Al-Ain 2007
This morning I coughed so hard I vomited. Yes, I felt better afterwards. It is a wonder and an amazement to be
alive. To have a job. I have much to be thankful for. Yes, I do not have a wife or a girl
friend. Yes, people ask why, what is
wrong. A lot is wrong, apparently. That is, if you wish to look at my social
status in a negative light. What is it
that I am looking for? The pursuit. The peach garden was full of attractive women
there to dance and listen to the hermaphrodite belt Sinatra and Sting tunes
with an imitating style it’s almost flattering.
A very young girl caught my eye and led me where she and two adults,
presumably parents, guardians, and then she went on stage, danced with her
father and I danced with two people between us and then I said forget it and
walked out and drove home.
I partied enough. The
pursuit fatigues me quickly.
Macao
The south china sea is cold and windy. My window seat on the ferry is in a wash, a
symmetrical dance of spraying jigs and zags, endlessly pounding, sometimes
angry in speed, never slowing to the rhythmic pitch of the boat, 1-2-3 up and
3-2 down.
In the temple market a young man was accosted and pinned to
the ground, accused of stealing something in his pocket that the two men
couldn’t get. I no got, I no got. One of the men pinning put his knee to the
thief’s neck and called police, then worked up a real sweat trying to handcuff
the kid. Not wishing to be too
voyeuristic I didn’t stay for the final scene.
Hong Kong Ishmael
in 611
I shaved and brushed my teeth in the communal toilet and
then found the man behind the counter who yesterday suspected I was English before looking at my
passport. You are up up up, and he smoothed the photo with his thumb like he
hoped a karmic rub would help his disposition.
This morning I asked him if the person in 611 had checked out. same person?
Then he thumbed to the kid sitting to his right. I’m sorry terribly sorry, and we walked to
his door. ‘I took a tranquilizer and I
didn’t hear it.” What he didn’t hear was his television on all night. He went in and I stopped at the
entrance. Ishmael has lived in room 611
for five years. Doctor says its
depression. In the 10 foot by 4 foot
room, on the floor a huge coned pile of cigarette butts rose next to a single
bed, a dirty pile of twisted clothes and newspapers and books took up half of
it. He reached up and lowered the volume
to a screeching commercial. He was
surprised when I greeted him with a salaam Al-Alaykum after he introduced
himself. His slick black shoebox cropped
hair matched the roy orbison glasses but the Chinese’s man’s rotted teeth
betrayed his age. 38? I guessed you at 25. I suggested he get a second opinion when he
told me he didn’t like being diagnosed as suffering from depression. ‘ok, I will.
It feels wrong to give such willy nilly advice and
encouragement to a man who may be better off if he doesn’t listen to my stove
pipe diagnosis but he was living like a dog.
I liked the UK because people like
it quiet. I lived in the UK. I want to go back. You stay in the Chunking Mansions you don’t
escape noise. He found refuge and converted in Kamal’s Guesthouse. Fine enough, I thought and left him to be. I had a nice hot shower after our visit, and
back in my own little closet wiped my ass and tossed the paper out the seventh
story window into the black walled canyon.
The next night Ishmael was quiet but it did nothing to resolve my lack
of sleep. Bed bugs chewed on my back and
legs and again I got about three hours of sleep. At ten
dollars a night, the cheapest
place to sleep in Hong Kong comes at a price.
Whitman; song of the open road.
The smoking room was empty except for a few with
mobiles. Many who waited for the ferry
to let us on peered past the new no smoking posters to see if anyone was
challenging the new city wide policy.
Victoria Park had signs everywhere.
This is a smoke free park.
Patrons of the cigarette clustered on the busy elevated pedestrian
footpaths that zig zag from Central to Admiralty where the law is ambiguous and
sucked away. At the ferry terminal one
nervous man walked around the smoking room looking for someone to break the law
with.
Sumatra
The room at the Losmen Subayak is 50,000 a night. Six dollars.
The bus from Medan to Berstagi was 8,000 rupees. On the fourth floor I have a nice view of a
path and a large garden below. Satellite
dishes litter the tops of corrugated steel roofs from my immediate right to
left viewpoint. And at 4:30 in the
afternoon the prayer call is a woman who sings a melodiously Islamic blues
rendition of the Quran for twenty minutes.
I lay down on the musty bed and see Diana Ross.
I have also seen some pretty damn cruelties here and it is
never comforting to ponder why this has to be.
What is their sin? What are the
genetic reasonings for human deformities so hideous we can only shake in
disbelief that God lets this happen.
The local bus to Berstagi stopped once and a young boy looked into the
last window in the last row where I sat crunched with a metal pole from the
roof to the floor between my legs. It
was only for a second but I can’t forget a cleft palate so bad, all his teeth
were outside of his mouth spread out and sticking up like you’d be holding a
box of McDonalds fries. My god, how has
he lived like this? My God, how can you get away with it and call these souls
to earth? What’s the lesson? It hurts to answer, and is better left
unsaid.
Two doors down from the guesthouse I found a barber and
after a few words of exchange the young man went to work. 20,000 rupees. While he cut a young boy came over and stood
off to the side at about 11:00 in front of me.
Here is this kid with Brad Pitt looks and a grey eye, slightly sunk into
his unspotted features. His smile is
infectious and his life without an eye has been manageable I presume, but you
look at his tattered clothes and know anywhere in the states this kid gets a
new eye and breaks the hearts of women everywhere. This is cruel and completely
unnecessary.
The staff at the Losmen live with the family who own and run
the business. Two of the young people
have walleyes. Is it in the water? Is it incestuous?
All the clocks in the Losmen are either ten minutes slow or
fast. I set mine five minutes between
and assume whatever bus I’m catching out of this place in three days no one
leaves on time.
Romano is a 40 year old Catholic who works when there is
work, as a guide, and believes there’s an active Animistic realm that lives in
the rugged nature around us. You climb
the mountain and you speak to the spirits.
Did Franz hear the voice? We
laughed over a beer at the Bob Marley bar with no music save for that which
came from mobiles around us. The
Austrian journalist of 47 years had been lost for three days. On our way down from Gunung Subayak earlier
in the day we met the first search party; three officers, a journalist from
Medan, and Smiley, the proprietor of the Bob Marley bar.
The volcano
Gunung Subayak is cool.
Three hours through lush jungle to reach the crater lip. Another world it is, the sulphuric stench ,
blanched rock, not a living thing. A
terrible living fog swallows us when we descended into the active volcano.
My guide was Boroosh, and like Romano, believed the mountain
possessed powers humanity forgot.
These plants here can make people
broken bones heal better. If it is
as effective as going to the hospital (this bothered him I’m afraid to admit)
then why aren’t they working together?
We came to the second search party, a much larger
gathering. He went without guide, now we have one hundred men from Medan here to
look for him. It is expensive and it is
bad for tourists. Well, I think it
is worse for you than for the tourists who aren’t in search for the meaning of
life on this holy mountain, my friend.
The man in charge of the orange-vested group asked me if he looked
Maori. I stepped back and said he was
from one of these villages around here. My wife is Maori and I lived there for six
months. No, sorry, you still don’t
look like a Maori.
A week later while lapping the waters of Lake Toba an
English backpacker who just arrived from Berstagi told me police found Franz
cuddled in a corn field, dehydrated, covered in dirt, and wearing only red joe
boxers.
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