locks to the keys of doors where the souls of different people live (or rest)?’
“While some fellow countrymen confused themselves further in the muddle that we can call political fundamentalism, Abbas anointed many a dinar and hour to touristic phrase-book compositions invested from Tabarka’s bookstore. With guidebooks for different countries his tongue perfectioned vital photo phrases in English, German, Spanish, Italian, and Russian. With the cowboy’s confident hat lift he practiced, ‘Hey, nice beautiful girl, how are you, do you want to please be a supermodel?’ With the Spaniard’s bullfighting smile he lisped,
‘¿Dónde está el museo de arte?’
With the Italian’s straight-backed stiff tongue he expressed,
‘Aspetti! Può parlare piu lentamente, per favore?’
And in front of the mirror he bounced his hand against the tennis racket of his imagination and asked himself,
‘Tennis willst Du spielen?’
The perfection of French was of course already my father’s private property.
“With control of the languages Abbas also expanded his broadness to investments in French fashion magazines. It was here where, in 1976, he was blinded by a photograph of a very attractive Brazilian. Her name was spelled Silvia and the article summarized how she had recently advertised her alliance of love with the king of Sweden. Did this influence Abbas’s future? Perhaps. But probably not. More vital was probably the biography dedicated to his idol Robert Capa, which Abbas read again and again. Capa, the master photographer with the velvet gaze, who documented everything from the Spanish Civil War to D-Day, who enjoyed Hemingway’s close friendship and Ingrid Bergman’s close love …
Let me present:
My father!
“A symbol for the globally modern meeting place where East crosses West, where Jesus crosses Muhammad, where redemption is a rendezvous in symbolic manly form, a little like the Lionel Richie of race and music!”
Hmm … I hope you do not perceive this section as on the quarrely side? With consideration for what happens later it is vital that the reader understand those dreams that burned your father’s breast when he was young.
The next scene welcomes the reader to the end of the summer of 1976. It is the year that the whole world suns itself in KC and the Sunshine Band, the year that terrorist groups like the PFLP , the Carlos group, and the Baader-Meinhof group fear-fill the world with hijackings, kidnappings, and bombings. The year that both your father and I have begun to grow our youthfully squared bodies to acertain bartender corpulence. But our mentalities are still constant. Neither religion, politics, nor tradition stops us from celebrating nights in the bonfire shine of beaches with soft touristettes in bikinis. Waves wash, someone’s guitar clinks “Lay, Lady, Lay,” a pipe is passed around, and discussions of harmony consider life’s shortness, the West’s stress, and the Orient’s beneficial mystique. This was a repeated subject that the tourists wanted to round up, and we chorused along with them. Even if your father had begun to grow his irritation about everyone’s constant focus on the vital difference between our world and theirs.
Suddenly I see your father, orangely fire-lit on the other side of the bonfire with the star frame of the night. His eyes, which normally usually seek the touristette with the night’s largest bosom, have suddenly relinquished their looking-around quality. Instead he is sitting with his back stretched like a hyena and his eyes magnetized to a group of women at the outer edge of the group. I remember distinctly his moistened lips and his swallowing throat. Then he advances his body, step by step, nearer and nearer the women, whose voices speak a language that to me sounds like singing in the tones
dutty-dutty-dutty-dutt
.
The special thing about this episode is that it is suddenly as though your father’s courting quality is kidnapped. When he is
“While some fellow countrymen confused themselves further in the muddle that we can call political fundamentalism, Abbas anointed many a dinar and hour to touristic phrase-book compositions invested from Tabarka’s bookstore. With guidebooks for different countries his tongue perfectioned vital photo phrases in English, German, Spanish, Italian, and Russian. With the cowboy’s confident hat lift he practiced, ‘Hey, nice beautiful girl, how are you, do you want to please be a supermodel?’ With the Spaniard’s bullfighting smile he lisped,
‘¿Dónde está el museo de arte?’
With the Italian’s straight-backed stiff tongue he expressed,
‘Aspetti! Può parlare piu lentamente, per favore?’
And in front of the mirror he bounced his hand against the tennis racket of his imagination and asked himself,
‘Tennis willst Du spielen?’
The perfection of French was of course already my father’s private property.
“With control of the languages Abbas also expanded his broadness to investments in French fashion magazines. It was here where, in 1976, he was blinded by a photograph of a very attractive Brazilian. Her name was spelled Silvia and the article summarized how she had recently advertised her alliance of love with the king of Sweden. Did this influence Abbas’s future? Perhaps. But probably not. More vital was probably the biography dedicated to his idol Robert Capa, which Abbas read again and again. Capa, the master photographer with the velvet gaze, who documented everything from the Spanish Civil War to D-Day, who enjoyed Hemingway’s close friendship and Ingrid Bergman’s close love …
Let me present:
My father!
“A symbol for the globally modern meeting place where East crosses West, where Jesus crosses Muhammad, where redemption is a rendezvous in symbolic manly form, a little like the Lionel Richie of race and music!”
Hmm … I hope you do not perceive this section as on the quarrely side? With consideration for what happens later it is vital that the reader understand those dreams that burned your father’s breast when he was young.
The next scene welcomes the reader to the end of the summer of 1976. It is the year that the whole world suns itself in KC and the Sunshine Band, the year that terrorist groups like the PFLP , the Carlos group, and the Baader-Meinhof group fear-fill the world with hijackings, kidnappings, and bombings. The year that both your father and I have begun to grow our youthfully squared bodies to acertain bartender corpulence. But our mentalities are still constant. Neither religion, politics, nor tradition stops us from celebrating nights in the bonfire shine of beaches with soft touristettes in bikinis. Waves wash, someone’s guitar clinks “Lay, Lady, Lay,” a pipe is passed around, and discussions of harmony consider life’s shortness, the West’s stress, and the Orient’s beneficial mystique. This was a repeated subject that the tourists wanted to round up, and we chorused along with them. Even if your father had begun to grow his irritation about everyone’s constant focus on the vital difference between our world and theirs.
Suddenly I see your father, orangely fire-lit on the other side of the bonfire with the star frame of the night. His eyes, which normally usually seek the touristette with the night’s largest bosom, have suddenly relinquished their looking-around quality. Instead he is sitting with his back stretched like a hyena and his eyes magnetized to a group of women at the outer edge of the group. I remember distinctly his moistened lips and his swallowing throat. Then he advances his body, step by step, nearer and nearer the women, whose voices speak a language that to me sounds like singing in the tones
dutty-dutty-dutty-dutt
.
The special thing about this episode is that it is suddenly as though your father’s courting quality is kidnapped. When he is
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