VOLUME 8: MAY 2004

8.9: A ‘HEARTY' ENGLISH BREAKFAST 5.29.2004

Continuing the adventures in foreign dining that I began in “Eating Chinese, Parts I and II” (see January 2004, in the Archives), this entry tackles the question: Is there a difference between dining and dying in the ingestion of English food? Having first posed the question to myself in 1979 I am happy to report that at least I am here to “tell the tale.”

In the photograph I'm standing on the steps of the Albert Memorial. Wearing sweats, a knit watch cap, sneakers and gloves, I look a bit like Sylvester Stallone in “Rocky”. My arms are raised in a victorious salute, and the snapshot caught the steam from my breath and the penumbra of condensation forming around me. It was damn cold in Hyde Park that morning. A few days earlier Laura, Lisa and I had made a snowman over by the little pet cemetery along Bayswater Road. 1979 was a cold winter in Europe.

Patty took the photo. She had come to the park with me around 6:30AM to shoot some photos for her work while I ran my three-mile route from Kensington Palace (most renowned of late for being the last residence of the beloved Princess Diana) in the West to Wellington's old residence (Apsley House) in the East, weaving around the Serpentine pond in the middle.

Running, or walking, through Hyde Park is a brief journey through English history. It was originally the hunting preserve of Henry VIII. James I opened it to the public and Queen Victoria opened it to “all respectably dressed persons” (well, excuuuuse me!) when she added Kensington Gardens to the park. Since then it has seen artillery emplacements in both the Civil Wars and WWII installed and removed, and has been decorated with statuary and monuments to England's royalty, military heroes, and other builders of her empire.

We were living in Leinster Gardens Court, just north of the park in the Bayswater area. The daily run had become a virtual necessity if I was going to survive my sabbatical in London. I was, so to speak, running for my life.

My life was being imperiled by English food.

Many people with functioning taste buds and gastro-intestinal tracts regard English Cuisine as an oxymoron. When in the United Kingdom such people head directly for the nearest Indian, Chinese, Italian, or French restaurant at the first sign of hunger. These days I pretty much follow suit when I'm in the U.K.

But back in 1979, for reasons that remain mysterious to me, I got hooked on English food: English breakfasts, and Pub Grub, particularly fish and chips. One theory for this affliction is sort of “genetically” based. Being of Italo-Greek heritage I have hypothesized that might ancestors might have been in those Roman legions back in the first century B.C. that conquered “Britannia.” Many of them settled in the inclement little isle, intermarried with the locals (after the obligatory period of pillaging, raping, and other routines of the Pax Romana ), and no doubt, began eating English breakfasts and other local delicacies.

Anyone who has survived a English Breakfast will recall that it probably consisted of the following: Bacon (though unlike American bacon, this is really more like boiled ham with slabs of translucent fat attached); Eggs (“runnyside-up,” and floating in the grease from the bacon); Hash Browns (cooked in, . . . you guessed it). And to make sure that you are not missing your minimum lifetime requirement of fat and cholesterol: “bangers” (English sausages). Remember that no fat is permitted to be wasted, so the remaining fat is used to—are you ready for this?— deep-fry your toast ! There might be a lonely half-stewed tomato as a gesture to one of the other food groups, or in some cases, and oily “kipper,” which is sort of an oversized smoked sardine. Wash it all down with tea with whole milk, and you are ready for a day in the “loos” of England's tourist sites, or a test of the cardiology wards of Britain's socialized medical system. You have just had perhaps the most mis-named meal in the history of cuisine: “The Hearty English Breakfast.” Hearty?! I think they're considering using this breakfast in place of lethal injection in Texas; and it gives new meaning to that “last meal.”

I have a hypothesis that the Romans left Britain after a few hundred years because their Mediterranean blood chemistry couldn't handle English cooking. The Romans conquered only as far north on the island as Northumberland, up near Scotland, then sort of gave up on the place. Historians say it was the weather, or the ferocious local tribes, who sent the Romans back south. But you have to have tasted the Scottish delicacy, “haggis,” to know the real reason they left. There's a long wall in Northumberland that marks the limit of the Roman northward advance. It still has some Roman communal toilets that were built into it, not doubt mute testimony to the Romans' aversion to the apt sounding concoction of inadequately-cooked, weird animal organs, wrapped in intestines. Could the name have been derived from “gag us?”

History does not record how many Romans were killed off by Hearty English Breakfasts and haggis. If they had blood chemistry anything like this descendant, their serum blood cholesterol and LDL jumped up ten points just being in the same room with the stuff.

