrigible,” growled Khalida. “He's a nice enough boy, although I don't think he approves of my clothes.”

If he was as orthodox a Muslim as he appeared, thought Samira, she'd have to agree. Though the professor was almost seventy, she still dressed with the same cosmopolitan, European flair she'd always displayed – a product of the monarchy and the Nasser years, her elegantly draped shawl and skirt-suit bespoke the kind of expensive, international refinement that had once defined Cairo's elite.

“So, Samira – of all the people I'd expect to see, you are definitely one of the most surprising.”

“I only just arrived this week. I'm taking the Cairo desk here,” she said, pride slipping into her voice despite her best efforts.

Signal Restored

2009-02-19T09:39:00.000-05:00

After some battling, my computer has come back to life - a little more than 3 days, and a bit early for Easter, but we'll call it an Easter miracle and leave it at that.

Next installment should be up in the next few days while I try to figure out the most effective posting schedule. Anyone have any preferences for a day of the week?

Carrier Lost

2009-02-09T10:10:00.002-05:00

My computer just suffered a pretty massive failure, so at present I only have access to my work laptop. There may be a brief interruption in my posting, since I have severely limited access at the moment.

Sorry!

Triumphant Sun, Pt, 19

2009-02-06T10:21:00.006-05:00

Samira checked her pace before the arched gate of the American University. The guards appeared as lethargic as she rememberd, but she still approached with trepidation. She ran a hand along the fringe of her scarf, tucking stray hairs in place. It might be the most liberal campus in Egypt, but propriety might get her through the gauntlet she was about to run. The men at the gate had maintained, unusually for Cairo, scrupulous rules about who could and could not enter. Understandable for a center of moderate, Westernized education that the Muslim Brotherhood would probably dearly love to immolate.

The strange meeting in the car still revolved through her brain. Evan Rochester’s manner had simultaneously put her off and piqued her interest. The memory stuck with her, and she didn't feel certain that he was entirely appealing. If he'd simply tried to seduce her, she might have humored him, but the predatory cleverness in his eyes gave her a sensation she disliked. Still, she might have been too brusque...but the thing was over. Not much point in dwelling on it.

She walked up to the guard, a warm smile carefully placed on her lips, her passport poised between her fingers; in a moment, he had taken down her information and swept her through carelessly. The smoothness of the whole transaction almost made her double back in surprise. Surely he'd want more than name and passport number? If she'd had to convince him a little, lay a hand on his arm - it threw her off balance. It wasn't the '90s any more, she reflected. True, as a English national she wasn't precisely public enemy number one. With a bag full of needles and tubes of liquid, however, it seemed like security theater at its weakest.

Students swirled through the campus in clusters, forming and reforming around the pools of shade. They watched the games that played out on the basketball and tennis courts, clouds of reddish clay dust hovering over the players. The site was familiar to her, though fashions had moved on slightly from tennis whites. Though she knew that the tide of conservative Islam had risen even here, she was surprised by the number of hijabs she saw - none with the full head-to-toe, eye-slit niqab, but everything up to that point.

Parallels

2009-02-04T14:31:00.004-05:00

*Fill in truth/fiction cliche*

Reading the times a few days ago, I saw a story that surpassed anything I'd dare write about. A few months ago, I wrote a brief, 1,500-word story about smugglers running the Mexican border. Obviously, this is something that happens all the time, but I thought I was pushing credulity by including a running gun battle in the middle of the desert.

Here's the story:

http://vouescrever.blogspot.com/2008/08/la-frontera.html

Little did I know...

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/02/us/02pot.html?scp=1&sq=mexico%20border&st=cse

Drug smugglers parked a car transport trailer against the Mexican side of the border one day in December, dropped a ramp over the security fence, and drove two pickup trucks filled with marijuana onto Arizona soil.

Drug smugglers from Mexico burned their truck and the marijuana it carried before fleeing from border agents in Arizona.

As Border Patrol agents gave chase, a third truck appeared on the Mexican side and gunmen sprayed machine-gun fire over the fence at the agents. Smugglers in the first vehicles torched one truck and abandoned the other, with $1 million worth of marijuana still in the truck bed. Then they vaulted back over the barrier into Mexico’s Sonora state.
Despite huge enforcement actions on both sides of the Southwest border, the Mexican marijuana trade is more robust — and brazen — than ever, law enforcement officials say. Mexican drug cartels routinely transported industrial-size loads of marijuana in 2008, excavating new tunnels and adopting tactics like ramp-assisted smuggling to get their cargoes across undetected.

I'm really just speechless. Firing at the Border Patrol with automatic weapons is one thing, but creating a mobile ramp to drive over the fence is some seriously crazy maneuvering.

I also apologize for the missed installment last week - I'll blame it on the Border Patrol, and promise to have a brand-new post this week.

Triumphant Sun, Pt. 18

2009-01-24T11:25:00.005-05:00

A thousand apologies for this much-delayed post. I actually saw a surge of hits on Thursday night/Friday morning - it was really rewarding to see that people have a real interest in reading, but it also puts the pressure on me. I guess I just got caught up in the hectic turmoil of inauguration week.

I'd also like to ask two small favors of my readers - first, if you have any questions, suggestions or complaints about where the story has gone or where the plot is going, let me know! That's the beauty of this format. Second, if I don't know you or I just don't know that you're reading, leave me a note saying hello and wherever you're from. Maybe it's working at a writing & development firm, but I love to find out demographics.

Anyways, here's Part 18:

Triumphant Sun

Evan recalled a connection between Samira's father and General Abdel-Kareem. There wasn't much chance that it had anything to do with his investigation, but he might find something he could use, some lead he could follow. He'd read an interview with Lena Crane, the English actress who married an Egyptian, General Rahman and made a splash in the London tabloids. To find his daughter here in Cairo so many years later was a lucky break.

He shook his head. She was staring at him curiously, trying to parse what meaning he might have gleaned from her name. That fixed gaze had a disconcerting effect on
him; he found himself biting at the back of his dry lips in distraction

“Did you know my father?” she asked.

“No, no. But I knew of him. Read about him. Are they here now, or in London?”

“Both passed away; my father here, my mother in London a few years ago.” She paused. “Allah yarhamhum.” She added the Arabic blessing for the dead almost as an afterthought, a dimly remembered but instinctive reaction. “What brought you to Cairo, then?”

Evan opened his mouth to speak but stopped for a moment. Too direct, and she might shy away from helping him. On the other hand, if he lost track of her it would be difficult to find her easily among Cairo's millions. “I'm writing a story, actually. It's being going on for a while now. Hopefully I'll be able to file it soon.”

An expression Evan couldn't identify flicked across Samira's face. Did she already know who he was after, what he was chasing? He pressed on. “You know this city well, don't you?”

“It's been more than a few years,” she replied.

“Still, you might be able to help me out. I'm sure of it, actually.” He pulled a card from his pocket and offered it to her. “Could I get a number, something to get a hold of you later on? I might have a few questions for you.”

Samira took the card, examined it for a moment and slipped it into her purse as the taxi rolled to a stop in front of the American University campus. She dropped a five-pound note in the driver's hand and stepped smoothly out of the cab.

“I'll let you know,” she said over her shoulder.

Evan sat for a moment, watching her fade into the hustling crowd through the metal frame of the taxi's open door. He felt a vague sense of guilt mixed with satisfaction as he toyed with the hotel key-card that had fallen, unseen, out of her pocket and onto the seat as she left. Maybe he should have let her know, but after she brushed him off that way, it was really his only chance. He grinned as he paid the driver the rest of his fare.

Triumphant Sun, Pt. 17

2009-01-16T08:12:00.003-05:00

The name ticked through Evan's head, turning gears of recollection as it went. Something about the juxtaposition of Arabic and English stirred vague memories.

"I feel I've met you somewhere," he confessed. "I can't really remember, though."

Her eyes never wavered from his face, their gaze sharp and disconcerting. "No, I don't think so."

"You're sure about that?"

She nodded. "Yes."

He leaned back in his seat and watched the city crawl by for a moment. Across the street, soldiers were piling wearily out of a dilapidated, fabric-covered truck, battered rifles slung across their backs. They dropped down from the wooden benches in the back one by one in a disorderly line, marshalling out slowly and without much effort. Put it in black-and-white, Evan thought, and you had documentary footage from the Second World War.

"If you insist, then, Ms. Crane. I guess we haven't met, but I'm not going to stop trying to figure it out."

The smile pulled at her lips again. It had a transforming effect on her face - from a sharp severity anchored by those inescapable eyes, her expression became momentarily open and inviting, her eyes looking almost surprised, they opened so wide.

"Good luck to you in that...Evan, was it?"

"Yes, Evan Rochester. Here, take my card. Evan fished through his wallet and handed one to her, slightly battered and dusty from kicking around the chaos in his billfold. "I've been here a while, if you need any tips. Places to go, not to go. Things like that."

This time she actually laughed. "I think nineteen years in this city more than prepared me. But thank you, Evan."

"Nineteen years?" Evan looked critically at her. They sat in silence for a moment. "But you've only just arrived."

"Hrm?" She raised an eyebrow at him.

He reached over and tapped the slim silver watch on her wrist. "Your watch is on..." Evan twisted his head sideways. "It looks like Greenwich time."

It was strange to see a brown woman blush the way, like someone had poured red wine into a cup of coffee. "Well, you've got me there, Mr. Rochester."

"So when was the last time you were here?"

She sighed. "Almost ten years. We left when my father died, and my mother moved back to England to write for a magazine."

The gears stopped turning in Evan's head and clicked together so clearly he could almost hear it in his head.

"Samira Mohammad Crane Rahman? As in Lena Crane and Khalil Mohammad Rahman?"

She nodded slowly.

Triumphant Sun, Pt. 16

2009-01-09T00:06:00.005-05:00

I hope to be bringing regular updates throughout the New Year - 52 minimum, inshallah. That's my resolution, and I'm sticking to it if it kills me.

It may yet kill me.

Also, if anyone who was in Egypt can remind me of the name of those delicious fried-dough pastries people had for breakfast, I'd be much obliged. I can't find a reference in my blog, diary, or on the internet.

Edit - fateer! I remembered.

Thanks!

***

Evan munched contentedly on his fateer, watching the flow of pedestrians eddy and flow around the chaos of the sidewalks. An old woman leaned against the cracking plaster of the wall down the street, wrapped in black rags and a white hijab, proffering a lined hand for alms. Her eyes gazed into the middle distance with the vague confusion of the almost blind. Evan counted out the change from Hamid and placed it in her outstretched palm.

“Shukran, shukran ya basha,” she began to thank Evan.

“No, it's nothing.” Evan walked to the corner and finished his breakfast, leaning against the dusty wall. He felt a vague sense of guilt eating next to the blind woman. She couldn't see him and his meal was as common and basic as they came, he couldn't help feeling over-indulgent as he licked the last of the honey from his fingers. The sun was beginning to peek over the rooftops, sending bars of light cascading down the street, and on an impulse, Evan decided to take a cab down to Islamic Cairo. He wouldn't find a lead there – far from it – but at present, the dry heat and buzz of the city made him wish for nothing more than to sit in the shade of an alley and pass the day smoking shisha and reading.

Evan knew he ought to try to hunt down someone at the Mogamma, but the idea of spending the day in the faded, claustrophobic rooms of that hellish building was too daunting. He stepped to the corner and flagged down a taxi that was slowing to a halt in front of the café across the street. Ducking under the sill, he slipped into the bead-covered back seat.

A woman stood frozen in the opposite door of the cab, half crouched in the act of entering the car. She wore a broad, brightly patterned teal headscarf that draped loosely around the lower half of her hair and western jeans tucked into high leather boots. For a moment she made as if to tug her scarf up around the loose waves of hair gleaming blackish red in the sun, then dropped them to her side and seated herself beside him

“Sorry...” began Evan in Arabic.

“It's fine. I'm going to the American University,” she said brusquely in English. “You?”

Evan was taken aback by the sudden switch in language. “How'd you know I speak English?” was all he could blurt out.

She looked him up and down, her grey-green irises raking quickly across him. A smile twitched at her mouth. “It's obvious. So, where are you going?”

The cab driver turned around and stared at the two. “Excuse me, but where to?”

“The American University is fine,” said Evan. “That's close to where I'm going.” He turned back to the woman, still staring at him with suspicion in her eyes and amusement on her lips. “Sorry, but I'm very inconsiderate. My name is Evan Rochester.” He proffered his hand.

She shook it lightly, her hands dry and slightly cool. “Samira Mohammed Crane.”

War...War Never Changes

2009-01-07T14:20:00.004-05:00

Required background reading:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/04/weekinreview/04cohen.html?scp=2&sq=Israel%20twitter&st=cse

What's the story here? Basically, this:

The Israel Defense Forces, recognizing that success in neutralizing the Hamas movement in Gaza is as much a public relations challenge as a military one, has enlisted an arsenal of Internet tools to take their message directly to a global audience. There is a military channel on the video-sharing site YouTube where you can watch suspected Hamas sites being obliterated by ordnance; blogs that spread the message of the foreign affairs ministry; and in the newest wrinkle, a news conference conducted through the microblogging service Twitter.
"Since the definition of war has changed, the definition of public diplomacy has to change as well," said David Saranga, the head of media relations for the Israeli consulate in New York, which conducted the Twitter news conference on Tuesday.

I can't even begin to describe how bizarrely post-modern this is. The idea of using Twitter - one of the most inane technologies of our time - to create the narrative of a war in Gaza just twists my brain completely.

I'm sure that statements like this will be of great solace to the Gazans receiving missiles and shells on their heads.

Question from peoplesworld: 40 years of military confrontation hasn't brought security to Israel, why is this different?
Answer from israelconsulate: We hav 2 prtct R ctzens 2, only way fwd through neogtiations, & left Gaza in 05. y Hamas launch missiles not peace?

EhsanAhmad: you didn't get my point that Hammas is an elected govt and if u keep attacking them they got right to attack you
israelconsulate: if hamas's goal were 2 btr the lives of its cit. they wouldn't target IL. they would invest in edu/hlth not in bombs
backlotops: 1 side has to stop. Why continue what hasn't worked (mass arial/grnd retaliation)? Arab Peace Initiative?
israelconsulate: we R pro nego. crntly tlks r held w the PA + tlks on the 2 state soln. we talk only w/ ppl who accept R rt 2 live.

What a shame that international law has not made a decision about the "rt 2 live." Truly this is one of the pressing issues of our times!

Seriously, Israel? This trivializes the war beyond the wildest dreams of the 24-hour news networks; they might turn it into camera fodder and meaningless backdrops for attractive reporters to bubble nonsense in front of, but to reduce the casus belli to "We hav 2 prtct R ctzens 2" is just insulting.

The kind of communication that Twitter represents is the worst sort that the internet encourages - the constant, unending, lightning-fast torrent of response to absolutely nothing. It's the kind of place where you'd post about what you album you're currently listening to for the delectation of the unthinking cyber-mob. It is, in short, an inappropriate venue for discussing the siege and invasion of a city.

I can only imagine what Genghis Khan's Twitter might have looked like.

'took smrkand 2day. piles o/skulls, rzed wall. was a gud day. 2morrow maybe rape,pillage?'

Triumphant Sun, Pt. 15

2008-12-19T01:25:00.002-05:00

Much delayed, I'm afraid. I'm outlining the plot for the next few installments - rest assured great things shall happen. But I want it to really be good, so I'm taking my time crafting that part.

***

Billowing clouds of off-white smoke obscured the street from the entrance of Evan’s building. He peered into the haze and perceived the shape of an old pickup truck, spewing out clouds of some mosquito repellent. Probably DDT, he reflected ruefully. Beams of sunlight filtered through the air, refracted into twisting edges of light. He seemed trapped in a bubble – unable to see beyond the corner of the street, the sounds of the city muffled and distant.

For a moment, he paused, watching the mist swirl, then pushed through, holding his breath, to clearer air down the street. Tendrils of white curled around the trees and fences, snaking under the cars and casting the whole scene in a kind of impressionist fog. A soldier leaned, head bent in the act of lighting a cigarette, against his wooden post. Evan took a deep breath, and coughed slightly. An ache in his side reminded him that he still hadn't eaten yet, and he headed for the corner.

A small crowd had queued in front of the compact pastry stall, crouched at the corner of two dilapidated colonial buildings, run by a Saidi named Hamid. His ashy, charcoal skin and oddly square, professorial spectacles gave him the demeanour of a tenured professor of African Literature. He had an aversion to smoking that relaxed only long enough for him to share his clientele with the ahwa across the street, but he chewed packs of imported gum with a singular ferocity.

"Sabah al-khayr," called Evan as he reached the stall.

"Sabah al-nour, sabah al-fuul, replied Hamid effusively, playing the old Egyptian game of topping another's greeting with one's own, more dramatic reply. Thus, 'morning of goodness' gave way to 'morning of light' - and, oddly, of chickpeas. Uncontrolled, it could swing back and forth until someone dropped a game-stopping 'Morning of Allah,' which, for obvious reasons, could not really be topped.

"Just a couple with honey, Hamid." Evan's stomach rumbled as he watched the man expertly flip circles of flat, light pastry dough onto a griddle and pour honey from a rusty iron bowl. The result was a flaky, sweet meal that was good just as long as it remained hot.

Drinkwater's Cambridge

2008-12-04T23:04:00.008-05:00

Gary Drinkwater looks the part of a seasoned veteran of Boston's menswear scene. With a grey beard that brings to mind Ernest Hemingway and an elegant, understated style, he fits in perfectly at his Porter Square store, Drinkwater's of Cambridge.

The quirky, studio-sized retail space is the result of four years of what Mr. Drinkwater calls “bootstrapping” - he built the business with his savings and turned it into a profitable enterprise with the sweat of his own brow. He runs the store without employees and relies on a loyal, “quietly affluent” customer base.

A heavy antique table dominates the center of the showroom, covered in a glittering array of 4-fold ties from makers like Robert Talbott and shirtings from Hilditch & Key. In fact, the store has a partnership with the antique shop “Room With A View,” so if you need to buy a 19th century French armoire or a gilded lamp when you pick up your suit, Drinkwater's is prepared. Despite this, the prices are affordable – Mr. Drinkwater says he's appealing to people who want to move up from brands like Banana Republic and Bennetton while staying beneath the stratospheric expense of a Louis Boston or Ermenegildo Zegna.

