Two weeks of fever had weakened me, but feeling safe made me bold, and when Man followed me to piss in the dark, I asked him, "Should we fuck?"
"Of a young dromedary Excellency has made the purchase…" Man changed his voice into a grinning murmur, "Do you need riding lessons? Where is your baton?"
I had come for the exotic sex the mountain boys are famous for; disbelieving what friends had told me: Extortion, robbery, kidnapping, murder, and war. – I liked Man's voice, his eyes, his hands but who was he? What did he want from me? Was he in love with me? I should have asked the doctor to call the embassy to repatriate me. Now, I had no papers, no money, and nobody, not even I knew where I was. What if Man simply left me in the middle of this desert?
Man finished his food, washed his hand pouring water with his left from the tumbler over his right hand onto the plate, chewed some anise seeds, poured more water from the jug into his wide-open mouth without touching the vessel with his lips, and asked, " Would it please Excellency to go inside?"
Getting up, my eyes fell once more on the small rosewood frame with the adage:
Dass Arun ein Durchschnittsstudent war, und sie wusste, dass Jungen auch nur Menschen sind. Sie wusste, dass er Brahmane war, und dass es nichts bedeutet. Brahmane zu sein ist nur ein fauler Trick, mit dem ein paar besonders Schlaue den Rest der Welt aufs Kreuz legen. All dies wusste sie; sie wusste und hatte es in amerikanischen Romanen gelesen, dass Frauen für gleiche Rechte einstehen müssen.
That Arun was an average boy, and she knew that boys were humans too; she knew that he was a Brahmin, and she knew that it meant nothing, that being a Brahmin was just a foul trick played by some people on others. She knew all this; she knew and had read it in American novels, that women had to assert their equality.
In Mary's uncle's home she was expected to serve as her younger cousin's maid; if her uncle's wife and Mary's not married aunt served him, how could she do otherwise?
Ich kam zurück für Vaters Beerdigung; weil es meine Pflicht war, doch auch weil ich nun zurückkommen konnte.
Mutter war alt, schwach; das Gefängnis der Ehe hatte aufgehört und ihr eine freudlose Freiheit hinterlassen, die schlimmer war.
I came back for the funeral of my father, because it was my duty, but also because now I could come back. My mother never had any power over me; my younger brother has gone abroad too.
Es wird eine Zeit sein,
als die NZZ noch nicht das anti-China Hetzblatt war,
zu dem sie später wird.
Ich werde Journalist und Schriftsteller sein
und Artikel schreiben,
die die Leser zugleich ärgern
und bestätigen.
‘Götter sind furchtbar, wenn sie sich offenbaren' (Ilias 20.131).
April
