Akram takes us once again to his favourite places. We follow. What else there is to do? We are desperate for things to happen. I like it when we go to the café where Juda works. Juda’s a beautiful person to look at. I decided that her eyes are uncommonly sweet, possibly it is bashfulness, because only twice I managed to have them be directed at me. She seems always to be thinking at something more important than the here and now, which mysteriously goes with her gentle manners, casting a light around her in the old tacky café. Her graceful body is not amorphed by the usual unshaped gown but instead present in the room, from under her colourful clothes. She’s from Algeri.

Akram, he’s from Casablanca. He says he has a crush on Juda. This is despite the fact that once outside of the café all he gives you on the subject is a comment on “her nice tits”.
We met Akram on the streets few days ago, he called to us of course, most likely he was trying to hustle random foreigners because he knows where to find booze and girls on the black market, which we don’t really care for anyway, but we feigned interest when he talked about it because we were actually interested in the story. After the first day Akram kept on looking for us every afternoon, and now we don’t know whether he’s still hoping to hook us on something, or he’s getting a cut from the cafes he takes us to, or if we are rather becoming friends. All I know is we need diversions and he is a nice enough guy. He works in a Pizzeria by night, the pizzeria has decent pizza. Him and I converse in Spanish, which my fellow gardener does not speak, but understands more compared to english; the rest I translate to him; it all adds to the idiomatic confusion I am falling into.

Somehow Akram can take us to three or four different cafes in a single afternoon, which in the end are really too many. The nicest one today is probably this old passenger boat tinted in blue tied to an abandoned pier along the waterfront near the centre of the city. I wish I could remember its name since I asked for it. Akram says everybody is from Morocco here, and the music too.
Nagged by police and by the Sahara, Akram likes to stay closed inside cafes; I like to stay outside and look at people passing by. Young african couples in love are especially uplifting to look at in this city, at least for me. The hour of the swallows is also very important to be witnessed. So few moments are typically spent debating whether staying outside or inside, this time we stay under deck in the belly of the blue boat, at a table next to the window, but on the wrong side. There’s only the sea out of the smeared pane, and rusty boats far away in the port. I hope the slight rocking won’t make me sick as I smoke the shisha again, which I know I really shouldn’t do. I smoke and think that Akram is probably getting a cut from all these cafes. Which for him is probably a losing deal compared to the cut he’d have if we were willing to ask him for booze or direction to houses with prostitutes; in my mind, this question matters only because every time he tells his story, of failed worker and emigrant kicked out of Spain after one year of jail, I vaguely want to help him, in other words I hope for the chance to turn the vagueness into real help. A selfish hope, that can be ruined, albeit not entirely, if Akram's interest in us is a machination. This explains why it can be so easy to fool travelers, I guess. Of course I also want to fight the cliché of the untrusting fat wallet bearer abroad: even more so because I am falling into it myself. I feel inferiority the moment I seem to perceive deception behind Akram’s sincere eyes, and so who knows why I later change my mind? and at the end of the day, back at the hotel, I have a annoying gut feeling, as if I am trapped in a judgment maze.

Unilaterally, lost in the mess of my room, I decide that tomorrow we are going to do without Akram for a change. That’s also because for the third night I am unable to fall asleep. I lay in bed -- all lights on -- reading in vain waiting for drowsiness. I know it is because of the shai and the apple tobacco and the so called espressos. So very useless in the end. I think that all the waiting can make us very vulnerable.

I get out of the room, walk around the corridor, sit back on the bed, turn the TV on and off. Trap a cockroach under the glass. At four something the call of the muezzins begins. God is great. I get out to the balcony, the air rushes behind my back from the inside of the hotel (the door's ajar). It is very late and the city outline is punctuated by lights of different sizes keeping watch. The world is half awake at least car wise. I let the little I can grasp of reality to sink in, the humming loudspeakers, the wind, the droning of the air conditioners, the distant comment of the waves. I think that nothing will stay with me the way I am sensing it now. Memories are a joke.
The share of sea I can see from here is a pitch black void against which all the human refuges and the restless palms seem to be floating: the stage of a theatre, a million untold stories. This land needs writers.