A local company from Lawrence, Southwick Clothing, cuts all of the suits and odd jackets for the store. Most of them are from a fairly conservative but sleek 3-button profile called Nicola, although Mr. Drinkwater's fondness for checks and Prince of Wales patterns is displayed in the window. Indeed, dressing and arranging mannequins is where he got his start in the clothing business over 25 years ago, and his experience in the area shows. One of the suits will run you between $700 and $1300, while a sportcoat goes for $600 to $900.

The other half of the store holds the streetwear lines from new brands like Engineered Garments and European companies such as Wellansteyn. Again, the emphasis is on quality construction and reasonable, although not cheap, prices. All the bases are covered – you could build your entire wardrobe here. Shoes come from Paraboot, a French company that became famous making boots for paratroopers, and there is even a selection of pocket squares in silk and Irish linen($18). Details are important, and a well-folded pocket square or proper cufflinks can set clothes apart.

But the greatest attraction is Mr. Drinkwater's personal attention to detail and encyclopaedic knowledge of men's clothing. From Louis Boston to the now-defunct Stonestreet's in Harvard Square, he's seen most of what there is to see in Boston's sartorial world.

Behind the register where he hand-writes credit-card charge slips, a pair of patched, frayed, hippy-era bell-bottom jeans hangs on the wall. They are a reminder of his younger days as an art student, a partly ironic and partly nostalgic symbol of another era of clothing.

Work, Work, Work...

2008-12-04T23:04:00.006-05:00

One of my jobs just launched a blog, and as part of the cycle of incestuous web references, I felt that I should drop a link to it. It's one of my two jobs - the other being Libretto - and it's a great place to work. Basically we work with kids one-on-one, tutoring them in how to write essays, research papers, letters, pretty much anything that uses words.

Obviously those who know me have probably heard plenty of stories, and I'd be willing to bet most of you reading already know me! I won't go into the gory details, but it's a good place that I think is doing pretty important work. So that's always good.

Triumphant Sun, Pt. 14

2008-11-20T23:16:00.001-05:00

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.

Triumphant Sun, Pt. 13.5

2008-11-13T22:31:00.000-05:00

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.

What Twisted Mind...

2008-11-11T14:39:00.004-05:00

...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.

Triumphant Sun, Pt. 13

2008-11-06T23:18:00.010-05:00

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

2008-11-06T11:09:00.003-05:00

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...

Triumphant Sun, Pt. 12

2008-10-30T22:17:00.005-04:00

I am trying to get the complete story uploaded, but unfortunately, the internet is not cooperating. Here's a bit of the next installment until I get it sorted out. Sorry about all the hold-ups and delays - once I get this running it should be a fair bit smoother.

Triumphant Sun, Pt. 12

In some, the men simply conversed among each other; in others, they inspected crates, containers, even a stack of rifles. In isolation, they proved nothing. But with the framework he had begun to perceive from his conversation with Fuad, they might be a definitive step forward. Unfortunately they were also adrift, lacking reference; though the 'what' was clear, the 'who, where, when' remained absent.

Said had dropped them in his lap and then promptly vanished, in an extremely perplexing and even slightly worrying fashion. The man had an angle, of that there was no doubt. But again, it lay in a vacuum, disconnected from everything else. He threw open the doors of the balcony to let air into the stuffy room, seated himself with a notepad on a plastic chair and began to sketch out his ideas on the pad.

In one corner, Said. In another, Fuad's subtle hints. The photos in the center, a strong line linking them to the Iranian and a weak, dashed one to the Afghan. General Abdel-Kareem went on too, with another strong line to the photographs. After some thought he put Carlos on the edge – with his fingers in every pie in city, he had a tendency to crop up in the most unexpected places.

His glass of coffee had reached the bitter dregs, swirling in the bottom. He peered into the cup, wondering if there was another sip there, but decided against it. In the kitchen, he found that he'd forgotten, yet again, to stock the refrigerator with anything for breakfast.

For a moment he leaned against the door, forehead braced on his arm, mentally berating himself. Then he grabbed a handful of Egpytian pounds, snagged his keys and headed out and down the street to grab a plate of fuul and a pastry at a local dive.

Triumphant Sun - Behind some clouds

2008-10-30T11:31:00.002-04:00

Will be coming later today...I think I'm going to move to a Thursday posting schedule because it works better with my week.

I'll also be posting a .pdf and a .doc of the whole story, to date, so that you can read it in chronological, rather than reverse-chronological, order.

Triumphant Sun, Pt. 11

2008-10-23T09:49:00.003-04:00

A rattling pickup trundled beneath his window, the steel canisters of cooking gas clanking back and forth in its bed. It made slow rounds on the street below, stopping at each building to unload its delicate cargo. An Egyptian army truck hurtled by, filled to the brim with underpaid conscripts slumped in dejected rows on narrow wooden benches. The sight brought Evan back to the problem that had been tormenting and tantalizing him – the vast invisible web of connections stretching through aircraft holds and car trunks and poppy fields that funneled a stupefying narcotic stream across the deserts and mountains and valleys of the Middle East.

The unbearable complexity of the idea oppressed him. He felt unable to get a handle on it, a vast smooth globe that glimmered in his mind's eye but eluded his grasp. Already he'd wandered far past the bounds of journalistic practice – he had nothing on which to hang a story, no quotes, no sources. He irritably scratched at his arm, picking at a sore despite his best instinct to let it lie. With a force of effort, he pushed his hand down to the railing. The world troubled him, and the story most of all, a mere amorphous collection of suspicions and allegations – and the photos.

In the thrill of pursuing Fuad and his underworld allegiances, he'd entirely forgotten the photos Said had delivered to him. An aura of distrust hung around them – that sort of thing felt too impossible to be true. Nevertheless, the possibility was too tempting to ignore.

He sat down in a decaying armchair and drew the photos out, laying them out in an arc across the glass table before him. They had the vague, distant quality of a telephoto lens to them, like the paparazzi shots that appeared in glossy celebrity magazines. A dusty milieu and a figure in military uniform featured prominently in them, mingling with militant figures clad in the robes and scarves of mountain guerrillas. Kalashnikovs featured prominently with a kind of totemic significance.

Egypt, 1941

2008-10-15T19:26:00.004-04:00

In September of 1941, tensions were mounting daily as the war in Europe ground on and Japan expanded its Pacific holdings. U-Boats and warplanes armed with torpedoes hunted shipping that supplied England and the Allied nations, and sometimes, they made mistakes.

One of those mistakes was the Steel Seafarer - an American merchant vessel which was hit by a torpedo in the Red Sea and promptly sank. Presumably, a German warplane had mistaken it for a British freighter and attacked during the night watch. Fortunately, the crew escaped onto lifeboats and made it away from the ruined hulk, which slipped beneath the waves less than half an hour after the strike. Some were saved by a Danish freighter, but the majority reached the coast under heavy seas, and eventually made their way back across the desert to Cairo, and eventually, home.

My grandfather was a member of the Merchant Marine aboard the Seafarer, and through some family connections, namely my half-aunt Marlene Beggs we've dug up a set of pictures from the incident, as well as clippings from newspapers that reported on it. I think they're pretty interesting, in all.

You can click the photos for bigger images

A photo of me juxtaposed with my grandfather, in nearly identical poses and settings.

Albert Beggs on the Pyramids.

News clippings describing the incident.

Grandfather Albert riding a camel.

Triumphant Sun, Pt. 10

2008-10-09T00:10:00.006-04:00

Evan awoke in near darkness, his disorientation almost complete. He stared at the crazed lines and cracks that cut his ceiling into broken shards of ancient plaster. Outside, the muezzin howled the morning prayer, echoing over the rumbling sounds of the city. As he finished another began, then another and another, tumbling over each other in a patchwork symphony of Quranic verses.

He fumbled at his bedside table for a glass of water, knocking his keys and watch to the floor with a metallic crash. A pervasive fatigue enveloped him as he levered himself to sit on the edge of his bed. The floor felt grainy beneath his bare feet so he shuffled his feet into a pair of beaten rubber slippers. The venetian blinds clattered back and forth in the slight breeze, sending erratic blades of light tumbling across the room, illuminating the dust that hung in the air.

Evan peered out the cramped kitchen window as he made coffee in the Arabic style, letting the powder-like grounds steep slowly in a small tin pot with sugar, cardamom and cinnamon. The window opened onto a peculiar shaft that ran the length of his building, supposedly bringing air to cramped interior rooms. Pipes and byzantine tangles of wiring snaked through it, covered in the sand and dust of forty or fifty years. It all hung together in an “Egyptian fix” – slapped together with whatever came to hand until it broke again, hopefully on someone else’s watch.

Evan closed the window shutter and walked to the balcony of the apartment, cradling the steaming glass of coffee in his hand. The first sip brought him awake and upright, the intensity of the dual flavors of coffee and sugar jolting him out of the morning stupor. He’d had no intention of waking so early, but sometimes he still found himself dragged from sleep by the calling of the muezzins. It was a sound at once ethereal and comfortingly familiar – on a trip across the Mediterranean a few months ago, he’d felt the lack of it every morning.

Minarets jutted out over the city like exclamation points – some mere crumbling towers of shoddy brick, others modern stone edifices and a few, selected examples of medieval Islamic architecture. Cairo earned the epitaph “City of a Thousand Minarets” several times over, but the effect became stranger and more affecting with odd, new juxtapositions. A new phenomenon outnumbered the spires – satellite dishes dotting every rooftop, sometimes clustering together like a growth, sprouting out of the fabric of the city. More popped up every day, tenuously wired and affixed to whatever surface provided a modicum of space.

Many of the buildings were unfinished, too – steel bars twisting up out of the concrete giving the roofs a vicious, unfinished appearance. Builders left them that way to dodge taxes – an incomplete building wouldn’t get taxed by the government. That never stopped squatters from moving out onto the exposed roofs, setting up rambling shanty-towns that collapsed upon themselves with depressing regularity. One of the thousands of forgotten, unimportant scandals that got lost in the wandering streets.

Triumphant Sun, Pt. 9

2008-10-01T23:00:00.002-04:00

Samira realized that there might be more old mansions like her father's, crumbling slowly under the endless sun. So many of the old families had moved on, to new, fortress-like homes, or out of Egypt entirely. Some day in the far future, their residences might be the object of study, like the ruined temples of Karnak and Aswan. She imagined sand creeping in the shattered windows, while whole tribes of feral cats prowled the grounds. The trees might be slowly reduced to ash and swept away in the endless wind.

The poignancy of the idea saddened her – but she realized that in it lay a potential spark of creation. There might be a feature in the idea – a profile of the noble houses of Cairo, laid low by time and neglect. She could imagine her father’s rage and disapproval, and smiled. She did not remember him spending much time in the house itself, but his presence had lingered even when he left.

She particularly remembered the dressing table where he kept a small castle of decanters and bottles, a wooden humidor for cigars and various other trappings of Western decadence. No one touched it – not her mother, and not the servants, devout Muslims that they were.

Occasionally he would take it upon himself to clean the tray off, clouds of dust floating up from the crystal and glass in the afternoon sun. As a little girl she used to sneak up and lift the heavy tops to smell the exotic, alcoholic scents of the amber and ruby liquids glittering within. Later, once she was older, she used to sneak a nip or two, praying that he wouldn't notice the dusty fingerprints on the side.

A small cluster of students crossed the street towards her. She remembered that the American University dorms were only a few blocks away, and she began wandering towards them. One of the stray cats scrambled up onto the dividing wall and paced for a while above her head, threading through the overgrown wire before leaping down and scurrying off into the maze of streets.

She stopped across the road and watched for a while as students, some foreign but many Egyptian, filtered in and out through the glass doors. Though she had never attended, Samira had fond memories of lounging in the main quads and courtyards of the University; and other, more vibrant memories of a young Irishman on his semester abroad who had so assiduously courted her. His piercingly grey-green eyes stood out vividly in her memory, along with the crooked smile he would flash at her.

With a shake of her head, she tore away the cobwebs of years past and turned towards home. The sun had sunk low and the full weight of her fatigue began to press down on her. The students continued their boisterous laughter as she turned on her heel and headed away.

Triumphant Sun, Pt. 8

2008-09-24T22:58:00.001-04:00

The garden had so overgrown the walls of the house that Samira could not discern whether anyone still occupied it. In truth, she could not decide if she really wanted to know. A perverse and contrary instinct pulled her to the place; now that she stood before it, regret suffused her. She let her hand fall down the gnarled iron of the gate.

As she stood, an elderly man shuffled down the street, each hand balancing a metal plate dotted with glasses of tea. He wore a long robe, the end spattered with dust and grime from the street, and his head was wrapped with a grey cloth. Deep lines carved his face, which crinked into a bemused smile when he saw her standing on the sidewalk, arm outstretched.

“Yaa basha,” she called, checking her shawl to make sure it was at a modest level around her head. “I have a question.”

“Yes, mademoiselle?” He said the French word with a rhetorical flourish; Samira felt he might have actually bowed had he not been burdened with the trays of tea.

“Who lives in this house, now?”

The man peered up at the house for a moment. “I think it is almost always empty. Sometimes there are cars, though. But I do not know who it has been in many years – not since Khaleel Rahman left.”

Samira's breath caught in her throat. “You know Khaleel Rahman?”

The man drew himself up with a dilapidated pride. “I was bawab here for 10 years.” His expression fell slightly. “But then, I joined the army.”

She tried to piece together a memory of this wizened man but could not. In her memory, the bawab had been a heavy-set, insouciant man with a deep voice and a barrel chest. No matter how many years had passed, she could not see him transformed into this diminutive figure.

“When was this?”

The man thought for a while, blinking rheumy grey eyes. “Maybe 25, 30 years ago I left? But I remember. Rahman was a great man.”

The hell he was, though Samira to herself. “Shukran, basha,” she replied out loud and inclined her head. He hefted the trays and continued down the street at the same slow, steady pace, slippered feet falling on the uneven pavement with rhythmic slaps.

Triumphant Sun, Pt. 7

2008-09-20T20:21:00.002-04:00

If Fuad benefited from the war, he had to be getting help from the Americans. With US troops in Afghanistan, Iraq and the Gulf, he could use a supply chain that stretched all the way across the Middle East, bypassing Afghan smugglers and Turkish drug runners. The Afghan would be able to cut costs and take advantage of military security. If he could find proof that Abdel-Kareem was mixed up with the operation, it would come together.

For a while, he stared out the tinted windows of the sedan. The city seemed impossibly remote from him, not truly there but merely projected onto the side of the car. His mind was far away, trying to trace the patterns, spiralling out from the Afghan highlands like a woven carpet. Which Americans were involved? He vaguely remembered a story about American drug runners using the coffins of slain soldiers. That didn't seem the likeliest scenario, though.

If Abdel-Kareem was involved, that meant the military would also be involved. Every year, millions of dollars in military aid flowed from the United States to Egypt. Some of that could easily be diverted to running drugs out of the remoter areas of occupied Afghanistan. Fuad wouldn't talk, obviously, but someone else in the chain might. He absentmindedly took the finger-length brick of hash and secreted it away in a pocket.

“So you do opium and guns too, Fuad?” he asked. “Maybe I need something else, I come back to you?”

Fuad gave him a searching look. “Maybe so. But guns, never. Too much risk, too little money. But for now, we have a deal?”

Evan nodded. He would have killed to have his pocket recorder with him right now. He wasn't sure yet what the significance of Fuad avoiding weapons was, but he knew it had to be there. Mentally, he filed it away for future use.

He produced a wad of a battered Egyptian pounds and thumbed through them for the least frayed bills. Money in Cairo circulated endlessly, the cheap paper steadily disintegrating further and further. More than once, Evan's payments had been rebuffed by clerks disdainful of the wretched state of his currency. He handed over the money and Fuad signalled for the driver to pull over. The car rolled to a halt before the front gate of the Nile Hilton under the bored, impassive gazes of the guards.

“This place is good for you?” asked Fuad.

“It's as good as any.”

“Ma'salaam,,” said the Afghan in a firmly dismissive tone. Obviously he didn't much trust Evan.

“Ma'salaam,” replied Evan as he stepped from the car. In front of the armed soldiers, the hashish felt heavy in his pocket. Fuad's driver pulled away from the curb in a cloud of dust and Evan looked after it as it faded into the snarls of traffic, a shimmering mirage of heat hanging over the square.

Staying the Course

2008-09-18T01:12:00.003-04:00

Sorry - I'm running a bit behind because I just started a new job this morning and I have a big writing project to wrap for the other one. I don't want to to rush the next installment because it's going to be important to the plot and I want it to make sense. Anyways, it should be up by the end of the week and then we'll be back on schedule.

Also, my tracker widget tells me I got a spike of viewers yesterday, which I can only attribute to the McCain post. I'm glad you enjoyed it. Tell your friends! Also, read the story. 'Cause that's why I'm here.

Consolation prize - some pictures of Cairo, to get you in the mood.

John McCain Created the Blackberry

2008-09-16T14:34:00.003-04:00

Although Al Gore may have created the internet, John McCain has done him one better by Creating the Blackberry.

Triumphant Sun, Pt. 6

2008-09-10T23:50:00.003-04:00

Evan stared at the paper before him, trying to decipher the scrawling of the last hour. He took another sip of bitter tea and forced himself to focus on the mess of names and dates that formed the bare skeleton of the story. Coherence hovered at the edges of thought, slipping away whenever he tried to fix upon it. The pieces of the affair lay before him, but he couldn't assemble them. There seemed to be no connection between the various parts – who was the Iranian, Said, for instance? What interest could he have in the scandals of an Egyptian general?

It occurred to him that Carlos might be able to help him after all. He just had to approach it from the right angle. He quickly called and watched the taxis maneuver before him as the phone rang.

“Miss me so soon?” drawled Carlos sardonically.

“Yeah, yeah. Funny. Look, you have Fuad's number?”

“Fuad, like Fuad al-Afghani?”

“Yeah, that one.”

“Well, I got his number, but...no offense on this, but I don't think he'd like it if I gave his number to a journalist. That's just the way he is.”

“Well, maybe you could just set something up for me. Tell him I want to buy something.”

Evan could practically hear the gears turning in Carlos' head as he worked the angles. “OK, sure, where are you now?”

“I'm in an ahwa on 26^th July, the one next to the butcher.”

“I guess that works. I'll give him a call and ask if he can meet you there.”

“Thanks, Carlos. I owe you one.”

“You owe me more than one, Rochester.”