To make matters worse I also had this inexplicable urge for English lunches and dinners, too. Pub lunches of bangers, Scotch eggs (hardboiled eggs sealed in a deep-fried carapace of doughy substance), Cornish Pasties of chopped meat in deep-fried dough (not mammary decorations), were favorites. For dinners I gravitated to fish and chips, a meal that totally reverses the arterial benefits associated with eating fish, and an occasional visit to a “carvery,” where one comprehends fully the origin of the term “Beefeater” in a atmosphere that only slightly civilizes what used to be Mediaeval gluttonous revels at which greasy-bearded trenchers flung joints of meat across raucous castle dining halls.

Since those days of running for my life in Hyde Park I have taken more to heart the advice and admonitions of the Surgeon General than I have allowed my stomach to try to digest hearty English breakfasts. When I think back on it there is little wonder why I ended those morning runs in Hyde Park with that little victory dance on the steps of the Albert Memorial; I'd survived another day of English cuisine.

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8.8: 9-11, The Perfect Storm 5.26.2004

When all the meteorological elements align just so, a “perfect storm” might eventuate. The term received great currency by the publication of Sebastian Junger's book with that title, and the subsequent so-named feature film. “Perfect,” in this case, means a storm of rare ferocity and power.

Meteorology is also often employed as a metaphor for social events; “climate of public opinion,” “storms of protest,” “an economic dry spell,” those sorts of references. September 11, 2001 might have started out as a sunny morning in New York City, but the climate changed dramatically that day. In many respect6s, 9-11 might be consider the catalyst, and eventually the “eye” of a “perfect storm.”

By itself, 9-11 was a momentous change for America, but the political response to it, the “climate” of fear it generated, was seized to political advantage. The political culture of those in power, were the necessary elements that formed, with it, the vortex of what has become a “perfect political storm.”

The climate of post 9-11 turned a controversially-“elected” president, widely (and correctly) regarded as a fumble-mouthed dim-wit, into a smokeless Marlboro Man and God's anointed protector of a nation under siege from dark, asymmetrical, sinister forces. Emerging from his hole in Nebraska to put a confident arm around the shoulder of a fireman at “ground zero” George Bush felt the power surge into him from the collective fear of the public, and the political fear of their representatives, and had his “mandate, ” to rid the world of terror.

Perhaps even these factors were yet insufficient to produce the perfect political storm. But stirring the maelstrom were a cabal of neo-cons led by a Dr. Evil vice-president bent on having their war with Saddam Hussein even well before 9-11, corporate contributors ready to latch onto the public teats swelled by debt-pumped budgets (not to mention their generous bonuses form the only tax cut in American history during wartime).

All the elements for a disaster were present, and the Commander-in-Chief, sailed the ship of state into the maelstrom, ignoring the meterological intel, denying his folly, and placing those in his charge in greater danger. If you read the book, or saw the movie, you know how things can end up when fools encounter a perfect storm.

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8.7: IT'S A GRAND OLDE FLAG 5.20.2004

The venerable American flag was flown and festooned from everything (but mostly SUVs) in the aftermath of 9-11. One felt almost like a terrorist not to have a flag on one's person: a lapel pin, tie, scarf, headband, T-shirt, whatever, or one or more flying from your car, or the more lofty SUV or Hummer. Stars and stripes were everywhere and the country looked like one huge automobile dealership. It was the bravest and most patriotic thing people could do, along with heeding the President's urging that they go out and shop (presumably for more flags) to show those terrorists we won't have out way of life taken from us.

That outpouring of patriotism having abated, and the tattered and soiled flags on SUVs far fewer and rather forlorn, now most of the images of flags are of them being burned in the streets and protests of those countries that displayed them with true affection in the aftermath of 9-11. That was when even the French flew them declared that "we are all American's" or New Yorkers. All of that is gone in the aftermath of George's Magnificent Iraq Adventure.

When it was popular to fly the flag proudly flag making and selling were pretty good businesses. The demand was so high that some production had to be “outsourced” to foreign companies. But what about all that potential foreign business, where the flag is primarily these days an object of protest and anti-American (or at least administration) sentiment? There are some bucks to be made there for the clever businessman. So I am calling your attention to Flamway Corporation, which will so have an IPO so that those of you who are looking for a sure thing investment opportunity can have a participation in an All-American business and have some financial security after Bush pillages Social Security and reduces Medicare to box of Band-Aids.

