Chivambo loved to tell stories, but this one was his favourite. He told it as often as he could. Some heard it when he was preaching in the Presbyterian Church at Chamanculo, back in the 1960s. His colleagues listened to it in the dormitory of the mission college. And others still heard it as they lugged their weapons on their shoulders, on the march to liberation.
...Two days since midsummer passed. We partied all night on summer cottage decking and drank strong beer with a bear’s face snarling at us from the tin. We sweated it all out in a sauna that smelled of birch. When the heat crescendoed, we dived into the chilly sea, blood racing and hearts pumping. Repeated the process until we collapsed on sofas and futons and floors, our skins pink and new, the sun never truly dipping below the horizon. At best it was a purple crimson glow around 4am, a clean comedown light. After our conversations were put to bed, the only noise was the splash of mating grebes out on the water and the tremolos of passing oystercatchers.
...Once upon a time, the Princess circulated a rumour. It began on her island at the top of her tower, in her round room, at her bedside. She slipped a message to her chambermaid, whispering in the lady’s left ear. The chambermaid turned (tucking it away), and told someone carrying a covered chamber pot, who dumped the news on a sentry man, who passed it along on his rounds to the butcher, who watched the cleaver slip just a bit as he shared more than he ought with the tapestry weaver’s daughter as he gave the child some bones for her cat.
...He’d been silent, the other man at the bar, gazing into his glass of whiskey before growing animated at the mention of Mark Twain. “I met Twain one time, you know, out near Jackass Hill.”
...Abdul didn’t hear her say those words. But that’s what he imagined she would be saying to the men in front of her. She made the requests garnished with something that resembled a smile. And with the smile, a nod of her head and a bob of her hair followed. From where Abdul stood, he could see the whiteness of her teeth as her lips parted. While bending to look at the document, her eyes would brush through the person in front of her. And every once in a while, she would push back her bobbed hair before handing over the document and smile again — everything taking less than a minute with each person.
...The Bay of Bengal in Bangladesh devours her children. I’ve worked in the delta’s sludge for five years, and already she has consumed the big toe on my left foot, and wounds like red open mouths fester along my right arm. For my cousin Amir, I fear the bay is eating his mind.
...The frightened moon and stars were hiding. The typhoon howled and dredged the Philippine Sea in search of living things. In a stolen outrigger with a broken motor, Ligaya gripped her jeans, shut one eye, and breathed the pelting rain. Every time the baby in her arms shook, the young mother tightened the blanket which wrapped them both. Lightning clawed the veil of rain, and Ligaya glanced over her shoulder, yelling at Saul. “Right! Left! Right!”
...When Keisha wrote down Harvard University on the list her college counsellor gave her parents, it was because she knew that he would tell her that she wasn’t Ivy-league, straight-A, or high-class Harvard material. As a result, she would have considered her duty as the daughter of two highly-qualified, much-accomplished, singularly-accoladed academic “Education is success,” “first degree comes first” parents done, and subsequently would have got them off her back for not “fulfilling her potential, Keisha, goddamnit”. The counsellor, a short man, already balding in his 30s and straight from South Carolina, had taken one look at Keisha’s list of schools, saw Harvard squeezed in between the almost-equally impressive Williams College, and the infinitely lesser NYU Abu Dhabi (Keisha quite liked the idea of the Middle East), and said, “Yes.”
...It is early morning and the hot winds fragranced with the aromas of sun baked earth and prairie grass blow through the car. Ahead the interstate is straight and flat for as far as I can see. On both sides of the interstate the prairie and ranch lands are contained within barbed wire fences that, like the interstate, stretch endlessly. There are few buildings along this stretch, no homes or barns. The only exits have signs to places that I imagine no one turns off to go to unless they live there.
...Plaza de la Cathedral, is an open space except during special events like Liberation Day. On Liberation Day, bands, stands and volunteer hands fill the plaza, inviting curious pedestrians and bon vivants. The Church of Santiago stands to the West, lively open-air cafés stand to the North, and old mansions hide behind a row of palm trees to the East. From the South, the grand cathedral of Cádiz, oblivious to the sinful lives outside, overlooks the square with a serene façade.
...Capable—if unreliable—little motorcycles, a used Honda Win can be had for around US$200. Boasting 110cc engines, endlessly replaced, welded and salvaged clutches, wheels, brakes, handlebars, frames, rims and gearboxes, with not a one having a working odometer, speedometer or gas gauge, and so on, these bikes are, for the traveller possessed of an adventurous heart, the magic key to the dramatic landscapes of northern Vietnam.
...There had been bombings, small ones that failed for the most part. A detonation in front of the Israeli Embassy that wounded only the bomber, a minor blast (three reported injured) outside the mall near Phrom Phong, Thailand. Still, I was shaken. In a city of a million motorbikes, the kick of an engine can sound like an explosion.
...The streets were empty, as were all the houses in that village. He walked from door to door, ringing doorbells that made no sound, climbed stairs in silence, crossed lawns and left no mark with his boots. Feeling forlorn, he decided to leave and go elsewhere.
...‘I would like a coffee with milk and a sandwich with ham and cheese please.’
‘Bitte?’
She stood there, pen and notepad in hand, her brow raised ever so slightly, the tiniest furrows on her nose ridge, looking at me through sky-blue eyes, waiting.
...The International terminal is a bustle of activity. Strong lights illuminate a massive stone sculpture, with a dazzling effect because of all the sand particles embedded within it. Vidya tries to make sense of it but can’t. The artistry is lost amid this mass of crowd and noise, neon lights and moving walkways. Jay would have had a meltdown with all this sensory input. There is a row of French school children, teenagers, standing in line, murmuring and laughing. She wonders if they are on the same flight.
...I’m slowly making my way south. Today I watched goats, grape vines and sunflowers from the train to Sicily. The sunflowers were enormous—elephant stalks, brown centers, yellow petals frantic for sun. Their keening was so palpable I turned away. The wizened old couple sitting across from me mistook my response for thirst and offered me their flask of ice water. I took it and bowed my head thank you. The man had a face lined with furrows, the kind made by a team of oxen laboring over a field. The woman’s cheeks were smooth but the rest of her face was a cobweb of lines. Their eyes rested on my nose ring and slid away unhurried, unapologetic. I let them. I am allowing everything.
...The dangerous ingredients are all there. Baja California and everything that conjures. Sun, ocean, tequila, rip tides. A handsome, young couple in the throes of a rough patch. Eight months of failing to get pregnant, and sex has become a chore. The guy on a business trip. His wife along to spice things up. Whatever that means. The decision to travel together is sudden.
...“There’s a story here,” she said.
I told her I didn’t doubt it. “Each town has at least one or two stories behind it, right?”
“Well, I suppose that’s true,” she replied. “But most of them are never heard, you know? It’s the same ones that get told over and over.”
...Today I will tell a story of a man I never married. Like water, some things are meant to be swallowed, the others wash away your dust, soothe your skin with their coolness. These things that should be swallowed, must be swallowed whole. You must still air from your nose; let them slide down your oesophagus, contracting with discomfort until they settle in you, forgotten things. These are the things you learn to bear, the things you must digest.
...We are always burying the dead. In this way, we are like the church interiors of old Dutch prints. Often in the background, workers have removed a stone from the floor and shoveled the earth from beneath it. In some prints, a worker stands waist deep in a grave he’s digging.
...