Evan settled back in his seat and asked for more tea from the young boy who sat on his heels, watching a soccer game on a flickering color television. He realized that he had no idea who or what to keep an eye out for – indeed, he knew little more about Fuad other than his reputation as an underworld dealmaker and smuggler, his friendship with Carlos and his Pashtun roots. But if Evan knew about him, than so did other, more important people – and the Aghan's continued presence and survival in Egypt meant he had the right connections, connections Evan could use.

He thought it unlikely that Fuad would agree to go on the record about anything, even anonymously, but he might lead Evan to the loose string that would unravel the whole mess.

A grey sedan rolled to a halt in front of the ahwa and let out a tall, rail-thin man in a tight-fitting black suit, a kaffiyeh wrapped around his neck. Aviator sunglasses shielded his eyes, gold rims flashing in the sun. He walked to Evan's table and peered down at him, long fingers rubbing against each other.

“Carlos tells me you want to talk.”

Evan looked up at his interlocutor. Fuad had a rich, sleek look about him, the kind that comes with plenty of money. “I was hoping we might be able to do business.”
“This way, then,” Fuad said, gesturing at his car.

Evan entered the car behind the Afghan, who gestured at his driver to pull away from the curb. Leather and wood panelled the inside of the Mercedes, old but well-preserved. Fuad took a cigarette from the inside of his coat and lit it, then leaned back. He removed his glasses to reveal disconcertingly bright green eyes that seemed to search Evan for clues.

“I hear you are a journalist.”

“Where'd you hear that?”

Fuad waved his hand dismissively through the curling smoke. “I'm not going to give you an interview, if you think this.”

Evan grinned. “I didn't really expect it.”

“What do you want, then?”

“Hashish, maybe?”

Now Fuad smiled like a shark with gold teeth. “This I like to hear. How much?”

“200 pounds?”

Fuad rapped on the back of his driver's seat and received a neatly wrapped package from him. He snapped open a blade, made a few quick incisions, and produced a thin brick of hash which he wrapped again in foil.

“Where do you get it?” asked Evan, feigning nonchalance. “I mean, which country?”

“Afghanistan, of course. Everything that is the best comes from Afghanistan. You want hash, opium, heroin, jihadis – my country is king.” Fuad said this last with a kind of twinkling, ironic pride.

“Of course,” said Evan, “But I thought the war would make this difficult.”

“Business is maybe a little harder,” conceded Fuad. “But everything is an opportunity. This I learned a long time ago. So for me, I make this war an opportunity. The United States invade, make it more expensive for everyone else, but for me – cheaper. With a little help, so I can bring you the best prices.”

In that moment, it became clear to Evan. The loose string unravelled into a whole messy tapestry, and he had to grind his teeth to avoid gasping in front of Fuad.

Triumphant Sun. pt 5

2008-09-03T20:42:00.000-04:00

Outside, the air had almost cleared. Samira checked her blood sugar and decide to go for a walk. Who knew what might have changed in the years since she'd been gone? She rummaged in her luggage for a pair of trousers, looped the blue silk of her scarf loosely around her head and slipped into a pair of shoes more suited for navigating the treacherous paving of Cairo.

The noise of the city hit her in a roaring gale. She'd been so dazed from the flight that she'd barely noticed, but now, on the street, it was almost unbearable. For a moment she considered hailing a cab, but decided that she needed to walk. The scent of diesel and heat played on her memories, bringing back a flood of disassociated images – the gleaming metal boot of the family sedan, a moonlit night on the roof of the house, the feeling of her tiny fingers encapsulated in the calloused hand of her father.

She paused for a moment in the center of 6^th October Bridge. A few feluccas plied the water beneath, one filled with raucous tourists and blasting music. From this spot, the river looked curiously petty and unimportant. As a girl, it seemed to extend forever, and she'd forever heard about how it was the heart and lifeblood of Egypt. But the water in front of her now was dull and murky, narrower than the Thames and filled with petty fishing craft instead of freighters and speedboats.

With a sigh, she turned towards Zamalek and walked on, fingers trailing along the railing of the bridge. A few cars honked as they rolled by, although she wasn't sure whether it was at her or just part of the general chaos.

Reaching the the end of the bridge, she turned off into the quieter streets that made up the rest of Zamalek, winding avenues lined with high walls and trees arcing over the scarred pavement. For a while, she walked by the sprawling, dilapidated grounds of the Gezira Club, with its derelict buildings and overgrown plants. Its history was filled with different uses – a racing track, a social venue, an athletic club. It seemed permanently half in use and half in decay, a colonial relic dissolving into obscurity but hanging on by the strength of its reputation.

It also played host to a horde of horse-drawn carts, giving it a pungent odor of manure which wafted across the avenue. Many of the carriages were elaborate and astonishingly tacky affairs that hauled tourists around the island at exorbitant rates.

The guards of the Russian Embassy stared impassively through her as she passed in front of it. Half of the buildings on the island were embassies and government offices. The thought disquieted her.

A few boys kicked a football back and forth on the street, bouncing it off of cars and trees and flipping it with their heels. There was no structure to the game – it flowed over curbs and around the meager, slow traffic, tumbling over itself in the flush of youth. They paused for a moment and one looked as if he would catcall her, but Samira fixed his eyes with hers and he blushed before throwing himself back into the contest.

She paused for a moment in front of a shabby newsstand selling magazines, cigarettes and ancient cassette tapes which lay stacked in a kind of plastic mural of Egyptian popstars, bygone Western singles and Islamic sermons. Fawning press photos of President Mubarak stared back out at her, his face in different iterations of wise, aloof, fierce and noble, lording over Egypt like a latter-day pharaoh.

The idea put her in a foul mood and half out of spite she bought a pack of Viceroy cigarettes.

Three blocks passed before she realized she had no matches. The pack now sat in the bottom of her purse like a tiny brick, weighing on her consciousness. A little less than two years ago she'd smoked her last cigarette – or at least, so she'd planned.

Her ruminations brought her to her destination without warning. In front of her, the familiar cement wall loomed high, topped with a new addition of curled, rusting razor wire. The spreading palm in the courtyard arced over the wrought iron of the gates, as tall as she remembered. Was this a trick of memory or had it really grown?

She peered through the gate at the entryway, lined with flowers and bushes. It looked dilapidated, overgrown – the gravel lay in erratic lumps and whorls. The paint, too, had faded over the years, its crisp whiteness smudged to a dingy grey. A colony of feral cats squatted in the shadow of the staircase, lean and hungry even in their indolence. One of them whisked its tail as it gazed at her, the only break in their placid indifference.

She drank in every detail – the windows, now listing slightly in their frames; the climbing plants that crept in random patterns up the walls; the broken and missing tiles on the roof; and the asymmetry of the great double doors, one missing its brass door-knocker. The whole thing seemed to be a dream or a reflection in dirty water. Was this really the great house of her youth? Now, more than ever, she wished for a cigarette to smoke.

La Frontera

2008-08-27T14:46:00.004-04:00

This is an odd one - I was (well, actually am) in a writing contest with a very odd prompt. We had to write 1500 words based on this photo of an old van:
Anyways, that's what today's post is - more of Triumphant Sun will be coming later in the week, I think, but it needs editing so it'll have to wait.

La Frontera

“Hijo de la puta!” swears Ezequiel as the van swerves tightly around a hulking cactus. In the seat next to him, Hector grits his teeth and guns the engine harder, 6 cylinders screaming in dry protest. The spiralling cone of dust remains in the rear-view mirror, dogging them at a distance as it has for the past 2 hours, a tiny black dot at its center.

“Why don't they make up their chingado minds?” Ezequiel spits out the window through the gap in his teeth. “How long is this shit going to last, cabron? What's with the fucking Border Patrol?”

“No patrol,” says Hector. “Police never take this long. Anyways, remember what Arturo said?”

“Si, si. But maybe they got the wrong sergeant. Maybe just sold us down the river, you know?”

“No. El Gallito, for sure.”

Ezequiel sucks in a long breath and fixes his eyes on the rearview again. It hangs at a queer angle, reflecting his own bloodshot grey eyes and thin, mahogany face back at him. He unconsciously fingers the jagged scar running down his chin from the left ear. He fishes a battered cigarette from a crumpled packet in his jeans and lights it with quivering hands.

“What's back there, anyways?”
“You want to know? Go look,” snaps Hector. “And light me one of those, man.” Hector holds out his hand to receive the cigarette.

They hurtle forwards and the desert gleams around them like old brass under the sun's burning disc. The endless pounding of the tires gives a repetitive quality to the minutes, flowing by slow as molasses. Scrub and brush dot the flatness of the sands, and occasionally a bird starts from the ground in front of the van with the swiftness of a gunshot. The two men remain silent, smoking grimly and staring straight forward, avoiding the oppressive presence of the dust cloud behind them, edging ever closer.

Ezequiel finally breaks the tension. “You know what they say El Gallito does...”
“Shut up.” Hector slams his hand on the dashboard. His voice cracks with tension and dryness, and he fumbles under the seat for a bottle of water to soothe his cracked lips. Ezequiel twists the top of the canteen off for his friend and watches in silence as he drinks. He takes only a brief sip when Hector hands it to him.

The shock comes brutally and without warning. The van lists to the right and the wheels dig into the sand, spinning in a fury of sparks and shredded rubber. Hector grimly fights the steering as it fishtails deeper and deeper into the ground, the gearbox tearing itself apart as the axles grind against the burning desert. Ezequiel slams into the door and hurtles on to the sand, his shoulder plowing down and wrenching painfully backwards. The van slides to a halt, the spine of its chassis broken by the impact. Black grease slithers onto the dirt.

Hector leans out of his door and vomits noisily. Ezequiel drags himself backwards and leans against the black metal of the van. It burns to the touch from endless exposure to the sun. He gingerly rotates the shoulder and sighs with palpable relief, the first time he has felt this that day. The crash did not dislocate the joint. He stands and squints into the distance, head still ringing from smashing on the earth. Their pursuer has slowed, circling too far to be made out clearly in the shimmering heat haze.

While Hector voids his stomach, Ezequiel slides under the vehicle. Oil drips onto his face as he fumbles with a long package wrapped in cloth and tied to the steel crossbeams. He rolls back out into the afternoon sun. He carefully lays out the cloth on the ground and runs his hands down the gleaming but pitted steel of the rifle, tracing his fingers along the wood of the stock, splintered in places from the force of the impact, raising it to his shoulder and peering down the sights, checking the straight length of the barrel.

Hector stumbles around to the other side of the van and slumps against the shattered wheel.

“You think that will help?” he mutters sullenly, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

Ezequiel stares down at him. Hector's pale face looks almost white from his sickness, and the heavy muscles of his body seem collapsed and defeated in his dejection. He turns away and searches through the chaos of the glove compartment and emerges with a handful of shells. His hands move like automatons as he carefully slots them into the breech of the rifle.

The pursuer in the distance circles closer, a shark waiting for its prey to grow tired. He can see now that it is a black truck, hulking with menace and cruising easily across the rough ground. Ezequiel kneels down and raises the rifle to his shoulder. His vision narrows down the iron sights, contracting to a tight circle as he carefully leads the front end of his target. He holds his breath tightly, body tight like a steel spring, and then fires. The rifle roars and bucks, the truck swerves to the left and with a practiced motion he digs in his feet and rams the bolt down, bringing another shell into the chamber, firing and reloading three times. Men pile out of the truck as it skids to a halt, steam rising from the engine.

Ezquiel quickly ducks back down next to Hector as bullets zip back towards them, rattling like steel raindrops against the side of the van. “I think I took one of their tires, maybe the radiator.”

“Give me one of those chingado cigarettes.”

They light the last two cigarettes and Hector inhales greedily, sucking smoke into his lungs. He peers around the fender and ducks back as more bullets slam into the ground, kicking up puffs of sand.

“Six, maybe seven. Mierda.”

Ezequiel leans around the other side and snaps off another quick shot. A strangled cry fills the desert air. “That's one.”

“Can you do that five more times?”

He sneaks a look over the hood of the van and crashes back down as more bullets fly by in a hail of automatic fire. “No.”
The two men sit silently for a while, smoke drifting in lazy curlicues above them. Occasionally, the van rocks under the impact of sprayed bullets, the harsh metallic sound of screaming metal echoing around them.

“Puerco pibil,” says Hector

“What?”

“Puerco pibil. My wife was cooking in it when we left. I didn't have time to eat, but I was going to when we returned.”
Ezquiel grins lopsidedly. “Would you call her and like to tell her you're going to be late?”
Hector stares at the other man for a moment. “Si, I would.”

“Well, you could go over ask them if you could use their phone. See what they say.”

“You are a strange little man. You know that, cabron?”
“What can you do, eh?”

They lapse back into their wordless state. High above them in the crystal sky, the black silhouettes of vultures wheel and turn. The desert is strangely silent. Hector leans forward and grabs the disjointed remains of the side mirror and tilts it carefully around the edge of van.

“I think they're trying to fix the truck,” he says.

“To leave?”

Hector shoots him a look. “What do you think?”

“Listen, Hector. Do you have that revolver? The one that Arturo gave you?”

Hector pulls it from beneath his shirt and lays it on his lap, ugly and snub-nosed. “It's no good. This for for shooting maricons in a bar, not this out here in the open. Maybe if they walk up and knock, or something.”
“Si. It's not for them.”

“You mean...”

“I have three bullets. Maybe we get one, two, but then nothing. I'm not letting them take me back to El Gallito. So one of us has to do it. Do both.”

Hector runs his hands over the revolver. “Which one?”
“I don't know. You have a coin.”
Hector fishes in his pockets. “You know what, I'll do it. I always wanted to shoot you anyways.”

“Chinga tu mujer.”
“She wouldn't. She says you look like a rabbit.”

Ezequiel shrugs and pulls a rosary from his pocket, distractedly running the cheap wooden beads through his fingers.

“You believe in that mierda, man?” Hector looks incredulous.

“Not really. But, you know. What's the worse that can happen?”
The two men sit back as the sun sinks lower in the sky. The metal of the engine pings as it cools, a weirdly melodic sound like a music box falling slowly out of tune. The last lines of smoke spiral away into the fading light and in the far, far distance a desert owl lets off a mournful call. Hector hums a few snatches of a Mexican song as the two men wait, watching the shadow of the van slink longer and longer across the landscape before them.

Triumphant Sun, pt. 4

2008-08-20T21:18:00.001-04:00

The envelope rested on a table between the two men. Carlos drummed his fingers irritably on his chair. A thick silence filled the room as he stared at the envelope. Finally, he pushed it away and inhaled a dense stream of smoke. “It's too much of a mess, Evan. I'd like to help you but...”

Evan leaned forward and took the envelope back. Outside, the storm had slowed and the sun began to gleam through the tarnished light. They lapsed back into a wordless haze. Evan rolled the cool, biting taste of lime and tonic around on his tongue, a perfect antidote to the dry harshness outside. The gin stung in the cracks that the heat and sand had left on his lips.

“Fair enough,” said Evan finally. He rose, finishing his drink and walking to the bar to pour himself another. “You should just forget I ever brought it to you.

Carlos crooked a smile with half his face. “Done. So what happened to your leave, anyways? Weren't you going to head home for a bit?”

“I was. But you know how big this is. If I've got to deal with it, I think I'm going to be here for a bit longer. More than a bit.” Evan ran his fingertips, damp from the condensation on the glass, through his hair.

“Bet you're thrilled.”

“Well, on the one hand it's a month or two more in Cairo.”

“And on the other?”
“It's a month or two more in Cairo,” Evan quipped. He paused, staring out the window. “Anyways, I''m going to head out. If I need to drop some stuff here, could I?”

“No worries,” said Carlos, holding open the door. “Any time you get sick of Stella and tea, I'm your man.”

Evan paused at the bottom of the staircase, standing a moment in the cool shadows. Only one of the bulbs was lit, and it blinked fitfully. The beginnings of a headache teased at the back of his head and he rubbed his temples with both hands, staring out at the almost painfully bright sunlight at the end of the corridor. The bawab had returned and dozed in his chair by the entrance, a cup of tea cradled in his wrinkled hand. Evan walked softly so as not to disturb the man as he emerged into the heavy sunlight.

The island of Zamalek felt quiet compared to the rest of Cairo, and the men armed with Kalashnikovs underpinned the sense of prosperity on every street corner. A group of school-boys in uniform scrambled down the street, bouncing off of cars and walls like so many tumbling creatures. A cab swerved to the corner but Evan waved the driver off and donned his sunglasses before the man could speak. The storm seemed a bit weaker now, and the walk to his apartment would help clear his spinning head.

***

Samira licked the blood from her fingertips. It had a salty taste mixed with the tiny grains of sand blowing through across the Nile. She ran her hands through her hair in frustration, threw a scarf around her throat and headed downstairs to the hotel to get a drink and wash away the dry feeling in her throat that she can't shake. The stares of the porters and clerks bounced off the shell of her indifference. She still felt wobbly though her shoes were flat and the dazed sensation of diabetic lows gave her the oddest sensation of standing feet over her own head and directing her motion like a puppeteer. For a moment she leaned on the banister.

Her finger was still bleeding and she put it in her mouth again before it spotted on to her pale blue dress. A group of rich young Egyptian men wearing garish designer clothes walked by with predatory gazes. She stared at coldly at them, shooting contempt from her steel-gray eyes.

One leaned over and blew a kiss to her. “Yaa habibi!” he called to her from across the hall.

Samira consciously snapped out of her unconsciously coquettish pose. “Allah yuqra baytik,” she snapped back, an Egyptian oath more or less translating to 'May God step on your home'. Patently absurd in English, it was effective as a whiplash in Egypt

He recoiled as if punched and stalked away to the laughter of his companions while Samira glided serenely on and got to the bar without shaking to order a gin and tonic and a tall glass of mango juice, draining half the juice in a single gulp and taking a long sip of the cocktail. Her fist coiled in a tight ball around the fringe of her scarf.

She took another drink of juice and felt the effect as it began to steady her nerves. The only thing worse than a low, she thought, was a high, when her body became enervated and the sugar poisoned her from the inside out. Highs and lows, ups and downs in endless cycles that tore one way and then another.

Her phone jangled and she shut it off after a quick glance. Fourteen hours and halfway across the world, London could wait. She took a palm-sized notebook from her purse and jotted down the number 59 in neat, round characters with a red pen. It added to the crimson digits cascading down the page, every single one representing a low blood sugar, with only a few little islands of black or blue interrupting it. Weren't, she thought and not for the first time, diabetics supposed to have high sugars?