Dear Anti-American Demonstrator:

The enclosed brochure will introduce you to a new line of products from American Flammable Flag, Inc., a division of Flamway Enterprises of Phoenix, Arizona. All of our flags have been pre-tested in our laboratories and are designed for safe and enjoyable combustion at home or in public.

You will note that our brochure features our top model, Old Glory No. 1776 . Old Glory is 6 feet by 8 feet, pre-soaked in napalm and has our patented own sewn-in igniter. No fumbling around for matches while the press is waiting to take your picture. Demonstrators at several of our embassies abroad have found this model to burn reliably and evenly, without those sudden bursts that scorch fingers and singe eyebrows. It's the latest in high-tech pyro-protest equipment.

Perhaps your needs would be better served by our 'Dawn's Early Light' , the hand-held, 10" by 12" model, which can be purchased in lots of 100. With a little coordination these can produce a dramatic effect for evening demonstrations and protests. Or, just keep a few handy around the house for parties or those occasions of personal grievance against the government. Light up a couple when you file your tax return, for example.

For the thrifty protestor the 'Betsy Ross' is a real bargain. It's our asbestos, re-usable model; soaked in kerosene it burns like the real thing, but can be re-used for dozens of demonstrations. And if you prefer, a humorous touch the 'Molly Pritchard' is just the thing. When a patriotic counter-demonstrator tries to stomp out the flames on this baby the impregnated glue makes sure he ends up with a real hotfoot. It's as much fun as our exploding lapel flag pins.

And if you are inclined to really make a statement we have our “O say can you see ” model for self-immolators. Wrap this baby around you like a Buddhist monk, strike a match, and “Zen” them a message they won't (and you won't) soon forget.

Now that you have an idea of the latest in high-tech flammable flags be sure to visit www.flamway.com for more American Flammable Flag products to suit all of your protesting needs. And keep in mind that all our carry our unconditional guarantee: if you are unsatisfied, just return the un-burnt portion of the flag with a self-addressed envelope and feel free to hold our sales representative hostage until you receive your refund.

American Flammable Flag is committed to your anti-American protest enjoyment. Remember, our president is committed to giving you more reasons to want to burn an American flag. So we're committed to our motto: Make a statement, make a revolution, make an American unprincipled capitalist rich.

Yours truly,

Newt Suggs, CEO

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8.6: THE CITY ADORNED 05.18.2004

What people put on the walls in their homes is their own affair; but when it comes to public arts projects political hell often breaks out, whether its NEA support of artists like Robert Maplethorpe, or the differences of opinion over the re-use of the World Trade Center site and the type architecture/memorial/monument that is appropriate and/or aesthetically satisfactory.

If you happen to think that Senator Jesse Helms started the controversy over public support of the arts, think again. In fact, start thinking way back in history. How about around 448 BC, which is slightly before Helms was first elected to the Senate.

Maybe controversial public art goes back even earlier; but the biggest one of antiquity was over the most famous buildings in the world. The Parthenon in Athens was probably the ultimate public art project. The city's ruler, Pericles, commissioned the architects Ictinus and Callicrates to design the famed Doric temple to the city's patron goddess Pallas Athena.

The Athenians had just won a war with the Persians, and Pericles (who was also a General) wanted to thank the goddess for her help in that effort. So, not only did he build the largest Doric temple ever, he also commissioned the sculptor Phidias to make an enormous statue of Athena, sheathed in ivory and plates of gold, to put in it.

An expensive public art project? You bet. In fact, Pericles didn't have the money for it. He embezzled the money from a military defense fund entrusted to Athens by several other Greek citystates. He stole it from the Pentagon; sort of an unauthorized “peace dividend” from the DOD to the NEA.

In the role of Senator Helms was the statesman Thucyidides, who fulminated that Pericles had adorned the city “like a harlot” (A rather curious choice of phrase, given that the Parthenon translates as “the virgin's apartment”). It wasn't a lonely opinion; the Athenians threw Pericles out of office, and Phidias out of town for good for pocketing some of that gold. Partly because of the extravagance the Athenians lost the next war with the Persians, who took the statue of Athena as spoils.

But the Parthenon is still there, somewhat derelict, but in tourist dollars it has since earned back it's construction cost countless times over. Athens wouldn't be Athens without it. Nor can we imagine Paris without the Eiffel Tower, Rome without the Trevi Fountain, or Washington without the Lincoln Memorial.

Much of the reason we like to visit other cities is related to the manner in which they display their aesthetic temperament by way of their architecture, urban design, sculpture, public gardens, festivals and other performing arts. These are the ways they display their personalities, identities, and sense of place. Their public art comprises the artifactual legacy of their civic biography. There is even modest comfort for the bean-counters whose yardstick for public artistic patrimony is the cost-revenue ledger. Like Athens, Venice, Brugge, Leningrad, and many other cities have found their public art to be, if not only a sound civic investment, the inheritance upon which their very economic survival depends.

