Unraveling history's alternate timelines
The sun in Memphis has the habit of arriving not as light but as a verdict. By the third hour, the streets between the temple walls and the market were divided into slices: white glare on the plaster,...
Continue readingThe road into Niani was doing what roads into important cities always do: collecting everyone’s excuses before the officials could. Donkeys stood hock-deep in yellow dust. A salt trader cursed softly ...
Continue readingThe Avenue of the Dead is not named that here, or at least not by the people who have to sweep it. To them it is a long stone problem that catches dust, sandals, spilled maize, dog droppings, and the ...
Continue readingThe heat had already settled into the stones before midmorning, but it did so unevenly, like a tax collector with favorites. The open street by the cothon baked my sandals through. The shaded passage ...
Continue readingA gray winter light came down the slopes this morning as if it had been strained through millet water. It lay flat on the mule backs, flashed dully on bayonets at the far bend, and turned the dust on ...
Continue readingSnow had gone gray in the gutters by morning, not from romance but from coal, boots, and the patient grinding of Berlin under occupation. Kreuzberg was busy in the old way: women with string bags, men...
Continue readingThe city was still finding its voice after Sunday, and for the most part it had chosen boots. Boots on Sackville Street, boots at the corner of Abbey Street, boots under the dripping archways where me...
Continue readingThe city wall at Datong still has the honest look of a military place: brick shoulders, hard parapets, gate towers with soot on the corners where signal fires have eaten the paint. It is January, and ...
Continue readingChicago in May still believes it is entitled to be April. The lake wind came down Madison Street with a wet palm and slapped everyone equally, which is one of the few civic services that has not yet b...
Continue readingThe first thing one notices about Bloemfontein is not the politics, though the war has made everyone here into an unwilling footnote to politics. It is the dust. It lies on the tent ropes like flour, ...
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