She'd smoothed her rough edges and she finally relaxed a little and allowed herself a tight smile. She had wheedled, bullied, begged and twisted arms but at last the paper had chosen her to take over the Cairo desk and it had been a personal point of honor that she hadn't once mentioned her father's name, even if she doubted they would have understood the importance. She wondered what it meant here. Khalil Mohammed Rahman had been a legend and a terror in his time, and being his daughter would have to mean something, even the daughter of his English widow. And what would he have thought of her gin and tonic? Probably just judged her brand of gin. The thought amused her.

She pulled out a second notebook slightly larger than the first and began to write quickly, the letters slanting more with each word until she held the book almost perpendicular to her body. Without a definite assignment from the London desk, the first few weeks would be impressions, local color pieces and soft features about eccentric characters. Her hotel room was too removed from the pulse of the city – that would have to change. An apartment in Mohandiseen or better yet Downtown, if she could manage it. The western hotels and restaurants of Zamalek were too sheltered and other parts of the city lay too far from the centers of power in the Mogamma and the ministry buildings.

Triumphant Sun, Pt. 3

2008-08-13T22:43:00.003-04:00

Evan passed through the metal detector at the front of the Sheraton Zamalek. Every major building in Cairo had one, but they were more for the Egyptians than foreigners. He brushed sand from his hair as he headed for the hotel cafe.

Tourists clumped around the glass tables, fanning themselves with magazines while groups of bored, rich Egyptians looked on in faint amusement. He scanned the room from behind his sunglasses. A heavy hand on his shoulder startled him out of his search.

“Evan Rochester, isn't it?” Evan spun around and fought to keep his cool. The man standing before him was dark and conservatively dressed in a Western suit. His thin lips curved in a sardonic smile. “I'm sorry, I didn't mean to disturb you. Sit, please.” The man moved back to his table and lowered himself into the chair with a stiffness that suggested old injuries. He watched Even for a moment as he toyed with a glass of Egyptian tea.

“And you, I presume, are Said.”

“How astute of you.” He motioned to one of the young men lounging behind the hotel bar.

“Yaa, ustaaz?” asked the youth. He used the word 'professor' as a slangy honorific.

“Bring my friend a tea.” He turned to Evan and spoke English. “Sugar?”

“Black, please,” he responded in Arabic.

Said clicked his tongue. “Don't you find that very bitter?”

“I prefer it – whenever I get sugar, it's always too sweet. Gives me a headache.”

“Of course.” The man reached into the pocket of his leather jacket and produced a steel cigarette case and a lighter. “Smoke? They're British – Dunhills.”

“Thanks,” He took one and flicked the lighter experimentally before lighting it. Said lit one for himself and set the case down in the center of the table.

“You work for a newspaper? So you know what I refer to when I speak of the Abdel-Kareem affair?”

Taken aback by the sudden shift, Evan nodded his assent. “I do.”

“There are a lot of sides in this thing. It's very sensitive.”

“The main one is whether it's true.”

Said waved dismissively. “Of course it's true. The question is how much of it is true, and when, and where.”
Evan leaned forward over the table. “And you know?”

“I know a great many things, Mr. Rochester.”

“A great many things in this world aren't important. Take your name. Is it Said? Isn't it? It doesn't matter the slightest to me. What does is what you can tell me about General Abdel-Kareem and whether or not you can prove it. Or if you don't, who does?”

Said smiled generously and waved his hand through the air. “ And here we are, Mr. Rochester. I know a lot of people. That's the line I'm in. That's it exactly.”

“There's a word in English for someone who knows a lot of people but doesn't know anything important. Lobbyist.” A long pause passed between them. Rochester raised his cigarette to his mouth and found that it had burned halfway down into a thin grey tube of ash. He tapped it out in the marble ashtray.

“I don't know this word.” Said frowned. “But regardless, that's how it stands.”

“And how did you find me?”

The smile returned. “Like I said, some things matter and some things don't. What I want to do is meet with you again, now that we understand each other. Meet with you, and another man who knows a great deal and has some of the same interests as you. Maybe the same interest as me. Maybe even General Abdel-Kareem's. Allah only knows.”

“This is all fascinating.” Evan switched back into English. “We couldn't have done this over the phone?”

“Perhaps. But then I couldn't have given you this.” Said pushed a slim manila envelope across the table. Evan reached for it and Said lifted a finger. “Ah, it's a surprise. Open it after I'm gone.”

“It's not a bomb, is it?”

Said laughed, a sound with a faintly unpleasant edge. “I wouldn't worry about that, Mr. Rochester. And now I must be going. Although be assured, there's plenty where it came from.”

Evan smiled with one side of his mouth. “How can I contact you again?”

“We'll let you know, Mr. Rochester.” Then he was gone, limping slightly as he carried his thin attache case and his Economist, leaving only the envelope and an unusually crisp five pounds for the two teas. 'We,' thought Evan. There was something that might be important. Or it might not.

He didn't reach for the envelope right away. Instead, he stopped the digital recorder in his pocket, threaded a single audio bud into his ear and played it back. Surprise and dismay spread across his face. Where the conversation should have played back to him, the recorder only provided a dull electronic hiss.
“Bloody hell,” he said under his breath. He gingerly turned the envelope over in his hands, giving it an experimental shake, and finding it to be innocuous, he opened it and slid the contents out and inspected them briefly.

He was careful not to let the shock register this time. After a moment, he bundled everything up, tossed it into his battered briefcase and left, humming quietly to himself. He left the hotel and caught a cab up the island of Zamalek to a crumbling old apartment building by the water. There was no doorman but somebody had left a package to prop open the door so he went in and took an elevator to the 14^th floor, an unnerving experience because there were doors inside the elevator so as he went up he could see into the crawlspaces between each floor and ceiling and he had to stand back so his coat wouldn't catch in the gaps. It was one of those things about Cairo.

There was a long wait after he rang Carlos Ribeiro's doorbell and when he finally got the door Carlos looked confused.

“You're not Mustafa,” he said.

“Cheers to you too,” replied Evan as he stepped inside the apartment. Despite the building decaying around it and the general air of abandonment in the darkened halls it ranked as one of the nicer apartments downtown, with its airy view of the river and modernist décor that looked as if it had been installed in 1959. “ You know there's no one downstairs, don't you?”

“Isn't there? How'd you get in?”

“I let myself in. Door's open.”

“Well, the bawab must be drunk again.”

A bawab was a sort of doorman, superintendent and security guard rolled into one, and nearly every building in Cairo had a hereditary dynasties who watched over and made sure the building did not slip off from to day. They were all more or less corrupt in a genial sort of way and the one who looked after Carlos' building manifested his corruption by levying a kind of alcoholic tax in exchange for ignoring the building's nominal prohibition on spirits. This meant he was drunk most of the time which, in the end, didn't hurt anyone.

Evan walked to the window. The day was getting on and the sand had died down so the city was laid out clearly before him and cast in a bronze glow from the sun going down over the edges of the apartment buildings across the river.

“Have a drink?” asked Carlos as he poured himself a gin and tonic from the little bar he kept on his end-table. “I just hit the Duty-Free.”

“When did you fly out?” Evan turned around.

“Oh, I didn't. I just know a man down there. Got a fifth of Tanqueray for a sizable discount.”

“Then make it a T&T for me.”

Evan took his drink and resumed his place leaning on the open windowsill while Carlos took a seat on a leather easy-chair and occupied himself with rolling a joint with hashish from a sticky, foil-wrapped sliver the size of a pencil. His thin brown fingers moved moved quickly and nimbly as he rolled the hash between the tips to soften it and sprinkled it along the cigarette papers.

“Don't you ever work, Carlos?”

“Not if I can help it.”

“Like today, for instance.”

“Sure I did work today. I had lunch with a minister from Interior.”

“About?”

“Business,” said Carlos, waving his hand vaguely. “This and that. Nothing very interesting.”

“Oh, it's that sort of thing?”

“Yeah. You know how it is with the government here. Everybody has an angle.” He shrugged and took a long drag. “Same as everywhere, really. But they're more enthusiastic about it here.”

“You got more than most, though.”

Carlos smiled crookedly. “It's true, isn't it? Well, everybody has to be good at something.” He extended his arm lazily, like a billiards player. “Getting the angles.

“Charming, really, Carlos. But I'm not just here to get high and chit-chat. I have some real questions.”

“About?”

“Abdel-Kareem.”

Carlos leaned forward, the joint dangling between two fingers of his left hand. He rolled it back and forth along his knuckles and then carefully doused the burning end with his fingertips. “Careful, Evan. You know what the stakes are here. I don't know if I want to have anything to do with this..”

Evan grinned and swallowed deeply from his drink. He drew the manila envelope from his fingers and fluttered it in the air. “But you want to see these, don't you?

Triumphant Sun, Pt. 2

2008-08-06T18:35:00.001-04:00

The cab pulled away, weaving through the pandemonium with practiced abandon. A bus hurtled by, men leaning from its open doors at alarming angles. There were no windows at all, and smoke – whether cigarette or diesel – poured from the vehicle in waves. Evan tried to look through his papers but lurching of the car prevented him from doing anything but gripping the door and hoping the whole contraption didn't fall to pieces.

For his part, the driver carried on a blistering flow of conversation into his cell phone while smoking the battered remains of cheap Egyptian cigarette. Occasionally, he blew his nose with great gusto on tissues from gaudy tin box on the dashboard, painted gold and laced with Qu'ranic verses. Evan wondered if the thing possessed some religious purpose – perhaps tissues needed some special blessing from Allah - or whether it was just supposed to add to the interior design of the car. This already featured a lurid, zebra-patterned acrylic fur dashboard, a Qu'ranic verse in window decals and a good luck charm to ward off the evil, eye swaying from the rear-view like loose rigging on a ship.

The traffic slowed to a crawl. The driver leaned out the window, uttered a few choice Arabic curses, and then retreated from a volley of equally enraged responses like an alarmed hermit crab pulling into its shell.

“It is the government,” he apologized in Arabic. “The traffic is bad because they are coming.”

“To give a speech?” replied Evan.

“No, just driving across 26^th July.” It was one of the major bridges arching across the Nile. Mr. X sighed. An official motorcade locked down the snarled roadways of Cairo for hours as it roared by at full speed with its motorcycles, armored trucks and limousines,. Any politician or officer with enough clout could command one, a privilege abused as often as possible in the otherwise impassable Cairene gridlock. “Inshallah, it will not be long.” The driver shrugged and lit another cigarette and leaned back in his seat.

“Inshallah,” replied Evan, echoing the Egyptian fatalism. Everything in Egypt operated on that principle - If Allah wills it. Inshallah, the work will be done tomorrow. Inshallah, we will have fair elections. Inshallah, I will be paid today – and if not, inshallah it will be tomorrow! All business conducted as if man had but a passing influence on the events of the world. On the one hand, as a philosophy of life, it dissolved many day-to-day cares. On the other, some problems were too important to trust to Allah's inconsistent influence.

“You would like cigarette?” Evan shook his head. “You are American, yes?”

“Yes.”

“Egyptians like Americans very much, you know,” he said, with the air of a man bequeathing mystical truths. “We like the American people very much. It is only...” Here he paused, dragging deeply on his cigarette. “It is only your President. Bush is very bad, and hates Egyptian people, Muslim people. But we know that your President and your people are different. We love the American people.”

“I don't doubt it. Everyone is very friendly.”

“Yes! Egyptian people are the world's friendliest. Did you know that?”

“I'm not surprised.” Evan began to wish he had taken the cigarette, just so he would have something else to besides sit with his hands awkwardly on his lap.

“Ah, but we are very bad, too. Many will try to rob you – try to cheat you! You must be very careful that nobody tries to cheat you.” The driver shook his head sadly. “It's a great problem, really. Nobody follows the law, and everybody tries to steal. Especially the government, they are the worst. Look at this – all these people waiting, and why? A minister in a hurry.”
E leaned forward. “Do many people feel this way? About the ministers, and the government?”

“Of course! Everybody is tired of it. But what can you do? Things are like that.”

“Yes. Still, maybe someday things will be better.”

“Inshallah.” That seemed to be the end of it. The traffic began to flow again as the police escort's wailing sirens disappeared back into the city. They moved forward by fits and starts that became the dashing, swerving combat of traffic.

*|*

“Of course I'm not smuggling drugs!” Samira Mohammed Crane folded her arms and tossed waves of thick, black hair over her shoulder. The customs official, a fat, passive man with the obstinate demeanor of a camel, stared back at her. Her eyes, like round obsidian flakes, sparked with anger. He held up a clear packet of syringes and three vials of smoky liquid.

“What is the purpose of these, please?” he asked in English.

“For the millionth bloody time, I'm diabetic.” The man stared blankly. Samira switched into a stiff but educated Arabic. “I have sugar in my blood and I need to take injections. Understand? Diabetes, the disease.”

“Ah, diabetes. Marhaba,” he replied, accented with the heavy drawl of a Saidi, from the south of Egypt.

“Finally.”

“Do you have a letter?”
“A what?”

“A letter, for permission.”

“Permission for what?”

“Permission to have drugs for the diabetes.”
“I need the drugs. I don't have any letter. You, you absolutely...” She burst out into English, “You silly little man!”

He shrugged with all the resignation of a bureaucrat at last back on comfortable ground. “I'm sorry, but without a letter of permission it is not possible.”

Samira looked around the terminal entrance in dismay. All around, tourists lugged behemoths on little black wheels across the spotted tile flour. An Egyptian man wearing alligator loafers and a pinstriped suit with a turqoise shirt stood amongst a small group of them, holding a sign saying A&O Tours.

“Excuse me,” she said, picking the plastic bag and striding over to the tour guide. “Yaa raab,” she greeted him quietly.

The man's expression leaped from boredom to leering enthusiasm. “How may I help you, madmoiselle?” he replied.

“I'm sorry, but the customs are giving me trouble. Do you think you could take me with your group.”
“No problem at all, madmoiselle. My name is Tareq Ramadan. But what is...”

“Not important.” With a smooth handshake born of tipping maitre'des at a hundred London restaurants, she slid twenty Egyptian pounds into his hand.

“It's my honor,” he said with an oily smile.

She loitered for a few moments, watching the customs official stolidly inspect the bags of unlucky travellers. When the group finally gathered, more than a few stared at the slight, dark woman with the finely tailored suit who had joined into the little huddle of nylon windbreakers, khaki shorts and digital cameras. With a smirk and a nod from the tour leader, the whole group swept past customs with grand indifference.

As she slipped away from the group, Tareq tried to interrupt her exit. “Pardon, madame, but please tell me your name. Perhaps...”

“Fatima,” she replied, letting her hand linger in his for a moment and then peeling off into the turbulent crowds of Cairo International Airport.

A New Beginning

2008-07-30T20:03:00.001-04:00

After over a year of neglect, it's time for me to do something with this space. Ever since I got back from Cairo, I've been toying with a story that incorporates some of my travels and experiences there. This will be a serial novel - like Dickens or Thackeray, except instead of a chapter each month I will post ~5 pages every week, hopefully on Wednesday evenings.

Ideally, it will run to a full novel length, at which point some guardian angel of publishing will come and scoop it up. In any case, I hope you enjoy it - and if you don't, then make some suggestions so that next week's installment will be better! I may also post articles I've written or read, reviews, and other odds and ends, but this is not primarily that kind of blog.

It is a blog about writing, about fiction and storytelling, and hopefully you will get a weekly advancement of plot. Tell your friends, co-workers, pen-pals - anyone with an interest in writing or the Middle-East. And leave comments - I don't want to write in a vacuum!

The Triumphant Sun

Sand swirled in the streets. The light filtered through like worn brass and the air had a smothering thickness. The traffic barreled on regardless, six cars across in roads meant for three. The sluggish grey Nile rolled under the bridge. From the middle of the river, even the tallest buildings were dirty silhouettes. Evan Rochester stood with a scarf wrapped loosely around his face. Dark glasses shielded his eyes from the blowing grains. He hefted his black case onto his shoulder and headed off, leaning slightly into the sharp wind. His scarf slipped and he lunged to catch it before it glided into the river.

His head throbbed as he walked onward. The air had a dense heat like a heavy blanket draped over his body. Sweat and a film of sand clung to his body under a thin linen shirt. The scarf didn't help much with the heat, but without it he'd be breathing in the storm. He'd always wondered why people wore so much clothing in the desert – robes, turbans, scarves and hijabs. After three months, it made more sense. It was on account of the damned desert; the fine yellowish grains insinuated themselves into one's clothes day and night. He would unbuckle his belt and it would trickle out of the metal. He woke to a thin layer of grit on every surface in his apartment.

In his distraction, he nearly stepped out in the path of a black-and-white Cairo taxi that hurtled by with a metallic death-rattle. He jumped back as the cabbie leaned harder on his horn. In the weeks after arriving, the constant honking had been maddening and infuriating – now, it seemed utterly normal, almost friendly. It wasn't the first time his life had been saved by the enthusiastic bleating of the cars – indeed, it wasn't even the first time that month.

He turned around and gave an almost wistful look at the huge stone lions guarding either end of the Tahrir Bridge, almost as if it would be his last sight of them. Crossing the street there, it might well be. He plunged into the swirling chaos of Midan Tahrir.

Cars wove around him as he dodged between the lane markers that were little more than faint suggestions and reached the foot-wide median with his heart in his throat and the Cairo buses wheezing by, their battered rear-view mirrors dangling inches from his head. A blast of diesel fumes enveloped his face, and with bated breath and one intrepid dash, he reached the safety of the wide-open square in front of the Mogamma. The brutal, Soviet-era building loomed over the chaos of the square. It had all the charm of a low-rent production of 1984, as if the Ministry of Peace had given up on basic maintenance. Its innumerable windows leaned open to air the endless claustrophobic offices of the civil servants who mismanaged the city and country from day to day.

He knew the inside of that building. The smell of cigarettes, sweat and cheap paper, weak tea and bureaucracy. The broken fans that swirled around in lopsided arcs and the one office where two ancient pencil-pushers played backgammon while they shunted people back and forth between departments. It wasn't all bad. There was Amin's office, with the beautiful hijabi secretary who smoked Dunhills when she thought no one was watching and cried silently over the husband who had vanished three months after joining the Army. Murad the clerk sometimes let him know when one minister or another was in a good mood and well-disposed to answering a journalist's questions.