Today, of course, there is a paucity of civic patrons and potentates who are willing or able to regard their cities as galleries for their artistic impulses. Nor, in democratic societies, would we be willing to submit our public art to the aesthetic parameters and power of a Pericles, Medici or Peter the Great.

Rather, on a day-to-day, brick-by-brick, basis it is the city planners (along with public arts commissions and other such auspices) who must assemble that patronage, and fashion artistic sensibility from the disparate tastes and dissenting voices of the public, not to mention a pauperized civic purse.

City planning today may have more to do with the “art of politics” than the art of urban adornment. So, planners themselves, long inured to the “city functional” and “city efficient,” will need to find persuasive rationale for Philistines like Thucyidides and Helms, that a city, if it is to be “a work of art,” must first be a place for public art.

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Originally published in San Diego American Planning Association Journal , Oct 1992

8.5: Postcards and The New Modem Of Communication 5.12.2004

In 1997 I bought a tattered old postcard from a street vendor in Hong Kong. Its postal cancellation mark reads July 1, 1907. Addressed in faded ink to a Dr. Chan in Edinburgh, Scotland, the message side is crammed with vertical Chinese ideographs. The profile of King Edward VII adorns the “hape'ny” (one-half penny) postage stamp. Somehow, sometime, the card made its way back to Hong Kong, perhaps with Dr. Chan.

Surely this postcard got to Edinburgh by steamer, maybe taking months to reach Dr. Chan (doctor of what, I wonder?) in his cold flat where it warmed him with some “news from home.” But how did it get back to Hong Kong? As part of his personal effects? By ship, or later by plane? And When? And where has it been all these years, during two world wars, the rise of Hong Kong to a great world city? Did it sleep away some ninety years in an attic somewhere, a desk drawer, tucked in a book? And how did it end up with a street vendor of philatelic flotsam?

There's s snapshot of some past lives retained in that old postcard; like the way a fossil retains something of its “author”. It's a record of a time and sentiments gone by. That postcard is a relic of a medium of communication that I couldn't help but contrast with my laptop computer, which was with me to assist in my work over a few months in Hong Kong. The computer would also be my primary mode of communication with family and friends back home. For the first time in a couple of decades of travel I would be “on line”. No more trips to the post office or Amex; my new mode of communication would be “modem communication”.

It is difficult to gainsay the ease and speed of E-mail. Each day I would log on and read mail from my daughters, or various friends, keeping current with affairs at home as if I were in fact “at home.” I could even set up a private chat group with family and friends and exchange news in real time. And E-mail became especially valuable when my father had a serious illness and I needed to be in close contact with the family.

But as with most technologies there is a down side: The magician has his price. For me, so much of the allure of travel is related to being in a different time and place. The ubiquity of cyberspace, and instantaneous communication through it, remove some of the sense of geographic and temporal distance. The low cost of E-mail means that the mundane and trivial matters that used to be left behind now can follow one around the globe. Did I want to be reminded about that root canal appointment after having spent an afternoon exploring Kyoto?

Then there is what might be referred to as the “aesthetic” of traditional (or “snail”) mail. Electronic mail just doesn't lend itself to certain sentiments. The kinesthetic of typing is not at all like putting pen to paper, and selecting “bold” and “italics” for “I love you” seems like the equivalent of sending plastic flowers. Adding a typed smiley-face doesn't help either.

E-mail is mail stripped to its essentials and. in the end, most of us dump it or leave it buried somewhere on our hard-drive. It's mail that hasn't had the experience of actual travel; it hasn't been canceled, and shipped, fondled, mangled, and carried around in a pocket for days, or used as a book mark. Email may have content; but it lacks substance . There's no coffee spill on it from that cafe in Sienna, no stamp that says Marrakech, or Djakarta, no envelope from The Hotel Metropole, or a postcard picture of the place to which the words “wish you were here” actually refers.

I'll probably continue to travel with my laptop and modem, but I won't be leaving my pen at home either. I rather like the idea that somebody in the year 2073 might discover one of my postcards in a street stall in some foreign city and wonder, as I do about Dr, Chan, what dimension of time and space its author might be traveling through.

