A most splendid Friday morning, clear cool, a bright
inviting sun lures me to linger in its embrace just a little longer and enjoy a
chapter of Rasputin and the daughters of Nicholas and Alexandra.
City power came on at nine am so I changed the plugs
and switches and turned on a few more plugs while Hanukkah snored in the lunch
/ ladies prayer room. I guess I
remembered what I didn’t see in the dark.
Anyways, I don’t want to not have the internet around. I know I need connections.
Yes, George Winston in December is a hellava lot nicer
than Martha Ford’s Lions in November.
Relax, stretch that lower back and here comes Hanukkah with the morning
tea.
5:18pm
The sunset was an uneventful, I stepped out to see it
at the last moment, a glowing orb winks later without much to do on a Friday
night. Now it’s time to work, sort
of. A lesson planned for the evening
conversation class was a major coup before the sun said goodbye. As for the rest of the day, I was without my
camera in the old bazaar with Fezel and his two adorable little ones and at
five and six they are equals in tininess and lo what did I buy but a few things
including one of them johhny cash black skull caps and and a black stone ring
to match. I’m still kind of scratching
my head on the choice of color. We
looked at a lot of rings in shops in the old high mud walls and turquoise is
nice, Naem Kabar.
We went to Arenas afterwards and sat in an outdoor
eating gazebo with pillows and ate biryani and grilled chicken wraps and drank
coke and I looked at the boy I played badminton with in the blue room, Anazara,
and his eye was a dead ringer with my ring stone. A black eye.
And as darkness descends without light except for the
backup strip light mosquitos lope up and down in front of the screen. I explained to Fezel when the pool is empty
the mosquitoes go away and for two nights it’s been mercifully buzz free. This morning Hanukkah filled it up when we
had city power. These cold killing
little buggers. Dammit.
can you write fifty thousand words in a month? Can you turn those words into a novel? A novel?
Can I get more information on this?
‘The world needs your novel’ Ha
ha. Does the world need my musings of
November? That is a hard sell.
I think its time to toast pound-cake.
This is a great song to listen to when you are driving
through a city with a lot of roundabouts.
And it’s a good song to close the day indeed,
appreciate no work days more and more when I have so few of them. But that is ok. There were a dozen moments today that were
worthy of being photoed. Can I recount
them here?
1.
Fezel’s children.
2.
Roundabouts
3.
old city walls and narrow lanes
4.
buildings in the center of the old bazaar with bullet pocked walls
5.
men in small shops selling rings and Turk blue eye talismans
6.
men standing on roofs with large guns
7.
shops selling song birds
8.
fishmongers
9.
the usual bread makers squatting to toss in flattened dough sticking against
the sides
10.
a shop full of very colorful Pashto hats which I’d wear if it fit like a
skull cap but they don’t.
11.
Fezel’s kids again.
12.
Would you have taken a photo of yourself if you had brought the
camera? Unlikely. There are a lot of things missing in this
culture, one is sports and their total absence from public or private
schools and another is selfies. That’s
not necessarily a bad thing in hindsight, but really not taking one here
because joy is kind of absent as well.
No sounds of children playing or women talking or men laughing, it felt,
well, alive at least.
And before I sleep what kind of psyche are we talking here when 14 out of 15 men and women say it’s ok to lie to your boss if it means saving your job. Telling the truth and you get the ax, we learned. I had to politely disagree but a day later I still think somewhere there in the chain of command something isn't right. If corruption in some form exists and it becomes grudgingly the norm, can it be called something other than corruption?
And before I sleep what kind of psyche are we talking here when 14 out of 15 men and women say it’s ok to lie to your boss if it means saving your job. Telling the truth and you get the ax, we learned. I had to politely disagree but a day later I still think somewhere there in the chain of command something isn't right. If corruption in some form exists and it becomes grudgingly the norm, can it be called something other than corruption?
Naem Kabar. I don't know.
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