A few guards stood listlessly by the doors, smoking cheap, foul-smelling Egpytian cigarettes. One leaned with his chin on his hands over the muzzle of a Kalashnikov. To Evan, it seemed a fairly demented idea to rest your head on the business end of a rifle.. But this was a place where children played football in the streets with the cars, and people ate fish out of the reeking, rubbish-filled Nile – because there was nowhere else to play, or eat. Evan had begun to give in - he drank water straight from the tap now, and no longer ran a discreet handkerchief around the rim of his glasses of coffee. What was the point, he reasoned? Everything seemed equally filthy.

He made his way past the towering Orientalist dream of the American University, a grand white complex ringed around with hedges and nine-foot walls. The gates had two sets of guards – the national State Security that patrolled every corner traversed of the outside, and the school guards that watched on the inside, mostly unarmed but somehow more serious-looking. The difference turned out to be mostly illusory – the ones inside had all been on the outside before, sergeants and lieutenants making their way in the private sector – where they had a chance of actually earning a living.

Down the affluent streets of Wast al-Madina, downtown Cairo, littered with posh cafés and restaurants, rich Cairenes ate McDonald's, sipped lattes, and sometimes even spoke English to each other in the faux-Starbucks shops. A left turn and just as abruptly back into what Evan thought of as real Cairo: sidewalks crowded with bushels of grimy produce and wooden racks of steaming baladi bread, the smell of grilling chicken on metal skewers, strong Egyptian tea and the aromatic honey-and-charcoal scent of shisha from every ahwa. The sounds of people buying, selling, bargaining and arguing, car horns and the squealing of both angry cats and tires, and the ear-piercing screech of the metal chairs being dragged along the wet tiled floors.

Evan once again braved the maddening traffic of Talaat Harb St. and reached the opening to Huriya – the sprawling open-air ahwa in the middle of downtown that was filled with odd drunks and chessmasters, local shoe-shine boys and embassy personnel, sweet tea and the cheapest Stella beer in Cairo.

“Ya habibi,” exclaimed the waiter as Evan entered. The same man, every day, every week, always waiting with a crook-toothed smile and a repertoire of bottle-opening tricks for each and every regular of that bizarre, seedy dive. “What's the news?” he asked in Arabic.

“Half-and-half,” replied Evan in the same. “Some good, some bad. Tomorrow it will all be arranged, inshallah.”

The waiter grinned. “Wasn't it arranged 'tomorrow' last week?”

Evan shrugged. “Egypt...”

“Yaa raab, it's supposed to be Egyptians who say that kind of thing.”
“Then I guess you've won me over to your side, Hamid. A few more months and you'll drive me off to Mecca. Then you'll have to call me “yaa hagg” and I'm going to finish every sentence with - “so says the prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him.”

Hamid frowned. “You shouldn't make so much fun.” He jammed the top of a Stella beer between his gilt teeth and popped the cap off, flipped it around his knuckles and slammed it down on the rickety stone table. Condensation dripped in glistening lines down the murky green glass of the bottle, forming a damp pool in seconds. “Anyways, you're too much of a western kaffir. I doubt the prophet himself, peace be upon him, could ever un-corrupt you.” He smiled sardonically. “But we forgive you here.”

Evan sipped his beer and then pulled a slim leather portfolio out of his bag, leafing through the disarray of documents and notes. Occasionally he would mark the pages with a steel fountain pen that leaked ever so slightly, staining his fingers and the paper with midnight blue ink.

When his phone rang, the irritating synth jangle startled him into dropping his work onto a pile on the damp, sticky floor. The pen rolled on top, leaving a blotted blue line across the top of a crumpled triplicate form.

He swore, picked up the pen and answered his phone in English, voice taut with frustration. “Yes?”

There was a brief pause and then the voice returned. “Mr. Rochester? My name is Said. You wished to speak – about Abdel-Kareem.” The voice switched briefly to Farsi, a language Evan had learned years ago in college. “General Abdel-Kareem and the Central Security affair.”

Evan had to grab his beer to prevent his hand from shaking. The glass was slick and ice-cold against his hand. He took a long swallow. “Where can I meet you?” he replied in Arabic.

“I'm at the Sheraton Zamalek. I'm sure you know where it is, yes?”
Evan bit his lip. In good traffic, it was less than eight minutes, but if he got stuck, it might be twenty-five or more to cover the distance. “Yes. Will you be in the lobby?”

“I will be in the cafe, waiting. Please do not be long.”

Evan took another long swallow and spoke slowly, in Farsi. “How will I know who you are? What should I look for.” He held his breath during the long pause and heard a low laugh.
“Don't worry, Mr Rochester. There will be no problem with that.” The line went dead. Evan quickly checked the phone for the number, but it came up unlisted. That was strange, for Egypt – strange, and not a little disconcerting.

He drained the last of his beer, threw a crumpled five-pound note onto the table and dashed out the door. He'd barely reached the pavement when a cab came squealing to halt and the driver leaned out the window, shouting in broken English. Evan leaned in and, smiling, asked in perfect Arabic for the Sheraton.

Over and Out

2007-06-12T10:23:00.000-04:00

I'm going to shut this down for a while...back in Boston now, and life is much less exciting. The world doesn't need the musings of another underemployed 20-something...

Pints and Drams

2007-06-05T17:20:00.000-04:00

Done a bunch of extremely British - and Scottish - cultural things in the past week. Among them, going to two Oxford Formal Halls with my friend at LMH(one of the Oxford colleges). Those were fun - an excuse to get dressed up and have a nice dinner in one of the those big, grand old Harry Potter-esque halls with portraits and rafters. Incidentally, I did get to see the real Harry Potter main hall...it's not that big! And the staircase in front is positively tiny. Funny tricks of perspective.

We also went to pubs/bars like "The Duke of Cambridge" and "The Eagle and Child." That latter was frequented, or so I heard, by C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkein. I got to see all the students finishing their exams, walking around in sub-fusc covered in eggs and feathers and such, or sometimes riding bikes. I've never seen so many formally dressed people on bikes in my life!

In London, I did all the sorts of things you might expect - visited the British Museum, which is really a great place, totally free, well-lit and designed, and generally just an excellent museum. I used to think they ought to return the Rosetta Stone and the head of Ramses II - no more. The Egyptian museum was a disaster. I think most things are better off in London, where they will be seen, safe, and clean.

I took the bus from Oxford to Edinburgh last night - almost 11 hours, all told, and they dropped us off in Milton Keynes for an hour to change lines. What a dismally bizarre place. It's some kind of strange English planned city, and it was all weird mall architecture, highways like landing strips and nobody to be seen. There were about 15 rabbits on every corner - it was like Watership Down or something. And as I sat waiting in coachstation, just a little turn-off from the highway with a closed coffee stand, I saw some really weird stuff. A white unmarked van pulled up and idled, and then about 15 minutes later a really nice Audi station wagon. An older white dude in white tie climbs out, goes into the back of the van, emerges 10 minutes later next to some Indian guy in jeans with a bunch of suits in drycleaner bags, and they both speed off. Bizarre. And then there was another station wagon parked nearby, and 3 separate cars pulled up, people got into the wagon, talked for a bit, and then left. Weirdest thing...I guess Milton Keynes coachway is where you buy drugs.

Now I'm in Scotland, and I've walked up to the Edinburgh Castle, hiked through the moors of Holyrood Park, and tried the scotch at the Dome, a grand old Victorian bank converted into a cool bar with a soaring dome roof.

Oh, and I had a haggis.

Rule Brittania

2007-06-02T19:16:00.000-04:00

Been in England for about 2 1/2 days now...what an incredible change. From the bustling, crowded, hot, dusty, vibrant, chaotic, overflowing streets of Cairo to the cool, shaded, verdant lanes of Oxford town and university. The first day I was here it was almost as if I had died and gone to heaven, coming from the sprawling desert heat into rolling fields, parks, grand stone buildings and overgrown gardens. Instead of diesel fuel I smelled flowers and growing things; instead of car horns I heard birds.

Oxford is really everything I imagined England to be, which makes sense - so many of the classic English writers were educated here. It's almost a fantasy of a town, and I could just get lost in the arches and vaults of the University for days or weeks or years. Cairo was the sort of place where everytime you turned a corner, you saw something that was bizarre or fascinating or ancient. Oxford is sort of the same way, but in a welcoming, comforting sense.

It's also funny because looking at England you kind of figure out how Boston came to look and feel the way it does. Obviously, that's simplifying, but the similarities in England and New England architecture, landscape, and layout are striking. I feel like I am in a reflection of home sometimes - or that home is a reflection of here.

Homeward Bound

2007-05-30T08:30:00.000-04:00

Well, my last day in Cairo is slowly coming to a close. I rose early this morning to go to Giza to do a bit of riding - and to see the Pyramids, which I have so far failed to do! I walked out the dorms to get a bit of extra cash, but the ATM at the supermarket was closed. Then I walked to the next corner, where there's normally another machine - and it was gone. Simply vanished. Bizarre. So I walked to the post office, but that one wasn't accepting my card. On to the Faisal Islamic Bank's machine, but it was out of order. 25 minutes and 4 machines later, I finally managed to withdraw from the Egypt National Bank on 26 July.

I headed back to MG Stables where Thalia and I rode last time - if any of you are in Cairo, I heartily recommend it, it's a good, respectable place and everybody knows it. Ask for Mohammed Ghoneim, the owner, and Nasser, the guide. Nasser took me out and gave me a bit of tutorial riding in the desert, trying to smooth out my trot and keep the horse under control in a gallop, then we infiltrated the pyramids. We rode out to a section of wall with a little Bedouin hut next to it, and bribed the Bedouin to open up the fence and let us in. Then we rode through the dunes surrounding the Pyramids, around 8 in the morning, and got to see them up close, in all their glory, without a single tourist around. It was really amazing, to be there with nothing but a few stray Bedouin hanging around, instead of massive tour groups. The light wasn't great, but hey...what can you do?

There was a desert boy there with a camel, and I rode that just for kicks. Camels officially suck, they're the dumbest animals I've ever seen. Mine walked about 10 metres, came back, and then made a sound like a diesel engine trying to start with severe flatulence and refused to sit down so I could get off. It took Nasser and the boy to drag the stupid thing down. I hate camels. Horses are much better.

We returned, I said my farewells, then walked back to the main street where, not wanting to pay a further 30LE to get to Zamalek, I took a baffling series of buses and minbuses until I got to the train station, then the Metro back to Zamalek. Of course, the train drops you at the far end of the island from the University dorms, so I got to walk most of the length of it, shooting pictures as I went. It was a nice morning, so it was all good, and I got back at 10:30 or 11 - just as Joe was getting up!

It was really cool to get out there in the desert, with no one around, no one at the Pyramids, just me and the sky and the desert. I love riding, and riding in the desert - total freedom, total emptiness, and a real touching loneliness. I feel compelled to come back to Egypt, a country full of contradictions and bizarre sights. The cabdrivers try to rob you blind, but when I was trying to figure out the bus system, on three occasions different men flagged down the buses for me and explained to the drivers where I was going because I didn't understand the geography or which bus to take. It was a really kind gesture of them.

I'm going to miss a lot of things about this - the dirt and the irregular facilities not among them. But speaking Arabic everyday, the people, the crazy crowded rhythms, the surprises around every corner, cheap coffee, fancy restaurants. Even the slowly pulsing Nile, which I was so disappointed with at first, has grown on me and become a kind of constant navigational companion.

Tomorrow I have to get up a bit past dawn to get my flight. Tonight is my last night in Cairo. Half-sad, half-happy - I'm looking forward to going home. We'll see how I like it there.

Winding Up

2007-05-28T19:09:00.000-04:00

My last days here are rapidly coming to an end. It's been an exciting and crazy and amazingly short semester. I definitely want to come back someday, although I have no idea when. But Cairo is too unique to just be experienced once.

Two days ago, Thalia and I went on a horse-ride through the desert - it was supposed to be an epic journey to Saqqara but we decided to make it a shorter, more efficient one. Still, riding around the pyramids, sipping tea at a Bedouin camp and generally enjoying the desert. It's a really interesting place, I love it much of the time. It's starting to get unbearably hot, though, and I'll be glad to miss out on July in Cairo.

We had a going away party for one of our friends, which was nice but a bit melancholy. Of course, there will be several more of those in the coming weeks. People are drifting away sort of piecemeal, which is always a little frustrating - I'd rather there be a big get-together where everyone says goodbye.

We've also done a lot of sight-seeing these past two days - visiting the 9th-century Ibn Tulun Mosque, the 14th-century Sultan Hassan and the 20-th century Imam Ria'f mosques. It's really cool to see how the architecture has evolved from century to century and dynasty to dynasty. So many different peoples and empires have left their mark on this city, it's incredible. It might have some of the most diverse architecture I've ever seen.

Finally, we did some shopping in the markets and the Khan al-Khalili, just getting another taste of the crazy, hassled streetlife of Cairo. I'll post pictures as soon as I get some uploaded.

The Finn, Pt 3

2007-05-25T16:49:00.000-04:00

On the way out I wrapped myself in despair as thick and soft as a cashmere coat. I had the coat, too, a velvety job custom-tailored overseas in Hong Kong. It was like wearing a grey herringbone cloud. I couldn't afford it on what I made; and then again, maybe that was the whole point. Outside of the daily grind of my job, I took every effort to appear as elegant and refined as possible. If I had to subsist on bread and cheese for a week to afford a bespoke suit or a pair of English-made boots, I would do it.
But beneath the clothes I found myself drifting aimlessly. I once spent an hour sitting on a stone balcony staring vacantly out at nothing, not asleep but not awake, until I suddenly snapped out of my stasis. A dispassionate feeling of not caring about anything had crept over me and trapped me beneath it. Like a beetle in amber I could see myself struggling to move and slowly giving up.

I departed the bus and walked quickly through the stiff breeze, staring up at the Citgo sign, now glaring down at me. This part of Boston was grim and dirty, and I kept my head down and walked forward through the overpasses and the colonies of the homeless around the ATM booths. It had begun to rain now, and the drops fell in streams around me in the silver lamplight. My umbrella leaned on my shoulder without much conviction – I wasn't sure if umbrellas represented an elegant stylistic touch or a foppish, almost effete affectation. It was probably too much thought to put into such a minor detail anyways. So I waited with my umbrella, leaning against the doorway and trying to look inconspicuous.

To get into my girlfriend's dorm, I had to check through a security point run by bored, irritable campus police. It made me feel like a burglar or a rapist, as if I was a paroled felon who can't vote, drive, or visit his girl-friend. On an all-girls campus, I was the intruder, an alien element in the neatly paved, trimmed and tailored walkways of Simmons College. It couldn't have been more different from where I lived - all traditional Boston red-brick, old ivy and manicured lawns. This was what a college was supposed to look like.

I found myself wondering what sort of school the Finn had gone to. In my mind, European campuses all looked like Oxford or Cambridge or Hogwarts from Harry Potter: elegant and stately arches, bell-towers and grand halls and stuffy headmasters with antique studies. What would a Finnish college be like? Perpetually drenched in snow, surely – that was the only way I could envision the country. Perhaps they sleighed to class, or skied. I couldn't see a Scandinavian landscape that didn't involve those elements.

The academic paradises of Boston seemed blasé to me, with familiarity divorced from contempt. Harvard Yard was like comfort food – known, remembered, and somehow separate from the school that had rejected me. I could sit in the Yard and reminisce or philosophize without feeling envy towards those who the Yard really belonged to. Maybe the Finn had gone to Harvard. It would explain his presence in my slumbering little suburb.

She poked her head out from behind the door and nudged me, her hair falling like a damp picture frame around her face – from the rain or from a shower I didn't know. She was wearing a long white coat belted around the waist that made it look as if she was wearing nothing underneath.

“Hey, babe.” For such a short girl, her voice was always surprisingly deep and throaty.

“Hey,” I said, giving her a quick kiss and a glance sideways at the police. “Let's get inside, OK?”

Compare & Contrast

2007-05-22T15:10:00.000-04:00

I haven't written in a while...with 4 finals coming up tomorrow, I've been swamped with work. But I had two interesting meetings lately, with two different authors that I've read in my Arabic Literature in Translation class: Sonallah Ibrahim and Gamal al-Ghitani.

Gamal al-Ghitani is a reporter at the newspaper Akhbar al-Yom(News of the Day), and the Editor-in-Chief of Akhbar al-Adab(News of Literature). As such, he's definitely a part of the state apparatus, because there is a lot of governmental censorship and control of the media. His books are still critical of the government, but in subtle, round-about ways - the one we read was called Zayni Barakat and it is about an eponymous 15th-century judge in Mamluk Cairo who is a critical parallel of Gamal Abdel Nasser.

Sonallah Ibrahim, on the other hand, is a real rarity in Egypt - a true professional writer. Since books in Egypt are printed in runs of several thousand, it's a hard way to make a living. But he wants to be truly independent from the government and so he has lived a very modest lifestyle, almost below the poverty line(which in Egypt is very low indeed). He was even offered a literary prize by a governmental literary body that included a cash prize of almost $100,000, but he turned it down, saying:

We have no theatre, no cinema, no research, no education. We only have festivals and conferences and a boxful [referring to Egyptian television broadcasting] of lies.
I publicly decline the prize because it is awarded by a government that, in my opinion, lacks the credibility of bestowing it.

I met Ibrahim first, last night at my professor's apartment here on the upper floors of the dorms where many of the teachers live. She has a really amazing place, with a stunning view of Cairo where you can hear all the muezzins calling to prayer at once. Most of our class was there, about 12-14 people, and we asked him some questions and then had dinner and it sort of relaxed into a dinner party. It was quite entertaining and enlightening, and though he spoke softly and alternated between English and Arabic, he was quite an entertaining guy and made a few funny quips - notably, when he heard we were studying Arabic literature, he asked "Why? What do we have worth studying?" He was a very thin, dark, mild-looking man, with an unassuming manner and a big shock of grey curly hair, almost Einsteinish. He also said John Grisham was one of his favorite American authors, although I couldn't tell if he was being tongue-in-cheek.

al-Ghitani couldn't have been more different. We met him at his office this morning in the imposing(for Cairo) main building of Akhbar Al-Yom, and we sat across the desk from him and talked in Arabic and English for a while. He was a much more imposing figure, bigger and more lively and self-confident. His great passion is Islamic Cairo or al-Qahirah al-Qadeema, and he offered to give us tours of it later - unfortunately, he's going to the US and won't be back until I have left. His office was very imposing and official, which seemed appropriate to his relatively "insider" status compared to Ibrahim.

All in all, it was an interesting and educating two days.