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8.4: Night of the Pyramids, Part III 5.11.2004

When I mentioned to our driver, Hisham, that I could swear people were getting laid all over the Great Pyramid of Kufu he seemed unimpressed. It may have more to do with the fact that the pyramid provides some privacy in a country that is so crowded he offered. Moreover, the Egyptians are hardly daunted by any memento mori . A couple of days earlier I had wandered through the huge City of the Dead near the Khan al Khalili bazaar in which thousands of squatters have made homes in the mausoleums of the dead. In a place where the past is so woven into the present there is little wonder that the dead must make way for the living.

Nor was there little wonder that rather lascivious thoughts took their place alongside my marveling at this special night. Sitting on the huge blocks a just a few courses up laid down five and a half millennia ago, and looking out toward the Nile and the lights of Cairo, I could not help contemplating what it would be like to climb all the way to the top with an adventurous lover and give a whole new connotation to ‘harmonic convergence'.

Hisham's thoughts however were running to refreshment, and after a good soaking up of the atmosphere of the world's most famous necropolis, he said the word I didn't want to hear for a month or two: shay. The mere though of more tea constricted my bladder. Furthermore, it was around 3AM.

“I think you will enjoy this café very much, Dr. James,” Hisham said confidently. He already knew of my penchant for cafés that had some historical connection or another. A couple of days earlier I had asked him if there were any interesting cafés nearby the Hilton and he had recommended Groppi's at the Midan Talaat Harb . Groppi's is known for its excellent confections, but also has a reputation as having been the scene of intrigue during WWII when spies for the Germans and the English and Americans kept tabs on each other over cups of tea and thick coffee. It still has its metal topped tables and the somewhat derelict appearance of a place that could ‘tell stories'.

When we made a visit there a few days earlier Jack and I ordered mint tea and some pastry. As the waitress served it to us I happened to notice a large cockroach crawl leisurely across her shoe. When it touched her skin she looked down, calmly stamped her foot with just enough force to dislodge the insect, and with a second quick and skillful tap, dispatched with a ‘crack', but not a splatter. A third expert foot movement flicked the corpse out of sight under the table pedestal. A ballet aficionado would have seen the moves as a well-executed ronde de jambe . Without changing expression she placed the bill on the table and walked off. In old cafés that serve pastry and espionage it's a good idea that even the roaches stay “undercover.”

So when Hisham led us through an underpass in Khan al Khalili that was crammed with squatters, screaming children, beggars, and piles of refuse, and then through the narrow streets to el Fishawy Café I was already beginning to feel like Indiana Jones or a character out of some spy novel. It was nearing 4AM now but I was exhilarated by the prospect that I might get to meet Egypt's Nobel Laureate author, Naguib Mafouz. Hisham had remarked that the writer was a regular patron. Moreover, the story on the café was that not only that is has been owned by the same family for three hundred years, but also that it has never been closed during that time.

Still, three centuries is a rather brief period of years for a country like Egypt. The area of Khan al Khalili, while it might appear ancient to Western eyes, is actually part of “Islamic Cairo”. The nearby Al-Azhar Mosque is, for example, a relatively ‘young' structure from 970AD (it also boasts the world's first ‘university'). The bazaar began as a caravanserai as “recently” as the late 14 th Century. Today it is an immense souq of shops, small industries, mosques, mausoleums and madrassas , and restaurants and cafés.

El Fishawy looked like it had been there at the beginning. Rickety wooden chairs and small, square tables were arranged on a wooden floor that looked like it hadn't been swept in three centuries. The dimly lit café seemed like a set from a movie. All of the patrons at this hour were in gallibiyyas, some were wearing traditional Arab turbans, many were smoking from shishas , the water pipes with little smoldering mounds of aromatic tobacco on top. The exotic and mysterious atmosphere was thickened and enhanced by old framed and blemished mirrors that hung out from the walls at angles that created a kaleidoscope of reflections and made the place seem even more crowded. We watched and were watched in their reflections.

Waiters passed among the tables with trays of dented metal teapots and chipped and cracked crockery. I had to drink left-handed from my cup to avoid the serrated chip on one side of its lip. A din of Arabic, clicking cups and saucers and gurgling shishas composed the ambiguous sound track. Jack and I were the only Westerners I could see, and were it not for Hisham's Western dress it seemed as though we had fallen through some time window to several centuries earlier. Everything seemed to be 300 years old!

