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Standing At The Wall

On its surface death meets life, the past meets the present. What was, doesn’t accuse; what is, doesn’t apologize. But this is the one place in America where they face each other, like it or not, beyond cant, revision, and lies.

Humboo

The effect was psychedelic: Dad heard colors and saw sounds. The people who were most crucial during his first twenty-one years of life — his parents, grandparents, brother, aunts, uncles — flashed by in a hallucinogenic parade of fiery color.

Venice Shimmers

Meanwhile, less than a day’s drive from here, the fighting continues in Bosnia, where tens of thousands have been killed or displaced, where starvation and concentration camps and rape hotels have become weapons in a campaign of ethnic extermination. Yet Washington is by and large indifferent, as Bosnia sits on no oil fields and sends neither Democrats nor Republicans to Congress.

From Yale To Jail

For no reason I can explain, I began to discover how little it matters where you are or what anyone does to you. I was sure that what I had done to get put in the hole was right, and somehow the longer I was there the better I felt.

The Revolution

The Great Army

When I was a child I used to beg the Old Buddhist to tell this story over and over again, especially the descriptions of the soldiers.

Storms

A classmate remembered, a card playing grandmother, a Hurricane Andrew survivor

Survivors

“It was winter when the commandant ordered us girls loaded into the truck,” my mother says. “We were naked, all young girls, maybe twelve, thirteen years old. You —” she points at me, “you would die with embarrassment at being naked in front of so many people.”

Sudan Journal

In Arabic it’s called a haboob. The three-day desert dust storm saturates the air with fine sand dust, filtering the sunlight. The Sudanese walk with their veils and turbans wrapped tightly around their faces, while scraps of last month’s uncollected garbage swirl around their feet. Scrawny stray dogs lean sharply into the wind.

Three Tales Of The Revolution

In 1913, my great-aunt Adela ran away with a boy intent on joining Pancho Villa’s revolutionary Army of the North. She was sixteen. The Revolution promised freedom from tyrants such as Díaz, Huerta, and her own father the rurales captain. Only her youngest brother did not disown her.