-- In picture above: running across the street at the waterfront

Every so often in the scorching night fireworks go off. It’s the third night this is happening. Faraway parties in the outskirts of the vast capital, where the big farms and the gardens of the elite are. Birthdays of daughters born in May. Celebrations of business deals.
We’ve been in one of those gardens; we’ve seen lions and tigers in cages below the violet shadows of majestic jacarandas efflorescence; next to one hectare of peach trees growing in the sand there was a old villa tinted magenta. But maybe that’s another story.

There’s not really much to see on the little white TV in my hotel room, I mostly have animal planet on, tonight I’m watching the wounded dogs, rescued dogs, uncared for dogs with their irresistible caring mugs, generous, good-willing, needy. I do it until I can’t stand it anymore, tired of the burning eyes. There’s a Tom Cruise movie on the only other channel I can understand where he tries to look older. I can watch it. The fireworks go on but I can’t see them from the window. Nights got really hot these last days, they say it’s nothing compared to what the next months will be, when the Sahara will actually turn its blow this way.

The occasional cockroach runs out from behind the mirror. The carpet is annoyingly warm beneath my feet as I rush for the kill and fail.

Days pass in the hotel as the nothing happens. Stuck in the Arabian labyrinth, or should we call it To Nowhere road, we are forgotten again, still without a contract, still not working. Fed and forgotten. I value the pointless energy of my resistance to it as I try to exercise in my room in the morning. Day after day we have identical lunches and dinners in the hotel restaurant, always rice and meat with something. Waiting for calls. The personnel knows us by now, names and room numbers. We exchange manly phrases about italian football teams. See if I care. With the young workers from Tunisia or Morocco it’s a little better, you can talk about women and booze. Personal biographies are left out pretty soon. Who should want to talk about its immigration disgrace in this pond called Mediterranean? Everyone comes from somewhere else and that’s all there is to it.
Just as well, I got tired to repeat that I am a gardener while I am not being one.

Sometimes we come down dressed with the tunics we bought at the suq just for kicks. We laugh at the elevator music that goes on and on and on while we eat, but does not actually plays inside the elevators where it belongs. My fellow gardener fights with the computer trying to get messenger to work. I have lengthy telephone conversations with Libi about how long I am supposed to stay put before fucking off and coming back home, but I don’t really want to come back. I want this to work.
Libi does not condone anymore.

Sometimes I wake up exasperated, sweaty, victim of the erotic dreams of the morning and feeling unjustified hatred for the place and the people. For our differences. For their disregard of women. For the price tags for foreigners. For spending their time always among men, for their ludicrous non alcoholic Becks, or for the hard to get prostitute option they leave the weak and the lonely with.
Then I am out in the traffic and the market and the language and I know nothing of this landscape. I feel envy and tenderness for the innocence and shyness of young people here. Curiosity. A glimpse of the world we have consumed, maybe. Where is love hiding for them? Hisham says it takes too much time, I’d say to scoop it out the pan of tradition. "Nobody has that kind of time."

Some other times I wake up and it’s the good old hatred for myself, my late incompleteness, my foggy mind, my wasted years, my green eyes looking at me from the mirror trying to understand fuck knows what. I will never know where I am going. Never.

-- In picture, above: Tarabulus, Lybia, sometimes yesterday night.

"Me, Love's servant? I wasn't at all! And suddenly my heart felt ugly, I was sick of myself. I thought that my aim of being simple was just a fraud, that I wasn't a bit goodhearted or affectionate, and I began to wish that Mexico from beyond the walls would come in and kill me and that I would be thrown in the bone dust and twisted, spiky crosses of the cemetery, for the insects and the lizards."

-- The Adventures of Augie March

I am reading this book slowly, partly because I am reading other things and partly just because its language is sometimes difficult for me: and also I was very impressed and got clobbered by the fact that as soon as Augie finds love he goes to Mexico following obviously eagles and snakes. It took me by surprise and had me sliding down memory lane (again).

"And so"

And so we were laying in bed inside the room by the open roof. Our naked bodies etcetera, one against the other dark against the white sheets etcetera. Above our heads the mosquito net which bothered us during sex when one of us stood up on top. Outside, incessantly, the sea-- but I wrote these things already.