But where was Mafouz? Hisham made inquires on my behalf and we were disappointed to learn that this was not one of his regular nights. Perhaps it was just as well; I had read only one of his books and was saved from making a fool of myself. It was a couple of years later when I read in the paper that he had been attacked by a Muslim extremist and nearly killed by knife wounds. Fame, literary license and regular habits can be a dangerous brew. I wonder if he will ever feel safe again to wander through the bazaar to his favorite café. Egypt has never been an easy place for pharaohs and politicians—a few days earlier I went from Tutankamen's sarcophagus in the National Museum to where Anwar Sadat had been gunned down for making peace with Israel—and now its extremists were attacking its artists and intellectuals. Not long after I left the country tourists would become the target.

The morning light was just coming up when we were leaving el Fishawy ; the fasting of Ramadan would begin again. Back at the Hilton I slept soundly and dreamed of the pyramid of Kufu. In the morning we would pass by them again, on our way to Alexandria. My notes for the script were fragmentary and tentative, with marginalia about death and love on the cool stones of pyramids. It makes one feel so “temporary.”

Driving northwest I reflected that it's a rather upside-down place, Egypt. What they call “Upper Egypt” is really the Southern part, closer to the source of the life-giving Nile. “Lower Egypt,” in the Northern part, where the fertile delta and most of the population and economy of the country is, hardly seems “lower”. During Ramadan , the customary activities of day and night are reversed. The country's prime livelihood is in marketing a long-dead civilization of the past, while the present Egypt is in cultural turmoil over whether it should pursue modernization and risk all the social upheaval that might bring, or follow the reactionary course of some of its Middle Eastern neighbors.

History will sort it out, but the pyramids have seen it all before.

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8.3: Is this a great country. . . or what? Part III 5.9.2004

Well, consider this: we live in a country that impeached a sitting president for having consensual oral sex, and will likely do nothing to a president who is responsible for his troops forcing Iraqi prisoners to perform degrading sexual acts.

G.W. Boosh, selected president of the most powerful nation on earth, just “don't like it one bit” when he is confronted with photographs of American soldiers torturing and humiliating Iraqi prisoners. My, my, my, aren't we outraged, now. Of course, if you are a nearly aphasic and illiterate dolt, who admittedly even has his one-page briefs read to him by Miss Condi (why can't I get the image of Butterfly McQueen reciting in front of a pretzel-eating “Massa Rhett” out of my mind?), his surprise may not be so disingenuous.

Then, quicker than you can say “democracy,” the temporizing, the not-quite-an-apology apology, a la Condi (“sorry this happened,” “regret that mistakes were made"), and then cut to the commercial about how “this doesn't reflect the behavior of all our troops” and this is “not what America is all about,” and what a great job Don, De-Fens (“well, you know, free people will do some crazy things”) Rumsfeld, is doing. Yeah, right Don. Then, the next day, a little more of an apology-apology, but to King Abdullah (are we at war with Jordan already?). Like his co-conspirator, Rummy, he “sorry” – sorry he got caught.

They are artful dodgers, these drawling Reb-publicans, always with the deflections, the spins, the putting the best face on the most abhorrent photographs. We likely would never have known were it not for the arrogance of the perpetrators taking their “war photos,” and a whistle-blower, that these atrocities no longer had any plausible deniability. They have had some success in controlling images of returning dead and wounded, but the Torquemada tactics (or what that great humanitarian, Rush Limbaugh, equated to “fraternity hazing” and “blowing off a little steam”) was too tempting not to preserve for posterity.

The irony is that this cabal of arrogant chickenhawk bumblers, who have been unable to prove any of their rationale for trashing a country they don't understand and can't seem to put back together, will continue to portray opponents to their policies as injurious to the morale of the troops they have now put in more peril if they are captured. Their counterintuitive policies and incompetent administration will make more terrorists than they claim to destroy. They will continue the recite the mantra that we are safer with the removal of Saddam Hussein thanks to the sodomizing of his former subjects. And they have brought shame upon our nation before the entire world.

I'll take libido over ego every time. We miss you, Mr. Bill.

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8.2: Out of Iraq 5.4.2004

OK, fashioning a set of medals for the abusers and torturers of Iraqi detainees is perhaps a bit of twisted irony. But then the Boosh war on Iraq is nothing if not riddled with ironies. That Americans are occupying their country in the name of freeing Iraqis of the crimes of Saddam Hussein, who used the very same Abu Ghraib prison to torture and murder his countrymen, is ironic. That Americans are putatively in Iraq (forget the phantom WMDs and the mythical Al Qaeda connections) to bring them into the bosom of democracy, and depriving them of the most fundamental of the rights guaranteed by democracies, civil rights, is another layer of irony. That the chickenhawk imbeciles in the administration imagined an Iraqi populace who would welcome our troops as “liberators” and invite us to stay as long as we would like is especially ironic in the light of the latest scandal.