Friends and Countrymen

2007-05-19T12:09:00.000-04:00

We went out for dinner last night, all dressed our best - Joe and I were rocking the suits Zaghloul made us, and the we were so convincing that Jay decided he wanted in on the action. So we went down to the tailor today and Jay commissioned a pair of suits.

But the evening was really wonderful - we went to La Bodega, a fancy first-class restaurant on 26th July, and ate like kings(and queens), with a 4-course prix fixe meal and wine for about $16 apiece. Really hard to complain about, if you ask me. It was a time, and we had lots of lively dinner conversation, recounting our adventures, reminiscing over our favorite moments in the month past, and engaging in a bit of spirited post-prandial debate about the role of modern feminism in American society, sparked by my - tounge firmly in cheek - comment that the men ought to retire to the lounge for cigars and brandy.

We got to the restaurant around 8:30, left around 11:30 and went to Jon's for aperitifs - or in this case, a bottle of Egyptian beer. We hung around, played some guitar, sat on the porch and enjoyed the night. Jon was rocking his new cream-colored pinstripe suit too. I really think Zaghloul owes me a free suit for all the business I've brought him.

I'm going to be sad to leave this place - I've made a lot of truly unique friendships, had all kinds of bizarre adventures and generally just lived it to the fullest, I think. While I am looking forward to returning and seeing everyone who is waiting for me there, I'm really going to miss the ahwas, the crazy rhythmic pulse of the city, the late nights and all the rest of it. Cairo's a one-of-a-kind city, I don't think anywhere else in the world could ever feel like this. I guess that's true everywhere, no two places are alike, but Cairo is like New York, like Istanbul - a truly different city.

The Finn, Pt. 2

2007-05-17T17:51:00.000-04:00

The Finn, continued:

When I returned to school I did not go back to my dorm. Rather, I walked slowly up the almost deserted paths of Brandeis to the top of the hill that dominates the campus. The buildings and trees seemed ghostly and derelict in the electric light. Its not that there
was no one about, but the palpable sense of emptiness suffused the campus. The paths were paved in a moist layer of dying leaves. All the pictures of the school show it in spring, when the trees are rich with foliage and the flowers and bushes are in full bloom. But that is only a tiny portion of the year that we spend here among the bare skeletons of the oaks and elms.

From the Castle that dominates Brandeis’ campus, all of Boston and its suburbs are spread out, the skyline twinkling on the horizon. I watched the glow of the iconic Citgo sign slowly cycling its way next to the Prudential building. Its neon brilliance seemed curiously out of place to me.

As a child, I always wanted visit the base of the sign, to see where it lived. For a long time, I thought that Citgo was the city’s real name. From my home and from the river, the red triangle seemed to hover over the cityscape, independent and above it. I still want to go it every night, launch myself from the top of the castle and soar over the woods and roads and homes. But that is for a different reason.

I stub out my cigarette – I only ever smoke at the top of the hill, leaning on the fire escape of the Castle. I don’t know why, although maybe its so the exercise makes me feel less guilty. Smoking down amongst the buildings and classes of campus it feels dirty. At the top of a stone tower at night it feels lonely and noble, like a sentry burning the night away in the red cherry cupped in his hands.

I stop in the library on the way home to look up Finland in the Encyclopedia. Actually the Wikipedia, because who bothers with paper books anymore? I find that “Finnish is one of the few European languages not of Indo-European origin.” I guess that means the Finn spoke a language nobody but Lapps and Nokia officials could understand. That’s an immensely depressing thought.

I also find that Finland is the world capital of cellphones, with 103% cell phone ownership. That 3% is puzzling. One has to wonder what would compel someone to own multiple phones that way. In my imagination, the only people who need them are the double agents in gangster films who call their Mafioso bosses on one phone and their police bosses on the other. I have a hard time imagining the Finnish mafia. What would they fight over? Snow? Reindeer? Maybe cell phones.

Also, Finland was invaded by Russia. Five times. That has to be enough to make anyone depressed. I try to imagine fighting a war in a frozen arctic landscape of ice and fir trees, but my imagine fails me. In my mind, wars are hot, brutal, and steamy, like Vietnam, or urban nightmares like World War II and Kosovo. The thought of waiting for frostbite and pneumonia to cripple your adversary is profoundly depressing.

Coming home from Starbuck’s I am dirty. Covered in sweat, shards of coffeebeans and splashes of chocolate and vanilla. I feel like a walking dishrag, studded with all the most disgusting things in the world. Lady Macbeth scrubbed at a black spot on her hands in vain – Starbuck’s partners have to rinse their whole bodies of blacks spots the same way every night.

Today, of course, was a thousand times worse – the feeling that blood was on my hands, on my shirt, on my face. We had never even touched the Finn’s body but the sensation was there. How could I help but feel guilty that a man had stared at himself in the mirror and then blown his brains out less than two yards away from me? The worst was, in the roaring noise of the Starbuck’s, we hadn’t even noticed until a customer had pointed out the door was locked for half an hour. I’m not sure why he locked the door. Was it a sense of privacy? Maybe he didn’t want anyone to walk in unprepared. He was a remarkably neat suicide.

I step into the shower and turn it up as high as it will go. The water feels like a scourge on my skin, and it is good. I can feel layers peeling away, scoured away by the blast. Unexpectedly, I am crying, the tears blurring instantly with the jet of water. I turn my face into the stream to clean away the tears, clean away my face, clean away everything until I am a soft, featureless creature.

With only a little warning, the water becomes icy, shocking me to the bone. Have you ever seen those videos of a seal lying peacefully on an ice floe when suddenly its whole world erupts and a killer whale lands on top of it? That is exactly how I felt. I flailed for the spigot and managed to slam it shut. For a while I stood there, dripping, and then I heave myself out and get ready to go back downtown.

to be continued...

Odds and Ends

2007-05-16T04:20:00.000-04:00

Sometimes it's the small things in life that are most peculiar. For instance, yesterday I walked out the door of the dorms into a billowing cloud of white smoke that obscured the sun and rendered the church spire across the street as a ghostly silhouette. It was strange and surreal, made more so by the fact that no one seemed to notice or indeed care. Normally when there's smoke everywhere people are at the very least curious. Apparently not in Cairo, where the catastrophic is more or less the everyday. But the oddest bit was that there was no smell of smoke or fire, as one might expect.

After the shuttle left, we found the source of all the smoke - a battered old Toyota pick-up that was spewing it everywhere out of something in the bed of the truck. It was really disconcerting, as the thick white fog totally enveloped the bus and made it impossible to see. With the early-morning light filtering down through the trees and the crumbling balconies of Zamalek, it looked like the beginning of a war movie. At one moment, I was kicking myself for not having a camera - there was a soldier pacing by his post, head bent, underneath a spreading tree in front of a little mosque, with the sun-beams refracting through the air and only the silhouette of the soldier and his gun visible. It was a beautiful sight, in a strange way, and I wish I could have captured it.

The other oddity this week is that less than 10 days from our final, our Fusha Arabic teacher injured herself on some steps and can't come in for class. So we got a substitute today, to teach until the end of the semester. Now, our original teacher was a very nice, affable, likeable lady, but while she was very good at Arabic, she didn't make too much effort to keep the class talking in Arabic the whole time. I didn't really realize until this sub showed up today and said maybe 3 English words during the whole 3-hour class. He really kept on us, never gave instructions in English - if we had had him for the whole semester, I might have learned a great deal more Arabic. Still, I find that I can roughly follow Al-Jazeera broadcasts and regualr newspaper articles, so I can't regret it too much.

Only 1 week of school to go. It's too bizarre for words - I remember distinctly arriving in Cairo, when Joe and I were baffled by the 15-second shuttle ride that was required to take us from the airplane to the gate. It's kind of a theme in Egypt - lots of effort and trouble and hassle to save a tiny bit of work. Once we got to the gate we were released to the mercy of the arcane mysteries of Passport Control, a system that would give a Byzantine bureaucrat solid cause to just off himself. Fortunately, there was a sort of pool shark of the airport there, waiting for a different group of AUC students. He was dressed in a glossy pinstripe suit and shoes so pointy you could use them like a drill. But he whisked us through, running around, waving and nodding at airport personnel and generally marshalling us through the ineffable chaos.

The real Cairo shock set in once we got out of the airport proper and found ourselves at the mercy of a pack of ravenous porters and taxi-drivers. They all but pried our luggage from our hands, and after trying to forcibly load it - and us - into a variety of increasingly alarming transports, our AUC escort showed up with a car that can only be described as appalling. Taxis are not normally the most well-maintained of vehicles, but it's really pushing the issue to have a car that does not, in fact, possess a dash-board, but rather a crumpled plastic shell covered in open wiring, topped with a fuzzy purple leopard-print rug and a box of tissues blinged-out like the cover of a Chamillionaire album.

And of course the driving was terrifying - roads no wider than Memorial drive transformed into six-lane free-for-alls. I'm convinced that no one has actually explained the concept of lane-dividers to the Egyptians...it's the only conceivable reason for the way they try to fit three or four or five vehicles into a space meant for two, passing on the right, the left, from behind. If there were a way to physically vault your car over the one in front of you like some half-ton game of hopscotch, the Egyptians would do it.

I'm going to miss this place.

The Finn

2007-05-13T16:09:00.000-04:00

A few months ago I posted a fragment of a story of mine that was being turned into a graphic novel.

Well, that project never came to much because the newspaper was just too disorganized and it sort of fell apart midway through the semester. But I've been playing around with the story and some of the ideas in it so I'm going to post the first portion of the story, which leads up to that point:

The Finn

The day the Finn shot himself in the bathroom was one of the worst the store ever had. It was probably fairly bad for the Finn too, but unfortunately no one had a chance to ask him how he was, or indeed why he shot himself. Mark suggested it might be because he was Finnish, a line that met with awkward laughter until we remembered that Finland had lost its quarter-final round game in the World Cup to Bahrain. After a quick search the internet to ascertain whether Bahrain was a real place, the store turned its attention to the more pressing problem of what to do with a self-created Finnish corpse.

Starbuck's has manuals and procedures for every eventuality. The company's overriding policy was “Just Say Yes,”as in 'Can I get two coffees instead of one...Yes! Can I get them for free because I had a bad day...Sure! Will you bring them to me on a gilded tray in porcelain cups and then shine my shoes...Absolutely! Unfortunately this didn't help as the only question the Finn might have asked was “Can I shoot myself in your bathroom?” and that particular path of action had already been settled.

Oddly, Starbucks doesn't have a concrete policy on in-store suicides, so we had to ad-lib it^¹. The police were nearby, and after assuring the customers that everything was under control and perfectly safe, we resumed business. After all, as tragic as the death of the Finn was, it paled in comparison to what might happen if we denied our clientele service for an entire afternoon. There were recorded instances of physical violence in response to unscheduled closings.

So we called the cops and stood around awkwardly. People would come in for coffee, and, not knowing what else to do, we sold it to them. That’s what we were there for. We had been programmed, like a cadre of automatonic hipsters, to vend coffee to any and all passerby. The mere fact of life and death playing out a room over, while disturbing and tragic, wasn’t about to throw us out of our rhythm. Indeed, the police sirens, EMTs, and firemen attracted such a crowd that we did record sales that day.

As consolation, we all got $75 dollar mental stress bonuses in our next paycheck and an extra day of paid leave. I suppose that was to help us cope with the psychic damage that the suicidal Finn had thoughtlessly inflicted on us. In reality, the only lasting impression of the incident was the reddish stain we were never able to thoroughly excise from around the toilet. In what we judged to be typically Scandinavian fashion, he’d blown his brains out directly into the bowl. I guess he was trying to spare us the trouble of cleaning the whole room.

We never did figure out why he chose our store to end his life. It wasn’t as if he was a regular or anything. Or maybe he was a regular and we’d just never figured it out. I fancied that maybe his whole life was like that, a permanent fixture at a job, a gym, a coffeeshop, maybe even in his own home, never recognized from one day to the next. Just a tall, blonde cipher drifting through life.

My reverie was interrupted by the manager politely but firmly^² asking me if I didn’t have anything important to do. Sometimes, waiting at the register, watching people approach and then retreat as if testing your defenses, you doze off a little and find yourself staring into space, counting the cracks in the brickwork or the stains on the ceiling.

At Starbucks, you learn not to work too fast. I guess it’s true of any retail job. Do nothing and you’ll get something horrible to do. So you find something that’s time-consuming but mindless, and then lose yourself in it. As long as you can claim that you are busy aligning all of the cups so that the logos are straight or rearranging the bags of coffee by region, you have a protective amulet against being forced to scrub grout out of tiles behind a dairy fridge.

On this particular occasion, I was making sure that each and every tray of sticky, nauseatingly sweet pastries was perfectly straight when I turned around and bumped into one of my coworkers carrying a pot of coffee. She dropped it into the sink and breathed a sigh of relief that it hadn’t gone on to the floor. It was at this moment that, perhaps in response to some primitive defensive instinct, looked up and was hit in the face by an encyclopedia.

To be fair, it was only one volume. The other volumes were busy tumbling down amidst the urns, grinders, brewers, and assorted paraphernalia of the coffee business. In some distant Paleolithic era, when the store had only just been converted from Joe’s Coffee or Jack’s Beans or whatever into a Starbucks, some enterprising manager had sought to lend the place an air of intellectual authenticity by stacking rows upon rows of books in the store. At ceiling level. In rickety wooden bookcases. Indeed, it was a miracle that the literary downpour we were currently experiencing hadn’t happened earlier.

Standing amidst clouds of decade-old dust, shattered spines, and dust covers lying half-in pools of dingy water, I heard a voice oh-so-quietly saying…”excuse me?”

I turned around and found myself staring at a pretty, timid-looking young girl, half-wrapped in a bright yellow balaclava and peering at me from behind a pair of thick-rimmed, square glasses. Her hair fell across her face in a diagonal line, as if someone had been cutting her hair and suddenly slipped violently to the floor.

“Welcome to Starbuck’s,” I replied. “How can I help you?”

***

I worked but I didn’t manage to find satisfaction. That was Boston’s fault. This town had dulled me with its persistent winds, and I was slowly wearing away in the rain, the snow, the battered sidewalks and cracking roads. In this city, every thing was a defense against the elements, every day was a task. And the people, clannish and irritable, could become as cutting as shards of glass. Every one shuffled around in coats and scarves, each a castle, a fortress, with layers of battlements and almost never visible. Boston wore at my soul and I could not escape.

A vast melancholy swept over me as I sat on the embankment, waiting for the train to take me home. It was one of those cold New England nights where your breath comes in freezing clouds that glow in the stainless steel moonlight. I could see the train coming half a mile away along the tracks, its running lights reflected in long beams down the rails. The track ran straight and then curved at the last minute before the station, so as it approached all I saw a was three flashing lights bearing down on me with an increasing roar. The cars blew by in a blast of hot air and roaring diesel that splashed through my mind like an ocean wave.
On the train, I sat facing the wrong direction, watching Belmont and then Waltham slide silently by. Staring through the scratched glass of the windows, I watched the tattered remnants of New England's industrial past slide by – battered redbrick buildings covered in cracking paintwork and dying ivy, junkyards filled with rusting trucks and stripped tires, men standing around in flannel shirts and dirty workboots the color of old wheat, smoking cigarettes. I looked down at my own shoes, chestnut boots polished to a waxy sheen, and then at the shoes I wear at work, scuffed and filthy with cheap leather. Why did I feel the need to change them every day before I left?

Follow The Thread

2007-05-10T19:10:00.000-04:00

End of the week, at last. It's been another long one, and the work is really coming on. Three papers to finish in the next few weeks. But relative to Brandeis, the workload is still pretty easy. Mostly, it's just the way the writing is at a much lower level here - what I would do an in-class or one-week assignment becomes a final semester paper. And the pace of reading is much, much slower.

I also went to see a play here in Egypt which my Egyptian friend Sarah was in, called The Bussy Blay. Bussy is colloquial Egyptian for "look!" or "Pay attention!" when speaking to a woman - but Egyptians also pronounce P's as B's, so it's a bit of a double entedre. The point of the play comes from a performance a few years ago of the "Vagina Monologues," which as you can imagine was a bit of a controversy. So they decided to retool the show to be more about Egyptian women.

And it's a really, really interesting and intense show, split 60-40 between English and Arabic, with lots of stories you've heard about Egypt, some you've guessed, and some you never would. I've always had trouble relating to women's-empowerment type literature - after all, I'm not a woman! But this was well-acted and well-done, lacked the gratuitous shock factor of the Vagina Monologues(although considering the culture there's some shock going on for sure!), and surprised me in many ways. The format is of students acting out anonymous monologues pertaining to particular women's issues. Two of the ones that shocked me the most were stories of girls being fondled by their Qu'ran teachers!! I guess it's not just the Catholic Church...

But there were other, lighter ones, humorous ones, personal ones, tragic ones, romantic ones - it was really quite a show and I fancy it made me a little more open-minded. But despite the one monologue entitled "Muslim Women," filled with equal amounts of rage at Islamic society and Western cultural imperialism - the show as a whole made me think the society could use just a touch of our cultural imperialism. One of the lines that stood out to me was about how "Yes, my father tells me how to dress...but so does Gucci!" Well, yes - but the difference is A)Gucci isn't supposed to be your father, and B)Gucci won't beat you for not wearing their fashion. A specious and silly comparison, to link traditional Islamic patriarchy with the much milder patriarchy of body image and advertising in the West - most often employed by Islamo/Marxo/Feminist types who need something to rail against and self-righteous suburbanites who want to pretend to connect with their "sisters" in Saudi Arabia or Sudan.

I also took Jon to see my tailor, and took the opportunity to get some pictures so you can see just how original and old-school this guy is. He really is the real deal vintage tailor, and he even does all his sewing on a peddle-driven sewing machine. Here's what his shop looks like. Click for bigger pictures.

Jon and Zaghloul.

Zaghloul's workdesk:

Works in progress.

The innards of a suit.

Waiting for delivery.

Round and Round...

2007-05-08T11:32:00.000-04:00

So it goes. My friend Thalia had her birthday party last night, which was really a lot of fun - she's moved out of the Egyptian family's home in which she as living and is now in Zamalek, in our friend Nick's former room down on Brazil St. 21st birthday, the big one - although ironically, in Egypt the drinking age is 18 if any exists at all. In any event, it was a nice party - we gathered, a bunch of people collaborated under Jon's culinary leadership to make a stir-fry, and there was watermelon, cake, baclava, even a sort of fondue, as well as plenty of beer. Unfortunately, Egyptian beer is really god-awful. But it was a great party nonetheless.

