The rain this afternoon was incredible. I imagine this was similar to El Nino in 96-97 before I moved to SF. It must have been an inch an hour, I don’t know exactly. It was torrential. I was trying to send an email to Azeema when I panicked about the…
I’m driving a new car here–a mini-SUV basically. I left the headlights on for, I don’t know, three hours, maybe four, and the battery was completely dead. I mean nothing. The hotel manager–a fellow gringo–suggested we push the damn car down the hill and start it while in motion. Didn’t…
Had a frustrating Manuel Antonio experience. I spent four hours hiking and only saw an agouti. For maybe six seconds. Most interesting thing all morning were the spreading roots of a tree. It was so amazing, the place was totally dead–as compared to yesterday when I was bumping into critters…
Good hunting in Manuel Antonio today. Right off the bat I encountered squirrel monkeys. Had some trouble with my Better Beamer and flash. I thought the flash only worked on “A,” but today it needed to be on TTL. So much for practicing in my apartment. The Better Beamer kept…
I’ve been trying to put into words how I felt visiting Gaza. For the most part, I feel that I’ve failed. Hebron, clashes, everyday life, those I can express with the written word. Gaza defies that. The contrasts are too stark. The brutal poverty is too painful. The arrogance of…
For the last three months, I’ve been hearing stories about Wadi al-Nar (pronounced WAdinnAR). It’s an ominous name. Wadi simply means “valley.” Nar, according to my handi-dandi Hans Wehr, means “fire” or “conflagration.” With the definite article (al), nar means “Hell.” The first person I heard talking about Wadi Nar…
One of the things you notice living here is the vast difference in reporting. For the most part, the States has pretty homogeneous reporting when it comes to foreign events. Even for domestic issues, coverage is generally on the fair and even side. It reminds me of Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon,…
After a healthy breakfast of French toast, I left for Nigel’s. It was about noon, a little later, and even if I didn’t want to go back to Ma’alufiyye, I had to. Yours truly, the highly organized individual that he is, had left his wallet at “Communist Central” the night…
Nigel and Hanan and I went back to Ma’alufiyya/Arak/Khammara yesterday. A cursory glance at the site, just driving past, you would never have realized that there were clashes there. A few days previous–last Saturday night actually–I took a cab back from Jerusalem that passed by Ma’alufiyya (it is the main…
A fog has descended over Palestine. When I left the university this evening after helping Nigel prepare his recent diary entries, the sun had fled, and a dense mist had settled, obscuring the nearby hilltops. Bloody Middle-Eastern weather. In college, a professor of mine–Rashid Khalidi–kept talking about some malady that…