Now I am not trying to imply or equate the malfeasances of Abu Ghraib with those abominations of Hitler and Himler. But unfortunately, we have now shortened this distance in reality and, perceptually, surrendered much of the moral high ground that admittedly we have arrogated to ourselves. But the events of Abu Ghriab did put me in mind of a visit to the world's most renowned temple of torture that was broadcast 22 years ago.

Out of Auschwitz

Even as we piled into the four cabs that would speed our little group southward out of Warsaw I still had not settled in my mind what in the world it was that so powerfully impelled me toward that awful place. I had three and a half hours on the way, at ninety miles per hour in ninety-degree heat to think more about it. Was it a traveler's compulsion to see something that was such a deep wound in Poland's history? Maybe morbid curiosity? Maybe, or something else altogether.

I don't think I began to close in on the question until I was about to enter the gate four million people had entered but never exited, and read that cynical phrase: Arbeit Macht Frei (Work makes you free). At that moment I realized that I had retained a small corner of doubt that the grim newsreels and photos did not represent something that could “really” have happened. But here was final irrevocable confirmation—Auschwitz was.

And Auschwitz is, in almost every respect, as it was when it was liberated by Soviet troops in 1945. Unlike many of the other extermination camps, the SS, in their zealousness to carry out the “final solution” up to the last minute left itself no opportunity to destroy the evidence of their crimes. Caught by surprise, they unwittingly left behind, along with the few emaciated survivors, the damning and macabre artifacts of the world's only museum of genocide-the Auschwitz-Birkenau memorial.

As my small group proceeded through the memorial behind our Polish guide there were no superlatives sufficient to convey the wrenching permuted emotions of sadness, disgust and rage. Four million died here, deceived, tortured, stripped of their identity and their dignity. That is why the mute monument is here, because words would not be adequate. That is why the guide drones on and on, almost dispassionately reciting numbers whose magnitudes seem more appropriate for astronomy than social life. That is why we say almost nothing to one another; thoughts will not form into words.

I wondered about the thoughts of the Israeli in yarmulke and prayer shawl when we viewed together a room full of suitcases with Jewish names painted on them. Nearby were large rooms filled several feet high with women's hair, another is full of shoes, others with spectacles, toothbrushes, even prosthetic limbs, and these only those that had not been shipped out for the Nazi war effort. How many times had these rooms been filled? I wondered what the man in my group who had been scheduled to be moved here from a work camp in France in 1945 was thinking as we looked through the once electrified barbed wire fences on which inmates were once been thrown, or, in despair, threw themselves. What could the elderly Polish man with numbers tattooed on his forearm have been thinking when we stood before the crude gallows made of a length of rail, and the “wall of death” where over twenty thousand were shot in the back of the head.

What were the emotions of the person who found, among the thousands of photos the SS took of their victims, the picture of a relative, only the wilting rose tucked behind the frame indicating that a search among the gaunt faces and terrified eyes had ended. Some of those pictured had names, but most only badges on their striped prison clothes to indicate whether they were Jews, POWs, political prisoners, gypsies, or homosexuals.

As we filed silently into the gas chamber fully clothed and knowing the sunshine awaited us outside I wondered at the last thoughts of the hundreds of thousands who had ignominiously perished in this room, their last glimpse of sunlight coming from the roof ports through which the canisters of Zyklon B rained down on them. We passed though the crematorium, its ovens now bedecked with flowers and burning only with votive candles, and out into the sunlight.

As we sped back to Warsaw after a brief visit to nearby Birkenau my contempt for the perpetrators of Auschwitz was leavened somewhat with the realization that they were not unique. I realized that Auschwitz stands grimly before us today not only as a reminder of its own atrocities, but also those of Armenia, Cambodia, the former Yugoslavia, Uganda, and too many other places. It stands as a reminder of the thin veneer of civilization; that any people capable of regarding others as less human than themselves are capable of re-creating Auschwitz. Auschwitz is not just a place in southern Poland, it's a concept born of the fusion of prejudice and power; and it can be anywhere.

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8.1: Night of the Pyramids, Part II 5.2.2004

Giza is a good fifteen miles from the center of Cairo, a long ride on a road that, although built less than twenty years ago, is rutted, potholed, and crowded with half-built, and already obsolete, buildings comprising overcrowded slums along nearly its entire course. Even at this hour it was lined with people squatting at the curbside doing little businesses, or eating, or just watching everything else going on. Cairo, typical of most every Third-World capital city, cannot keep pace with the influx of its citizens from the countryside and its own out-of-control birthrate, confirming that, deprived of other distractions, the principal amusement for the poor must be sexual intercourse.