Once in a while, it's nice to get away from the Egyptian-ness of Cairo and just enjoy some company where we are all on more or less the same wavelength, in a setting where we are comfortable with everything. And it's always funny the people you meet - I ran into a kid who I had never met, but who lives probably 3 minutes away from me in Watertown, and knows some of the people I do from WHS. Not quite as strange a coincidence as meeting Thalia on the other side of the world, but still pretty close.

Oddly, Thalia wasn't happy about her birthday - or rather, she was happy and excited for the party but she said that each birthday scares her more and more. I've heard that from people more advanced in age but never from anyone turning 21. In American culture, 21 is kind of the last important birthday until 30 - it signals the beginning of real adulthood, often presages the end of college and generally implies you now have to be responsible for yourself. As for me, I like the idea of getting older - I can only hope I am wiser at the end of each year.

Return from the Hidden City

2007-05-05T11:54:00.000-04:00

Last time I told you about how getting to Petra, and everything we did there. But getting back was an adventure in and of itself. Also, this has been one of the most boring weeks ever, so I'm working the Petra story for all it's worth until something else exciting happens.

We set out from Wadi Musa to Aqaba fairly early, wanting to get the 12:00 fast ferry back to Egypt. Since there were no minibuses or public transportation, we were forced to use the hostel's pickup truck, at pricy $40 for a 2-hour ride. But it was a lot of fun driving through the Jordanian landscape, and it really had me very thoughtful and pensive the whole way. I wasn't able to get many good pictures because of how fast we were driving, but the landscape is very desolately beautiful - rolling dry plains and rocky mountains, extending onwards and onwards under a massive blue sky. Joe reminded me of a very perceptive quote - a historian who said that it was no wonder monotheism came from this land with nothing in it but hills and rocks and sky. In the fertile valleys of Egypt, Greece, Mesopotamia, Rome, and Mesoamerica, the people could make gods for everything - trees, rivers, sun, earth, animals, the sea, and so on. But herding sheep in the dry hills of the Levant, there's not much to worship aside from the sky.

And it really hasn't changed that much...we drove for an hour without seeing much more than hut-like homes and black Bedouin tents with their herds. The same sense of wide-open wilderness still prevails in many places. It's a land that makes you feel very small and alone, out beneath that immense sky.

But that ended as we drove through the desert valley leading into Aqaba, finally culminating in the sprawling, modern port city. A massive Jordanian flag easily 50m across waved lazily in the breeze. We got to the ferry-port - and there were no spaces left on the fast boat. This condemned us to the "slow boat", a conventional ferry that departed at 3 - nominally - and took 3 hours instead of 1. So standing around the port at 10 in the morning, we prepared to wait.

And wait.

All told, we were there for 7 hours before departing. We sat in the cafeteria, hid from the sweltering sun and heat, and tried to pass the time, reading all the books we had, writing in journals, talking, drinking coffee, and staring off into space. There were really two ways it could go: sit there in utter misery at our predicament, or laugh it off as one more ridiculous 3rd-world transit adventure. Fortunately, we chose the Douglas Adams-esque latter option, and ended up having a pretty good time just laughing and chatting. Never underestimate the presence of a good travelling companion - without Joe to converse with, I would have gone totally bat-shit.

And speaking of Adams - although he said "always know where your towel is," in the middle east I think that gets translated to "always know where your kaffiyeh is." I've heard the epithet "towel-head" used for Arabs and now, frankly, I don't think it's insulting at all! A kaffiyeh is the world's most useful garment. Wrap it around your head to keep the sun or the rain off, around your shoulders as a shawl for the sun, around your face in a dust storm, use it as a towel after washing, pile it beneath your head as a pillow, put it over your eyes to help you sleep, and of course it's always a stylish scarf. I used it for all these things in the course of 2 days - it's my new favorite item of clothing. It would seem Adams knew what he was talking about!

Anyways, we also spent part of the time at the ferry part talking to two travelling companions, a Saudi entrepreneur and a taciturn Japanese retired engineer. They fulfilled their stereotypes perfectly - the Japanese man was a prolific traveller, very polite, with limited English, and when I mentioned Boston he got really excited about Matsuzaka. The Saudi was a loud, arrogant man in a brilliant white robe and mirror shades, who talked incessantly about money and the correctness of Islam, and used one of his two camera-phones to show us pictures of his horse, his motorcycle, his farm, his daughter, his car, etc., etc. Yes, he really just mixed his daughter in with all his other possessions. As a sociological sample, he was interesting, but as a person he was dreadful...I can only hope all Saudis are not like that. He also had a weird way of shifting from telling dirty jokes and making crass comments about women to talking about how shameful the way Western women dress is and how terrible alcohol is.

We boarded the boat around 4, and spent another hour and a half waiting for it to leave while they loaded trucks, cars, and so on. I tried and failed to take a nap, so I spent the time just conversing with Joe. Our conversation lasted almost two hours, so we were well on the way by the time it ended. We decided to get dinner, a not entirely dismal affair, and then were ambushed by the Saudi guy again. We went to the top deck to chat, and when I got sick of him, I went down to a lower deck to nap, which lasted until our arrival.

But a bizarre thing happened on our arrival - we were on the upper uncovered decks, enjoying the fresh air, and they locked the doors. Every single door leading down into the ship was chained shut. Though probably just for crowd control, it was very disconcerting, and we joined a couple of sheikhs in yelling at the officers until they let us out. Sometimes being an ajnabi, foreigner, really helps. We finally shuffled out through the car deck, almost unbreathably inundated with diesel fumes, and slid through customs in tenth of the time it took back in Jordan.

It was now about 9:30 or 10 at night, but fortunately there was a night bus to Cairo. While waiting for tickets, we met two travelling Libyan entertainers - one was a singer, the other an actor. They were really fun and funny guys, who spoke very clear Arabic. One of them was even diabetic, and we commiserated about that. As Arabs often do, they bought us water and food without even asking, and we passed the time chatting to them until the bus left. It was a welcome change from the Saudi bore.

The ride itself was weird, but not bad. My seat "broke" - which meant it reclined 90% into an almost perfect bed on which I slept for about seven of the ten hours. Unlike the journey to Nuweiba, which had shown an ancient C-quality Sinbad movie and The Man in the Iron Mask, the movies on the inbound bus were bizarre Arabic drama/comedies with lots of yelling. I put in my earbud headphones, wrapped my kaffiyeh around my head, and slept.

I woke in Cairo, feeling cheerful and rested, and though we had to argue at the bus station taxi drivers about prices, we eventually beat it down from 50 pounds to 20. The taxi driver even brought me a glass of tea, which was pretty difficult to drink as he careened through the streets. But my lightning reflexes kept me from spilling any, and we arrived in good enough spirits to not collapse for the whole day.

Voyage to the Hidden City, Pt. 2

2007-05-02T16:31:00.001-04:00

Sorry I've been gone for so long - I try to put something down every two days, but the past week has been crazy. Anyways, last I wrote we had just got to the town of Wadi Musa, which occupies the valley outside Petra.

Our first decision was also our best one - Joe and I decided to get up and over to Petra as early as possible, and we arrived about half an hour after it opened, at 7:30. There was still a greyish early-morning glow and as we walked down the road to the entrance of the Bab Al-Siq(literally Door of the Shaft), the Bedouin were just bringing out their horses so they could try to get tourists to ride them. But we passed on that and headed into the narrow valley that leads into Petra. The Siq is a narrow, winding passage of crimson sandstone warped into bizarre whorls by some ancient stream.

We walked down, taking pictures, and the walls of the canyon began to close in. Then, after at least a kilometer, we saw a crack of light. As we approached, we saw the classic shot that any photo-series on Petra has - the facade of the Treasury gleaming in the sun as we walked down the path. You know, the Indiana Jones thing. But it comes at you as a surprise, and it really is breathtaking.

We admired it for a while, having the place almost to ourselves aside from a few camel, two tourists and some Bedouin. It was really amazing - the peace and quiet, the solitude all contributed to the majesty of the sight. It wasn't nearly the same at the end of the day when it was swarmed with people - much less stirring. Anyways, we moved on - we were planning to do the Lonely Planet guide's two-day itinerary in about eight hours.

We walked down the valley, passing more tombs and carvings on either side. There are almost no buildings as such in Petra - just magnificent Classical Greek-style facades that the Nabateans carved for their tombs, store-rooms and palaces. They actually lived in tents, and I can't blame them - I wouldn't want to live in those artificial caves. The more I thought about it, the more I realized things haven't changed that much in 2000 years. There are still Bedouin with their camels and goats, still open-air markets in the middle of the city, still people coming from a long way to see the tombs and temples.

We passed the Ampitheatre and the Tombs of the Kings, all of which were almost entirely abandoned. There were a few other people walking around taking pictures, and lots of goats. Then we set off down the old Roman rode that runs down to the only free-standing structure in the area, the Qasr al-Bint: literally, Palace of the Girl. I have no idea why. Really, it's not all that impressive -although from an engineering standpoint, it's more difficult, the cliff-side facades just look so much cooler. And over time, the soft sandstone from which they were built has slowly eroded, leaving them with a weirdly melted look.

After a quick stop in the Nabatean Museum, we set off down the Wadi al-Deir, the long canyon at the end of the Petra valley. At the entrance to it their was a sign warning "Danger! Do Not Go Beyond This Point Without A Guide", in English. We were skeptical, and looking around, we didn't see any guides! So off we went. The climb was really nice, winding up through the sandstone valley, with a little side hike to a hidden, forested glade with the "Lion Tomb." We wound up further and further, catching glimpses of stunning vistas and marvelous sandstone formations, and making more than a few wrong turns. I guess if we had been blind and stupid, we might have been in some danger - there were a couple of paths that dead-ended into sheer drops. But it was no more perilous than your average hike.

Finally, we saw the summit of the climb in sight, with a tent set up to serve tea, coffee and hookah. It looked interesting, but not all that great - the view had been better further down. A British guy who had climbed the last five minutes with us quipped "I've half a mind to write to Lonely Planet about this."

Then we turned the corner. And there it was, "The Monastery", another facade easily the equal of "The Treasury"(both those names are misleading, they are neither!), but with a much more commanding view. We rested at the summit for a while, snacking on bread and peanut butter(a cheap traveler's best friend!) As we headed back down we ran into two of our travelling companions sipping tea and shisha, and talked to them for a little while. Their plan was even more ambitious than ours to go overland to Amman and then Damascus!

As we descended, we began to see more and more tourists. Then the donkeys laden with overweight Latino tourists - as well as other AUC students(not overweight, though) - started passing us, hogging the whole narrow stone path. By the time we got the bottom, the Wadi was flooded with tourists heading up to the site that we had enjoyed in relative peace and solitude. And of course, there were "guides" and touts offering to lead people up what was essentially a totally linear hike now filled with people going both ways, and offering the "official" warning sign as evidence of the danger!

We made our way against the stream and then headed for our final destination, the High Place of Sacrifice. This was essentially a cliff in the middle of the Petra valley with a long, long series of steps leading up to it. We made our way up, the sun now blazing down on us, and probably drank a good .75 litres of water apiece making it to the top. By the time we got there, 45 minutes of stair-climbing later, we were pretty beat, so we decided to make the High Place of Sacrifice the High Place of Lunch. Yeah, you guessed it - pita and peanut butter! And the best part - we'd done the Lonely Planet's two-day itinerary before lunch.

The view of Petra was pretty spectacular, but unfortunately the haze made it a lot less photo-genic than it could have been. I guess the valley kind of traps the hazy moisture. Finishing our lunch and finding ourselves surrounded by Russian tourists, we made our way down the other side of the cliff through another little valley with smaller, more finely-carved tombs and relics, including the house of the man who controlled the water cistern for pilgrims on the pilgrimage route.

Reaching the bottom, we had walked over 12 miles. We had to plow our way through tour groups to get out, and some Arab film company was even setting up a film shoot in front of the Treasury facade! It was utter madness getting out, and then we had to walk another mile to the town center to get money from the ATM. The fudgesicle thing I had on the way up was the best food I have ever tasted!!

We were so tired, the evening was pretty low-key: nap, wake up, eat dinner, have drinks in a 2000-year-old Nabatean cave tomb, a bit of al-Jazeera and then bed.

Voyage to the Hidden City, Pt. 1

2007-04-28T03:28:00.000-04:00

My adventures for this weekend revolved around visiting Petra. Strictly speaking, however, most of my time was spent in transit - an experience, I can assure you, was a bit less than exemplary. As a study in how the Middle East basically seems to work, however, it was pretty invaluable. So I'm going to drag you through every excruciating moment of it. I will, however, refrain from using the phrase "Rose Red City," throughout, because I'm thoroughly sick of that epithet.

We set out from Cairo late Tuesday night to take a bus to Nuweiba, a little port city on the Red Sea in the Sinai Peninsula. The plan was to take a ferry from Nuweiba to the Jordanian port of Aqaba and from there another bus to Petra, about two hours inland. There's another way to get there, by cutting through Taba in Egpyt and Eilat in Israel, but that involves getting an Israeli stamp on your passport, which is the kiss of death for trying to enter any Arab nation except for Egypt and Jordan.

Little did we know that Nuweiba is pretty much the sphincter of Egypt. It wasn't quite a wretched hive of scum and villainy, but it was pretty damn close. Apparently the tourist part of the town is actually quite nice, but the port authority area is a sprawling mess of dirty cafes, loading docks, shipping offices, and filth. This place was seriously disgusting even by lax Egyptian standards. We spent most of our time in the shaded courtyard of the ticket office, which was the least awful of the available locations.

Don't even get me started on the cement-block hole-in-the-ground Egyptian squat toilets. The most foul truck-stop restroom in America wouldn't even be able to hold a candle to these - in fact, if they did there might be some sort of explosion. I will never be able to understand how an Islamic culture which places such a high value on personal cleanliness and regular ablutions allows its streets and especially its washrooms to become such vile cesspits.

The bus which we had taken was actually chock-full of AUC students, but most of them were going to Israel, so they got off in Taba to head north to Jerusalem. There were a couple of others with is in Nuweiba, including two crazy guys who planned to visit Petra, Amman, and Damascus all in one weekend. And even though it often takes 8+ hours to cross the Syrian border - if you get across at all - they still probably spent less time in transit then us.

Joe and Ben - another guy visiting Jordan - and I chilled in the ticket office until they finally decided to start boarding the "fast ferry." After being shuffled through six or seven different waiting areas, having our passports and tickets checked innumerable times, and being put on buses that sat idling for 10 minutes to travel no more than 500 ft. from the terminal to the boat, we finally boarded the ship - only to have our passports confiscated for "processing."

Now, being out of control of your passport is a worrying state of affairs at the best of times. Giving it over to the grimy hands of the Jordanian/Egyptian state port security services would be enough to give the Dalai Lama an aneurysm. But, we bore it with admirable patience, and after finally shuffling everyone around, the boat took off from the dock. And it was a fast boat - the "slow ferry" was still boarding trucks when we arrived in Aqaba an hour later, around 6pm. We were optimistic that we would be in Petra by 8, and happy that our investment in the "Fast Boat", about twice as expensive as the regular ferry had paid off. So we pulled into port...and waited.

And waited.

And waited some more. We sat in our seats, with no one telling us a bloody thing about what was going on. A few other foreign nationals were let out but they weren't letting Americans anywhere. Mind you, they still had our passports during this whole ordeal. Finally, over an hour later, they relented and let us out of the boat and put us on another 500m bus ride to the Jordanian customs/arrival terminal.

Where they didn't have our passports. Now, I'm used to Egyptian bureaucracy and official stupidity, but I have never before encountered a customs bureau that had simply vanished our passports. For almost an hour, I couldn't get a straight answer out of any of the duty officers as to where they had gone. People walked back and forth. There was shouting in Arabic and a fair amount of gesticulation. We were repeatedly assured that the wait would be "10 more minutes." Some of the Americans' passports emerged, while others inexplicably remained hidden in the bureaucratic void. It finally emerged that they were "processing" each passport for security, a process which appeared to take about 5 minutes per passport. They trickled out over the course of the hour, emerging in small, illogical batches - one guy got his while his girlfriend didn't, while a Korean family was handed all of theirs - except for their 5-year-old daughter.

Finally, having determined that Joe and I and two middle-aged travelling companions from Ireland and Oregon did not represent pressing security risks to the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, we were allowed out around 9pm - to get a bus to Petra. At this point, Joe and I had been travelling for 24 solid hours, with only brief naps on the bus and boat. But we got a taxi, and after being shunted between four different drivers and twice as many arguments about something - Allah only knows what, although it undoubtedly involved money - we were on our way to Petra.

I was honestly only conscious for the first bit, where our driver pointed out the world's biggest damn Jordanian flag flying over Aqaba port and bought jerry-cans of petrol from a station run exclusively by eight-year old boys. Then it was off into the Jordanian countryside. Fortunately, Joe was able to make conversation with the middle-aged couple who had gotten stuck in the same trap as us, and I was able to lie back, sleep and have my head repeatedly slammed into the doorframe of the car by the squealing hairpin turns that led to Petra.

We got to our hotel, and found that two other groups of AUC students were already occupying it, so that was an interesting surprise. Fortunately we had booked ahead of time, and through the incompetence of the hotel staff we were for some reason given a four-bed room for the price of the two-bed room we had booked - not particularly useful, but it at least gave us clean linen for each night we were there! They briefly tried to charge us the 4-bed rate, but we were so thoroughly fed up that we took our bags upstairs and told them we expected the right rate when we returned. They obliged.

That was the end of our voyage to Petra - or strictly speaking, to Wadi Musa, the village just outside Petra. The next day brought all of the good, awesome, and beautiful stuff. Stay tuned...

Best Laid Plans

2007-04-24T06:16:00.000-04:00

Well, the initial plan for the weird Sinai Liberation Day (or as Joe puts it, "The Israelis Kicked Our Ass Day) was to go to the beachside resort of Dahab on the Red Sea and do some windsurfing. Unfortunately, the weather does not always provide - so it goes. In this case, the wind is going to be a measly 6-8 knots all week, barely enough to get the stupid thing moving. I really can't be bothered to go rent some fantastically expensive kit if the wind isn't going to cooperate and I end up sitting in the middle of a - shark-infested? - sea.

So we changed our plans, and the new idea is to go to Petra. If you're a classical history buff, you'll know the city as the ancient Nabatean capital carved out of the walls of a canyon in Southern Jordan. It's pretty incredible stuff. You might also recognize it as the home of the Holy Grail from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Basically, an awesome place.

