Politburo Leaks

Leaked Politburo Minutes
A couple of months before I arrived on the scene, Spilograd

A is invited to B's house on the occasion of C's birthday. B's wife has cooked a spicy Russian fish dish that A finds hard to eat. B then says to A 'You should write an insider's report for our journal. What subject do you think you can do?' A suggests writing an article about D. B and C say disparaging words about D, and then agree to give A free reign.
(After this presumably a lot of port and much fun was had by all. Ed)

It's got a kick at the end

'Be careful! It's got a real kick at the end!' shouted our red haired, Yorkshire born, home counties bred hostess. It was the evening before I was flying out to Istanbul and I was at the grounds of a country mansion, and this was happening in the interval of the open-air play that our hosts were hosting for charity- for the new Ashmolean.
Just before the play had started, I had noticed a face I knew and could not think who it could be that I knew among la belle monde. But before I could push the brain cells further the play had started and I, as usual, totally played along with Wilde. In the interval the hostess, my friend's friend, took us into what her father had called 'Africa' before the revels had started ('For the gentlemen, if the port-a-loo queue is too long, there's always Africa', and when we were introduced and he realized he could not kiss me- the octogenarian- he had said 'Ah, local customs and all that') and then there we had it, the slinging rope, down you went from the tree house and just before you thought you'd hit a big tree, it would stop, right after a big kick.
And when my turn came, I did not even hesitate- my hands hurt and the kick almost threw me to the ground. And then I remembered. The face was that of our late warden's wife, who'd served us lunch in her kitchen.

Mannequin, Jean Rhys

'The English boys are nice,' said Babette, winking one divinely candid eye. 'I had a chic type who used to take me to dinner at the Empire Palace. Oh, a pretty boy . . .'

Aleppo, Nov. 2010

You will never walk alone
in an Ottoman han in Aleppo old town
you will come across a fridge magnet
of Krak de Chevalier
you will never, ever
walk alone

You will never walk alone
there will be Germans and Brits
going around with their Baedekers and Rough Guides
they will be one step ahead of you
ordering lemon and mint,
eating their humus and kibbeh

You will never walk alone
when a badly planned soujourn
has you switch hotels, lose friends
you will end up in a place
right across from the hotel Baron,
no, you will never walk alone.

You will never walk, or enter or exit alone
coming out of a mosque you will lead other women
saying
'Fawk'
and they'll ask you
'Wa min wayn ant?'

*

The pigeons drawing
co-centric circles over the roofless roof tops
the pigeons whose names I still don't know how to spell
dance
to the tune of the young man who's fed and bred them
whistling from the district of al Jdayda

Passing archways in the district of older faiths
I come upon familiar faces saying
words like 'inch' and those 'ha's
you only hear Anatolian throats utter
and I know I owe to them
this feeling of being at ease,
being at home

the ladies who've done up their hair for Sunday
and wear skirts that fall down
just below the knee-

*

In the morning
it is of course to the tune of Fayrouz
that the bakers bake their hubz,
and the goat-gutters gut their goats
it is to her voice
that the cleaners at the Baron Hotel
wash the veranda
and two Turks
find themselves taking a photograph
of a map of Syria
(not quite) decided, by L of Arabia
with a little legend of a castle
for Krak de Chevalier
(no, no R, you will never walk alone)

*

I love the women of Haleb
in the mosques, in the souq
with their 'argile in the cafes,
they smile and guide me

the persistent smell of jasmine
finds ingenious ways to reach me
walking towards the 'ala
I ask for directions, surprised at my own voice
that now sounds so Levantine

The Grand Cafe

This,
the setting for my
Brazilian soap opera:
The Grand Cafe,
High Street, Oxford.

I enter with two friends,
and after some waiting in line
find a table to sit at, at the incredibly full cafe.
(and who would've thought that it was so popular,
and that anyone who's anyone would be there that morning?)
The girls order sensible things
but I am too much under the weather
under the atmosphere
of the city, of the cafe,
of the chattering classes
to concentrate and so say yes,
and no at several points
through the litany of offers that the waitress is citing
and end up with
with some rye-bread, marmite and overcooked mushrooms.

I overhear conversation
from the table behind me
They're talking of archives, grants, deadlines
as I cut my bread into identical pieces,
and then wash a couple of morsels
down with the earl grey

(of course, earl grey,
which I've learned to drink with milk)

I fidget
while fighting the specters in my head and
knock a chair behind me
and disturb a couple's
symposium

They look at me
as at a mad-woman-
Yes, I have only escaped the attic this morning
to come to 'Real England'

The one with the speckled face
puts his spectacles on and let's me know
with a movement of the brow
(how is that even possible?)
that they are not amused.

'Love is blind',
my friends tell me, and pay the bill
Holding both my arms, they guide me
towards the door.

Why Not the West Indies?

Why Not the West Indies?

Why not the West Indies, Mr. Dyson?

Why Istanbul,

Why not the West Indies?

You said you had to correct

our dictation papers,

our spelling of

immediately, certainly

while there was a ship

in the harbour with

'English people', you said

'drinking and dancing'

and you gave us to understand

in the little English we spoke

that you felt marooned

doomed

to wait out the days

of your white, fragile burden

here, on our shores

But why here Mr. Dyson?

Why not the West Indies?

*

And at last, your labour paid

I spell words like Roseau, Windward

and chase them across time zones.

Now, I take photographs of calabashes

as if they were my daffodils

certainly, Roseau, calabashes

the mist that is sitting on the blue hills

and a thousand other creation stories.

Incidental Music

Morcheeba is playing. I taste the local delicacy he has transferred to my plate and I think of witty things to say. I namedrop. It is not going too badly. Then I namedrop a name painful to me and this name calls forth stories on his side. The significance of which is impossible for me to gage. The little he knows about me is a good measure of the little I know about him. But I know I have hit on something here. He looks at me rather intently and asks. 'He is working on A., isn't he?' This may be the one single moment in which his real, vulnerable and almost tactile self has shone through.

