وا حد. Uncle Vartan’s Carrots

Took the death plane from Heathrow, last row, smokers section, a numbing multi-stop ride; first Schiphol, then Sofia, which only a few of us survived, before we landed in Cairo at two o’clock in the morning. At each stop, EgyptAir 778 bumped the tarmac, and the empty seats flopped forward, their backs pointing to the ceiling, crash position. Is ‘heads between knees; hands behind heads’ really the best way to make it through?

London was smothered in a misty rain when we took off, the first sign of autumn, but when we reached our final destination, it was hot, humid, and my first thought was, Oh my God! After the jabs for yellow fever and tetanus, the pills for malaria, and the cholera tablets, I had forgotten hepatitis!

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หนึ่ง. Rubies and Rucksacks

Smells of fish sauce and wok-stained stir fry wafted from street stalls as the tuk-tuk threaded through traffic. Our driver wrestled taxis, mopeds, and black-fumed buses. At one stop, we came alongside a tuk-tuk containing a large Western man. He lay limp in the back. A woman was screaming. She was German.

“He has hit his head; he needs a doctor.” Blood spilled from the man’s forehead.

Somchai yelled something in Thai to our driver, and our tuk-tuk lurched forward.

We span away before I could properly see the damage.

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Apat. Life in Paradise Part 1

Karin skipped through the barriers and past a security guard. She took one final look back at me as, with her fingers, she pushed away the errant strands of her platinum hair and her eyes were green as the misty slopes of her Cambrian forefathers, glistening despite the cold neon lights.

ဆယ့်သုံး. Reporting from Rangoon Part 1

Dressed in faded denims, he wandered past bottles wrapped in shining glittered paper for the connoisseurs of fine liquors. His shirt was stained and punctured with wear. Jeans stretched, they hung loosely around his buttocks and were frayed at the ankles. Sweat gathered in black shavings where the plastic straps of his thongs rubbed his toes. And he shuffled around the aisles, parted the hair away from his eyes and stared along the display for the right whisky.