I'll bring back lots of pictures and hopefully stories, and I'll be gone until Saturday.

But It Pours...

2007-04-20T09:21:00.000-04:00

The weather went from strange to utterly mad. On the one hand, sand blowing out of the sky is bizarre and peculiar phenomenon. But you sort of expect to get sandstorms in the desert, even if you have no idea what they are going to be like. Yet for the next day to bring rain is just too odd. At first I didn't even believe it was raining - I thought the pattering in the courtyard was the fountain being rinsed out or someone gardening the bushes.

So it rained, coming down and washing away the dust and grime that had been deposited over everything. Part of me wished it would come into the room and wash away all of the accumulated sand in here. Another part of me wanted to go out and sit in the rain and feel washed off, but of course here rain is just as dirty as everything else. It will actually leave brown marks on white clothing.

Nevertheless, there is something psychologically cleansing about rain, so I decided to write a quick haiku about it. Why? I don't know, it's just something I do.

Spring raindrops carve out
patterns in the swirling dust
and holes in my heart.

Also, the weather made me think of this song:

The sky is crying the streets are full of tears
Rain come down wash away my fears
And all this writing on the wall
Oh I can read between the lines
Rain come down forgive this dirty town
Rain come down and give this dirty town
A drink of water a drink of wine

Sandstorm

2007-04-18T05:16:00.000-04:00

Well, I hear Boston has been having thoroughly wretched weather for the past couple of weeks. I'm sorry to say that we've got that beat over here in Cairo - yesterday it was 35 degrees in the shade while a sandstorm raged through the streets. It was a truly surreal experience.

On the bus to school, I could barely see the far bank of the Nile over the bridge, and everything was cast in the weird yellowish-grey light of the storm. There's a statue at one end of the bridge and it was nothing but an eerie silhouette.

And the sand gets into everything. You open your mouth and it gets stuck between your teeth. I found it pooled in the bottom of my bag after walking outside for only a few minutes. But the city rolls on, just like it would after a rainstorm in Boston. It's a commonplace event, I guess, and for all its bizarreness no-one really seemed to notice or care that much. I did feel envious of the veiled women, for once, as they could just wrap their scarves tighter and not breath in the sand. The kaffiyeh really does make sense over here - keeps off wind, rain, sand and sun, and can be used as a pillow or a towel in a pinch.

In other unrelated news, our friend Nick departed yesterday, leaving the Egyptian Museum to go back to the States and then to study German in Hamburg or Frankfurt - I can't remember which. That time of the semester is fast approaching when we will all have to say our goodbyes, unsure of whether they are final or not. It is easy to make promises to visit, stay in touch, etc. In truth, very few of these friendships survive the distance barrier. I only hope we can all keep in touch after the semester ends.

Glimpses

2007-04-15T11:55:00.000-04:00

News remains slow here, but what can you do. I apologize that I can't get mugged by Turkish pimps every week - although that might get old. Anyways, here are five or six of my favorite photos from the trip. Hope you like them! Click to see them in all their full-res glory.

Stairway in Cairo. I like it because it sums up the physicality of the city.

Bizarre volcanic cones in the Black Desert. Looks like an alien landscape.

The beginning of the white desert and its bizarre cones and whorls.

Footprints in the White Desert.

Old man in prayer at the Suleimaniye Mosque, Istanbul.

Ceiling in the Roman Temple at Baalbeck.

As The Crow Flies

2007-04-13T12:20:00.000-04:00

"If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him." - Voltaire

And as there's no news in my life now, it was necessary to make some up. So a short fictional vignette, instead. I stress fictional because that is what it is. Small bits are based on reality but basically that's what it is - a story.

I hope you enjoy it!

As the Crow Flies

Ink glittered for a brief moment as it slid onto the paper. In moments, it dried as a matte black snake of words. I watched it as I wrote, paying more attention to the shapes than the words themselves. They had become little more than crumpled heaps of shed emotion. The paper was stiff and its crackling annoyed me as I wrote. With a final sigh of frustration, I tossed the pen aside and watched as it rolled along the margin, tiny drops of black spattering the page.

A month here had worn me down to a raw stub of frustration. My computer, stolen on the plane, had been my one link to the rest of the world, a lifeline to modernization. Plunged into the daily chaos of Cairo, these papers were the only, tenuous connection to everything I had left. One a day to my family; one a day to my friends. And one - a hopeless, futile gesture to the woman I had left waiting for me, written in an unsteady hand that grew shakier with time.

This was the last one. The final letter. It pounded the last nail and rolled the coffin over the edge of the boat. We had been on shaky ground when I left. I was nervous over so many months apart, with temptation always beckoning. Our trust was worn thin and the arguments had always bubbled just below the surface. In my letters, the tone grew increasingly strident. This final communique was the product of the past weeks, throwing my words into the void. I told her it was finished – I was finished. I could not stand another month of raging silence.

I stood on the balcony and watched the balletic madness of the street. A taxi made a mad swerve around a bus of children to offer an old woman a ride. She waved her cane and shouted something in Arabic – curses? Greetings? At this height, I couldn't tell. The restaurant across the street from the Algerian embassy shone with lights and music. Uniformed guards lounged at the entrance as well-dressed guests filtered in. There were two sets, actually. The Cairo police leaned on their battered Kalashnikovs while the Embassy security stood in shadows. The latter were hulking men in black suits caressing submachine guns.

And the guests! A month in the grey dust of the streets made their luxury look like a djinn's palace. Women in shimmering cocktail dresses, men in dinner jackets and black ties. Long parades of luxury cars that snaked around the block. I saw one man enter flanked by two blonde women in white dresses – sisters? Wives? What was the party for, anyways? It could be a wedding – there was one of those a week, at least, and the celebration never ended before sunrise. Or just revelry for its own sake – the excitement of being rich and privileged.

I contemplated sending my letters to one of those women, just addressing it at random to a Yasmin or Rasha and seeing what happened. It couldn't be any more frustrating than my current plan. A month's worth of letters, one each day, and not a single response from her. Thirty-one pages of endearments, questions, demands, poems, news, and finally pleas.

The silence nagged at me, like the dull buzzing that filled my ears when a room was totally quiet. The slightest event would set it off – a young couple entangled in the back of the library, a man smoking on the 6^th October bridge while he waits for his liasion, even the sight of someone writing on the shaky metal coffee tables in an ahwa. It intruded on my sleep with dreams of drowning in a sea of ink leaking from my pen.

Frustration propelled me down and out of the apartment. The lobby was empty and my boots echoed on the scuffed marble floors. I hesitated briefly at the door, than turned heavily down the street and towards the ahwa that I had adopted as my second home. On the way, I sent my last letter off at the post office. My hand shook slightly as I handed the money over to the veiled girl at the counter, and she looked at me oddly. I could hardly blame her – hair slightly disheveled, three days of stubble and a faint aura of disreputability. But it was done. I thought of Caesar at the Rubicon, and that gave me a brief moment of amusement before I realized the pretension of the thought.

The floors were dirty but the mirrors were clean when I got there. Some days, it was the other way around. Nothing was ever really clean, as Cairo dirt and car exhaust coated everything in a layer of blackness. Only the glasses shined, and that was among the reasons I came. Abdel, the owner, croaked out a hoarse “Salaam aleikum” - Peace be upon you - through his cigarette-and-sugar-rotted teeth. As alarming a figure as he cut, he was a kindly and welcoming man who didn't object to my long hours sipping tea and coffee while scribbling away. With his head of crazed white hair, paltry collection of teeth and hands like sandpapered bronze, he was half an Orientalist-cliche and half everyone's peculiar old uncle.

“Wa aleikum salaam,” I replied. And upon you, peace. Did he have peace, I wondered? I was convinced he was gay, as many Egyptians are but refuse to admit. His ancient three-piece suits, the unusual cleanliness of his store and the hanging portraits of the former royal family's handsome young princes all pointed towards that. So did his clientele – dandily dressed elderly men, to a man, sporting such eccentricities as rosewood canes and umbrellas.

I imagine him spending his whole life offering nothing more than little hints and gestures – telegraphs in code, sent out to the cruel unfriendly world. Did he ever hear a response? Did he want to? There are ways to outflank society's walls, but they are long and tortuous paths. Or is it just a whole castle of cards that I build in my mind?

I sipped my coffee, letting the aroma of cardamom fill my nose. After a month in Cairo, I couldn't smell much, but this one scent was too powerful to loose. As I reached the bottom of the glass, Abdel sat down next to me with a shisha, his own personal one rather than the many he kept for customers. It had been painted with a picture of King Farouk. He offered me the pipe and I took a few drags. The tobacco was heavy and perfumed, and it left my head spinning.

We chatted quietly for a while. My Arabic was rough and his English fractured and interjected with French. But an hour passed, and eventually I wandered back. As midnight approached, the streets grew lonely and the river mist settled over the island of Zamalek. The streetlamps glowed with faint halos, and even the guards' cigarettes seemed to float in the darkness.

I shuffled into the lobby and was halfway into the elevator when I realized the bawab was calling me. I turned reluctantly. He was standing in front of his desk, waving his arms. In my daze, I had walked right past him. He proffered a battered package to me. “Sunduq, yaa Basha.” He always says that – basha, officer. To each and every foreigner, without fail. I wish I could talk him out of it but I can't.

A box, stamped from America. Probably a package of cookies or books or some other little token from my family. I slouch in the elevator, picking idly at the worn brown wrapping paper. My door squeaks as I open it and I grit my teeth against the sound. Inside, I pour myself a measure from the half-empty bottle of whiskey on the counter. It isn't particularly good, but it fills up that little space inside.

I open the box with a knife from the Khan al-Khalili bazaar, a cheap tourist trinket. There is another smaller bundle inside, tied up with rough twine. A letter is laid out on top, in a familiar, loopy hand done with red pen.

I'm so sorry, love! The postage went up and all of my letters got returned at once! But here they are...

Dance of the Veils

2007-04-11T17:29:00.000-04:00

The past three and a half months in the heart of the Islamic world have blasted my preconceptions on the hijab straight out of the water(or sand). When I arrived, my view was simple: clearly it represented a form of patriarchal, Arab-Islamic oppression that ought to be fought at every turn. You might know me as a cynic about many of the manifestations of modern feminism, but this was my own personal line in the sand firmly on the side of feminism. These weeks with literally hundreds of women who wear the hijab in all its forms have complicated my opinion, in multiple directions.

First, a little vocabulary exercise. Hijab is a complex word and concept. Basically, it is the Arabic word for "veil" or "cover" and more broadly represents the concept of modesty. Colloquially, it is usually used to refer to the head or head-and-neck most often associated with Islamic women. Abaya is the long, shapeless black overcoat worn by conservative Muslim women and a legal obligation in Saudi Arabia. Burqa is a single-piece head-to-toe cloth peculiar to Afghanistan and that region, with a thin mesh for vision and breathing. A chador is a Persian garment similar to an abaya. Niqab is any of a number of forms of face-covering veils, usually with a vision slit.

There are all sorts of other terms, variants, and subtleties to these terms peculiar to Arabic, its various dialects, and all the regions of Islam, but I am neither qualified nor interested in discussing this. Basically, before I came I didn't know and didn't care about the difference - the Islamic requirement of "modesty," however it might be interpreted, was sexist and wrong.

Now, having met a large number of hijabis, whose interpretation ranges from a simple head-wrap to the full neck-covering shawl, I've pulled the proverbial 180. Their reasons range across a broad spectrum: modesty, piety, a desire to fit in, social pressures, family orders, and simple tradition. The most insidious examples are of those girls who said, as one of my friends did - "If you don't, they call you a slut and spread stories" - or something to that effect. This is a social problem in the Arab world, as prevalent among women as men, and it needs to be addressed. Many girls just want to be protected in some measure from the leering eyes and comments of the men on the street, another social issue which will take time and energy to remove - if it indeed it ever can be. From personal experience with months in a mostly-veiled nation, the sight of a woman's hair is enough to turn my head every single time. Needless to say, I developed a severe neck sprain in Lebanon!

Nevertheless, the religion of Islam - or an interpretation thereof - saying that women's hair needs to be covered is not particularly harmful in and of itself. I used to object on the grounds that men had no similar restriction, but that's not strictly true(although the men's rules are far less stringent). But anyways - men don't have to cover their chests on the beach in the West, and we're not allowed to wear skirts and dresses in an social setting(Eddie Izzard notwithstanding). Norms will always be different for the sexes, and although I don't think the Islamic ones are a particularly good idea, I respect the difference of opinion. I love wine and might die without pork, but its fine if you want to declare it haram - just let me keep it!

A note, however - going to Turkey and Lebanon was incredibly refreshing for me, to see all of the women walking around looking, happy, healthy and mostly uncovered. Even the covered ones appeared more at ease, smiling, talking, and generally seeming better-adjusted than all but the must affluent hijabis in Egypt. Whether this a function of religion, society, or something else - I have no idea. Of course there was no self-interest at all in this observation...:)

Yet with regards to the niqab and the burqa, I've become if anything more radically opposed. You don't know the meaning of hypocrisy until you've seen an Arab man in full Western suit being trailed by 1 (or more) woman wearing a head-to-toe black garment with only a thin mesh to see and breath. It drives me berserk and I want to scream from my lungs every time I see the poor women struggling to walk, wear glasses, or even eat. It is a horrible, disgusting practice and no amount of cultural relativism will change that. Maybe its their choice, I don't know, but I think it does so much more harm than good that it becomes irrelevant.

Humanity is manifested in the face. Hair and skin and revealing clothes are a vanity. The face is where our inner selves manifest, how we greet the world. To hide that, to be told that God and Men demand that you hide that, is dehumanizing in the extreme. Can you imagine living your whole life without ever feeling the sun, the wind on your face? Worse yet, to feel it until your first period, and then be denied it ever again?? It is beyond cruel, and I cannot condone it in any circumstance whatsoever. The niqab and its various forms do irreparable damage to society, to freedom, and to individual women.

Ghosts in the Cedars

2007-04-10T14:44:00.000-04:00

Perhaps it was inevitable that Lebanon would be more affecting in many ways than Istanbul. The Turkish city is much more European in its nature. It is more happily - even smugly - contemplative of its glorious Ottoman past and its modernizing present, and both the relics and the cutting-edge seem smoothly integrated into the city's life. In Lebanon the feelings of both historical and modern tension are much closer to the surface. You can see them in the almost frenetic pace of Beirut's nightlife, the beautiful girl in the drop-top Porsche racing by Hizbollah protests, the bored shopgirls smoking outside their stores in the abandoned downtown, and even the grandeur of Baalbeck's ruins. It whispers through the mountains and curls like fog around the bombed-out bridges of the Israel war.

Baalbeck was particularly affecting to me. All the antiquities I have seen in the East are either settled in cities or turned into massive tourist attractions. The Pyramids, Luxor, the mosques of Istanbul - all of them are in one way or another streamlined and modernized for tourist audiences. Baalbeck is different. It is the best-preserved Roman temple in the world, yet its remote location means that few tourists venture there these days. For 2000 years, it has been the greatest structure as far as the eye can see down the Bekaa valley, and it may well stay so for the next 2000. Surrounded by acres of farmland and snow-covered peaks, it must have seemed one of the wonders of the world, and yet it was no more than a backwater of an Empire that stretched from Arabia to Scotland.

The temples' stones and pillars were used by Justinian to build the Haga Sofia, by the Arabs to fortify the temple and the Crusaders to bolster the walls, by the Ottomans to build a castle and now they lie shattered in green moss. The broken colossus of Ramses inspired Shelley's Ozymandias but I find the cyclical destruction and rebuilding of this vast complex much more affecting.
I can't help but reflect, as I stare at the six pillars which are all that remain of Jupiter's temple, on the futility of human ambition. And yet I return to Beirut where people are stubbornly, urgently erecting new towers of steel and glass and concrete to replace the buildings shattered in fifteen years of war. Lebanon and the Levant are littered with the wreckage of human civilization and the scars of man's cruelty, yet they struggle on. The Lebanese are sick to death of war and it is hard to blame them. There are so many bullet-scarred buildings on the former Green Line that 20 years later, they still haven't finished replacing them. But you can still go to one of the hundred best restaurants in the world, visit the regions chicest clubs and bars, and talk for hours with strangers on the bus. They want to live and they want to be great, in spite of their troubles, and even Hassan Nasrallah says that 3 more years of stalemate are preferable to anymore civil war.

The irony is that I thought Lebanon would be the most dangerous leg of my trip, yet it was in Istanbul that I found myself in danger, while I know people who were on the Greek ferry that sunk this week, and a Turkish plane was hi-jacked today. The world is un-predictable and you never know what will come each day it turns. Whether the answer is silent prayer or joyful partying, one way or another we all have to find an answer.

Turkish Delight

2007-04-01T10:49:00.000-04:00

Istanbul is hard to sum up in words. It acts one way and then, without warning, surprises you with hidden delights. The tiny alleyways with children playing soccer, the cluttered houses and gleaming boutiques, the bars, cafes and restaurants tucked into side streets and lining broad avenues - you could wander this city for a year and see a new mosque and eat in a new place each day.

Yesterday, we saw both the Blue Mosque and the Haga Sofia, and the contrast could not be more apparent - as was intended. It was a grey, rainy day, and the Sofia was a cold, almost brutal marble structure with a soaring dome - unfortunately somewhat obscured by scaffolding. There are massive pillars and the remnants of old, gilt Byzantine mosaics. Even the remains of the Islamicization that took place after the conquest are massive wooden wheels with the names of Allah, the Prophet, and the first four Caliphs.

By contrast, the Blue Mosque is an almost weightless structure of thin, gold-topped minarets with an airy, lofty interior. Carpeting and careful lighting make it seem far more delicate and open, and from the exterior it appears to be made of porcelain or glass next to the heavy brick and stone of its Christian counterpart.

Today, on the other hand, was sunny and gorgeous. We wandered the streets of Sultanahmet, visiting a number of other major and minor mosques. Ottoman architecture is very regular and elegant on the outside, so we began to get a sense of deja vu as we approached each, but the interiors differed wildly. The lovely weather meant we had some great views of Istanbul.

The greatest sight I have seen was last night as I walked back to the hotel by the Blue Mosque. Fireworks went off over the Golden Horn, glittering in the rainy night sky. They startled the flocks of seagulls that nest around the Mosque, which took off simultaneously, and were lit up by the Mosque's floodlights so that it looked like hundreds of golden arrows soaring over the spires.