England, my England!

Returning from a dinner in Eton where my host did different accents at the table, including several shades of posh, I get off at the train station in Reading and start walking to my friend's place. A Russel Brand type of English guy approaches me and says 'I know this sounds very strange but do you have 60 p?' I smile, and when he realizes I won't pay up he starts 'Fucking...' and stops to consider, possibly, to go for a racial one and then thinking better of it '...bitch!' he says. All is well with the world.

English Words

Oh daughters of Jerusalem,

Give me today

My daily split infinitive

That I may speak about over

Dark coffee, sitting at dark benches

Hall-style

Oh daughters of Jerusalem

Give me today

My heavy expletive

That I may chuckle head tilted back

And brush it off with a hand gesture

Cutting through the thick fog of

Derision

Oh daughters of Jerusalem

Give me a moment or a lifetime

Of your speeches and soliloquies

as I listen and watch, through a glass,

darkly.

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.

A Tale of Two Bookshops

This time around I ventured into Daunt Books, which had caught my attention on an early stroll towards the Wallace Collection. Inside the 'olde worlde' bookshop the first thing I noticed were the new Nabokovs neatly placed on the counter, giving me ample opportunity to leaf through it before the event in the evening. Downstairs they had a good travel section which featured no Daniel Metcalfe but the magazine which featured an article by Bijan Omrani and one by Alexander Morrison. I thought I'd discovered something rather extraordinary but when I opened the door to Alice's place, the issue was staring at me from the armchair- she'd placed it there, she said later, thinking I would enjoy seeing it. I am an open book! Daunt also had what looked like locals with their travel cases on wheels, doing their last minute book-shopping. There was no Nicholas Coleridge to be had.

At the Hatchard's next day I first asked for the Nabokov with renewed interest and all the staff lifted up their heads to look at me like meerkats and said sadly that it had not yet come in. I resolved to buy some Bennett and indeed, another lady was asking for him at the counter. There were a good number of signed copies of books- including Coleridge's Deadly Sins (which I bought) and William Dalrymple (which I thought was too expensive at 20 pounds). Downstairs Adam Thirlwell's Politics was there where I'd left it summer 2008, and there were two ladies talking about the wretched estate agents that harassed them about their 'houses'. One of them was going to some (important) one's house and said proudly that she was 'dining there on 5th December'. Upstairs I sat and read Rory's introduction to Arabian Sands in which he says that only as an Etonian can he understand what Thesiger says when he says 'First Field Colours'. There were also some copies of Metcalfe's book.

Oh my prophetic soul!

A much belated introduction to Robert Byron after my summer 'travel-reading'. Here's an excerpt from his First Russia, Then Tibet, from the first chapter ''The New Jerusalem'

"Should any echo of the laughter provoked by my journeys reach the ears of my Russian friends, they will be able to ignore, or at best pity, such irreverence. Levity is the music that accompanies the European's whoring after false gods, gods which, in fact- and all fact is Marxist- do not exist."

The Spectre of England

The Spectre of England (apres Walcott)

Down the Abrahamic stones of the distant past,
by the mulberry trees that shade the graves that hardly ask for it,
to the sound of thunder that comes from across the border,
he waits, for the sepoy to say something, to divulge
and looks lost into the distance, thinking, building an empire here
destroying one there, vertical like one of the seven pillars
of that proverbial wisdom
(ah, that room above the arch, the arch, the arch, the quad)
fearing he may let pass a word that could
heal.
He passes zebra crossings, watches the traffic lights
until he has come to a table where he can order
strong coffee, mineral water
with a view of a train station long abandoned
in this town of past wrongs beyond repair.
I almost missed him, but there he is
his hand with the up and down motion
of sipping coffe, and in the background
the noise of a hesitant rush hour
his dark blue suit and inner jumper
sensing rain with the coming gale, he stands up to go
this young looking old old man.
II
Walking the washed out walk ways, holding something precious in his breast pocket,
unreachable in his silence
he does not care about the carnage,
his travel companions are talking about. This figure
not quite a man, but this walking stick, this tall straight-line
this tower
from his city of sleeping spires.
The mist is his master, within which
he grew to like, to dislike, to keep silent
- the mist that nurtured him to be vague, in all appearance
and yet be true to his colours.
He enters a church that is blackened with the soot of candles,
and wonders how many said their prayers there.
III
The locals are dark and merry, the library is
in disrepair, his need to read is something palpable, and in the heat
he rushes to the market to find a second-hand shop
that soothes his nerves.
He grabs Anna Karenina in Russian and walks to a cafe
The youths are smiling under their brilliantined hair, the girls are dressed to the nines
The waiters are listless as they offer delicacies, the policemen stroll about
He sits there and shuts out everything,
indifferent to a world that tries to impress.
His postcards home are one-liners
as they have taught him not to care,
not to take to heart much what one sees
On his way to his rooms
he watches the traffic revolving around the opera house
and thinks he hears a familiar note
reaching him from within the closed shutters
His is an innate music of the mind that needs no strings.
Entering his room he sees the poster he bought in London sometime ago
Thinking it perfect for his kind of digs
His paper kinsmen stare at him from across the room
All is well with the world.
Think of the worlds torn apart, burnt, destroyed
Think of the splatters of blood, ash caused
By all this well-ness that fills your room
With the power he no longer has he looks at me askance
“Really N! I am not the beast you make me out to be”
IV
His forehead creased and be-freckled
He envisions the gorge, the river bed
The poplars bending over it, the little caravan
swifts flying overhead in concert.
The old Greek temple stands, full of tourist
And forever, that girl with the flower-tiara
It is as it should be, girls, hair and flowers
All this he sees in his mind’s eye
And now it comes to him as an aftermath, an afterthought
of the pillage, of the spoils of his silent war.
He picks and chooses
The figures that decorate his memory
And himself, vertical, on a straight path, not wavering
one wee bit.
The forehead creases- it is sometimes to much of a strain
To record images without a word to tag
To turn into some kind of story.
A vast sea of unseen sights stretch before him
As he plans his next foray into the wild
Silently, swiftly, he builds another frame, another altar
To his unfathomable gods.

Good Old Muscle Power

So, a friend of mine has returned to university after she'd abandoned it ten years ago because of the headscarf ban- in the interim she married and had two children. Now, the ban is still in place in some universities, sometimes only in some buildings of some universities- evidence of the arbitrary nature of the whole thing. So my friend takes a couple of exams and yesterday as she is about to sit another, the janitor stands in her way with a no pasaran. She tells him he has no authority to stop her as he is not of administrative stock. But he is keen to make his citizen's arrest. Luckily, my friend's husband is with her and he physically pushes the janitor aside. The janitor can't now do aught and my friend sits the exam. I am now thinking taekwando can largely improve the educational lives of Turkish Muslim girls.

Confederacy of Asses- or the Cult of the Communicative Bums- or Ode to Pitless Bottoms

From Baburname:
"On reaching Khwaja Sih-yaran there was a wine-party. Today orders were written and despatched by Kich-kina, the night watch, to the Begs North of the Hindu Kush. Giving them a rendezvous and saying 'An army is being got to horse, take thought, and come to the rendezvous fixed"

When all else fails, blame the Germans

The Coalition Forces (or is that the name they assume in Iraq?) have massacred 70 Afghans in Kunduz. The BBC has been running the news with pictures of American military personnel visiting the wounded in the hospital, all the while re-iterating that it was the Germans who gave the order to 'exterminate'. Oh what a lovely war!

Vereschagin- Samarqand

almost looks Art Nouveau