Up the creek

with a pack of Cleopatras and two women, both named Aisha. Head pounding, the flech of sink-brewed arak gumming up my tongue. In the street below I can see where I parked the Caddy. Angled under the awning of the ahwa, next to a Russian built tractor from the 1960s. There’s a donkey hitched to the bumper. Beyond, some lesser arm of the Nile. Reed lined, choked with weed. Garbage strewn.

I’m banging this out on a rusted Royal. The kind that stands up and looks you in the face as you type. Like an upright piano or a marmot. I guess I’ll send Aisha—the bigger of the two—down to the landlady with the carbons in a bit and have her fax them into the office.

Not that I have much to say.

This wretched ruined remnant of the countryside gave birth to Mubarak. Dowsed now in cheap chemicalia banned in the first world and dumped on the fields of the third, choking on the refuse that won’t burn and hacking up the particulate of that which will. Cemented over and pissed on. Its children herded from classrooms without desks to factories without windows.

It’s a bit depressing. Especially if you like 320 thread count sheets.