Washington

Washington itself, is a Disneyland, very Baudriallard, giant signifiers, plaques gone wild. There are many people jogging, which recalls scenes from Burn After Reading. After such knowledge, what forgiveness?

There is also a kite festival, bright skies and freezing cold.

I have soup at the Smithsonian Castle, and sit at a table with a middle aged American couple. They ask me what I do, and when I tell them what I teach, they say 'Ah, our son is learning Arabic, a special kind of Arabic, what was it? Sunni, yes I think it was sunni'. I smile. 'Has your son been in the Middle East?' I ask. 'Yes' they say. I know what is coming and still ask 'Where has he been?' 'Iraq' they say. I am relentless. 'What was he doing there?' 'He was in the army'. I could go on asking questions. I could even make a scene. I don't.

As part of my Grand Tour of American universities I make my way to Georgetown and for some reason when I get of the bus I feel I am in Stratford. Maybe because of all the Shakespeare related establishments that are in Washington. I enter a Body Shop and not far off is a Karen Millen. I am, of course, in my element. I slowly make my way towards campus and stop at the Bryn Mawr bookshop. It is run by two very old ladies one of whom has a discernible British accent. The other one is at the counter, transacting, ever so slowly, business. She adds sums on a piece of paper with a pencil and then looks at a table to calculate the tax. Then she can't calculate the change. The gentleman says it is quite alright, she doesn't have to give it to him. She insists, and the other lady arrives, looking hawkishly at the proceedings. The lady at the counter manages to give the exact change and now it is my turn.

She writes the prices of the books down. A Selection on Verses from the Koran. She looks at the price, looks at the cover and says 'I quite like the older version' she says. I wonder if she means the Bible. Then she looks at Priestley's An English Journey. 'Oh yes' she says 'We have some very good books here'. She does the sums and now's the time to swipe my card. She tries a couple of times and fails. The other lady, a character you feel must be played by Emma Thompson comes and says to me 'It should be alright. She can do it'. Then turns sternly to the hapless woman at the counter. 'You can do it Margaret. Take your time Margaret'. Margaret takes her time. It does not work. I pay cash.

I then continue towards the campus and have a quick walk around the grounds. As I am about to leave a notice a group of young men all dressed in black a-la-Reservoir-Dogs, and stranger than that, there is a woman who is walking ahead of them, turned towards them and so walking backwards, taking their photographs. Other people turn to look at them and they cast flirtatious looks back. Some kind of ad? As I exit the gate I hear their talk, and my radar catches the word 'Islam', and then I here the rest quite clearly. 'Hey, I think we should have a picture taken with the hijabi girl!' I want to stop, turn back and say to them a-la-Robert-de-Niro 'You talkin to me?'. Who knows what that could lead to? I feel strangely flattered. I am impressed that they know the word 'hijabi'. A bit more discerning than Sunni Arabic, I think. I have never been called that before. I feel validated. Maybe now's the time to make a scene.

But there's a bus I must catch and so I soldier on.

Raspberry Sorbet, East Coast Style

so, as a visiting scholar in america, i am at a posh restaurant (the only thing posh about it is the restaurant, before you get any ideas), and after having had my fish, the waiter reads the desert menu to me (as they do in posh restaurants), and of course, it ends with the sorbet. i 'consider' the sorbet for a while, and say what the heck, as we are in america, and have the sorbet, AND the espresso (not like some other characters who, fighting calories, decide AGAINST the sorbet and only have the espresso). and then i walk back home in my victorian shoes. i get a sore left tonsil from the sorbet and still i am content, walking over the bridge towards home, as only the untermensch do in america, breathing in the spring air.

North Carolina: Reclining on couches in happiness, with companions pure, most beautiful of eye

So I am stranded in the south because the north is getting a lot of snow. It's plantation houses and biscuits here and I am staying at a renovated mansion that could be the setting of Kara Walker's nightmares. Or certain people's dream weddings. I spend days in the luxury and wallowness of a southern belle of a hundred years. They have prints of natives and ducks all over the walls. The silverware is quite exquisite.

Today, I ventured out into the world, and spent the better half of my time at a cafe working on my translations. I thought of Aschenbach. I contemplated on certain aspects of walking, picking up things and opening doors. A phenomenology, if you will. I bought a secondhand skirt from a very pretty boy, something out of a sad American road movie. He asked me the name of the author I gave a talk on. Then, responding to nature's call I entered a chinese. I bought fried rice, which in the hotel room turned out to be a good American portion that could feed a family of four. Walking down to my plantation residence I saw two dark SUV's, they had words painted with whitewash on them. Duke Fuck UNC. Duke > UNC, beautifully and academically economical. There were tents set up in the middle of the oxonianity of Duke, under the rain yesterday, people waiting to get tickets for the basketball game. I bought a Carolina t-shirt to commemorate the game, my groundedness and the phenomenology of the cafe (there was a guy with an Exeter College hoodie sitting behind me). Reclining on couches in happiness, with companions pure, most beautiful of eye.

Arendt, Snow, Railtracks

In preparation for a 'chance' meeting with a professor I read Arendt, having taken refuge in the carpet-floored inner-sanctum of my apartment which is the bedroom. My eye waters uncontrollably (I think the night cream seeped into it) and to the kitchen I go to pick a tissue. I see it snow as in fairy tales, in abundance, and the flakes are seeable only because of the light of the locomotive that is parked a few meters away from the window which covers the whole of the north facade of the apartment. The flakes fall down onto the railtracks, and the locomotive bides its time. It will be a white morning tomorrow.