We bounced along the road, windows open, Hisham's Sadé tape blending with the sounds of the crowded thoroughfare, music, laughter, shouts, and the sibilant tones of Arabic. It hardly seemed like a religious occasion, but then a month of Ramadan is a long time to sustain an attitude of solemnity.

But solemnity does characterize the atmosphere of the pyramids at Giza. After handing over a wad of Egyptian pounds to Hisham as baksheesh for the military guard at the gate we are allowed to drive up onto the plateau of the pyramids.

In the distance I can see the silhouette of the Sphinx, it's profile ruined even in shadow. It was supposed to guard against intruders and grave robbers, but all I wish to steal from this ancient, fabled place is an unusual experience. It seems that the conditions could not be more propitious for letting the imagination have a go at spanning the millennia, back to when the pyramids were sheathed with glistening stone and the Nile flowed free and clear. This night was bright, an almost full moon in a clear sky. The temperature was still in the humid eighties, cooled slightly by an occasional breeze. And it was quiet, appropriately, deathly quiet. The wheels of the government car crunched the gravel of the roadbed as we drove up to and alongside Kufu.

I could just make out in the gloom the entrance, several courses of stone up one side, forced into the great pyramid's side like a jagged gash. I remembered a couple of years earlier entering there and climbing up hands on knees, head to butt, with other tourists, through the fetid air of the shaft that leads upward to the king's chamber. That shaft led into the ‘Grand Gallery' a tall and narrow ascent that communicated with the little room that was the burial chamber. There are still lampblack stains on the walls and ceilings from the days when the pyramid was built. Here we ascended on wooded ramp that aided access. I shuddered at the thought of those high, stone walls closing in a crushing us.

I recalled the clamminess of the interior of the pyramid, as though the moistures, gasses and other exhalations of countless visitors remained hermetically sealed by the mass of surrounding stone. In the burial chamber itself the king's red granite sarcophagus was coated with the greasiness of innumerable sweaty hands. Even its long vacant interior was coated with the oils of visitors who had lain in it for the obligatory ghoulish souvenir “pharaoh photo”. On that particular day a small group of fellow Californians were there, lotus-sitting around the perimeter of the chamber, engaged in some ‘new age' attempt at cosmic connection, desecrating the place with psycho-babble and flaky ‘pyramidology. There have been enough books of bullshit written about the pyramids to pile into pyramids twice the size of the originals.

ut if one can somehow block out all of the touristic static and let the mind and imagination focus on where one really is there is a little aperture to an almost transcendent state. When is made my way down to a much smaller, secondary chamber, called the ‘queen's chamber' even though no one really knows for certain, I was for a few minutes completely alone to wonder at the mysteries of this ancient place. It wasn't the groupish ‘new age' connection that interested me—I wasn't looking for some miraculous harmonic convergence that would ensure me financial success, or make my cellulite disappear—I wanted to get as close as I could to what had intrigued me since I first read a book: time travel. I wished to be a time traveling fly on the chamber wall, a witness to some ancient funerary rite, to the priestly figures in the torchlight, the smoke and incense, the aromas of the chemistry of mummification, and the incomprehensible babble of requiem incantations in a language whose true sounds remain a mystery. I wanted to see the sarcophagus set it its place for the eternal journey, surrounded by the riches of the pharaoh. I wanted to hear the chamber being sealed. Was it true that priests and slaves, maybe even concubines, might have been sealed in as well? There seemed a ghostly presence is the bare, reticent, chamber.

Now, on this balmy Ramadan night I wanted to walk the entire perimeter of the great pyramid of Kufu. As I did I thought I did hear the eerie moans and mournful murmurs of those long-ago voices of sealed-in priests and concubines. I soon realized, as my eyes accustomed themselves to the low light and the shadows that I was not alone. In the shadows and crevices of the huge blocks of the pyramid were, I discovered, people, or more accurately, couples. Even more accurately, if my senses were detecting the meaning of those moans and murmurs, copulating couples!

What a marvelous notion! What a concept! Making love on a pyramid! Doing perhaps the most affirming act of life on a monument to death!

How many people had “done it” at the very summit of Kufu, its top flattened off from the long missing golden point, and its stones covered with inscribed graffiti from over the ages? What a reward after a long, and perilous and arduous climb: a “black mass” on the altar or Eros. But alas, the unromantic authorities now prohibit climbing the pyramid..

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