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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สอง. Rubies and Rucksacks

On to Pieria he stepped from the upper air,
and swooped down upon the sea,
and then sped over the wave like a bird, the cormorant,
which in quest of fish over the dread gulfs of the unresting sea
wets its thick plumage in the brine.
In such wise did Hermes ride upon the multitudinous waves. The Odyssey – Homer

A well-dressed man in a formal grey suit came up to me to ask where I was from. It was my third day in Bangkok, and until then, I had been alone. I was standing in a wide open grassy area in Sanam Luang Park, no one around, and I was facing away from the Grand Palace when he approached.

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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.