Activity

The food—bah! I forgot to touch the chicken-and-pepper sandwich my mother had made for me. In my notebook, I waxed poetic about the alluring possibility of simply going on, into the infinity of lifedom, never buying the freezer chest. I would go past Murska Sobota, to Austria, onward to Paris; I wo…

This happened in 1984, when I was long and skinny; my legs hurt, and I could not stretch them in the dinky bus. Pus accumulated in my budding pimples; there was an arbitrary erection in progress. This was youth: a perpetual sense of unease that made me imagine a place where my discomfort would be n…

The streets of Goma were enveloped in roiling clouds of black dust. In an uncanny, disturbing moment, I recognized that everyone in sight was barefoot, and I could not remember what the purpose of shoes was. But then I saw booted policemen standing on the porches, leaning against the walls, like id…

The streets of Goma were enveloped in roiling clouds of black dust. In an uncanny, disturbing moment, I recognized that everyone in sight was barefoot, and I could not remember what the purpose of shoes was. But then I saw booted policemen standing on the porches, leaning against the walls, like id…

Determined to dispel the cloud of tedium hanging over us, Tata finally put a call in to the Yugoslav ambassador and invited ourselves to his residence in Gombe, where all the important diplomats lived. The mansions there were large, the lawns were wide, majestic flowers bloomed in impeccably groome…