We had an argument because Eli had invited us to go with her to the disco in the village nearby, and then Martina said she wanted to go alone. This wasn't the argument because it was me the one who nicely took it out of her that she wanted to go alone -- advantages of being more experienced -- and then, OK, I said, but tomorrow it's our last day here, isn't it kind of stupid? It wasn't. I also took it out of her that she wanted to be alone the following day as well.
She was funny to look at, her profile sulking in the pillow, senses scanning the roof and the noises, at moments making a long face, casually asking, does it bother you?
Now I am forgetting spanish all the way... I don't know if she said '¿te molesta?' or something else.
She was playing the part, let's be real cold and forget all about it, this was but a small amount of the ominous fury she was going to be capable of, stomping on the things she feared she wasn't able to keep from happening, the pain mixed with grace-- but spontaneously I knew better, again the lousy advantages of experience -- and said: of course it bothers me, I want to be with you -- I said it in a gentle way -- and I knew she didn't expect the straight self-exposing dope, a degree of sincerity yet to be known by her-- that's when the argument started, pure obstinacy on her side to make things slump -- I need to be alone, I came alone, I have to go away alone, she said. It's all right, I said, it's a pity, but all right. Just don't be upset now.
But she dressed up in a hurry, in the remaining seconds during which we didn't look at each other. I felt kind of hurt because of the impersonality and the swiftness of this small tragedy -- her behind disappeared in the short jeans skirt, her small lovely breast in the top, her dear mouth disappeared behind a door closed in a rush. I said 'stupid' as the door closed and regretted the sedate casualty of the remark. Then the sea only made noises.
I stayed in bed for a while more. I didn't know of what she was capable of at that time and didn't really worry.

Then I got out, climbed down the stairs, looked down from the terrace to the sea, the empty uneven beach and the foamy round waves under the big clouds -- I went further down, to the beach and to eat. On the way to the restaurants I found abandoned on the sand a bracelet with little colored stones stringed to a leather ribbon and took it.
Later it was still bright, it was bright until late. I got to the internet place, started reading or writing emails, emails that probably contained omissions or lies, and from the monitor I raised my head and there she was, out in the street, licking a white ice cream with her red red tongue and looking at me through the window hole with the same dark serious eyes in abeyance. I smiled, got out. She came close to me and said "I am impulsive". I opened my arms to make her come close and stop her from explaining things, and we hugged and didn't let it go. The girl of the internet place was sitting under the porch with her baby just out of the crib and looking at us. The baby had learned to walk. The dusty road was empty and quiet. I felt Martina's grip and her smell. It was so simple -- and mysterious at the same time. What were her thoughts in that moment? What her feeling? In what area exactly our feelings were meeting? What name or address it had? But we were happy and relieved and no words were needed. Has my heart ever beat that fast? (Yes it has. It doesn't matter.) Eli went alone to the disco that night and Martina told me that when she came back it was four in the morning. We were finally asleep.

"I hate these memories"

I hate these memories. They come to me across the things I read and the music I hear. Funny how I listened to all those songs so keenly the first weeks and now the sheer idea that something like "our" song might exist and might be heard paralyzes me. I thought those things were supposed to go away or not to hurt so much. At the same time I feel like I am pushing the memories to the surface where they should evaporate and dissolve. Because they will. The thing I like most about astrology, whatever kind of astrology including the mayan that Martina liked so much, is the knowledge that the wheel keeps turning, always, although in a complex uneven way. So nothing lasts identical for too long. I feel that I am turning, my hair and posture are already half-way-- I soon am going to look at something else: this is so terrible and unjust-- and these idea of sending her a picture one day of myself from the garden where I will be doing--- whatever, should it be possible, I won't care to send her anything anymore. That's how it goes. Etcetera.

there was this check from the car's insurance company abandoned in the drawer and I knew I had to wait before to cash it-- with its three damn zeros. Now, wow, it entirely disappeared inside the subscription to what will be my task for the next six months -- going to school. And it didn't even covered the whole crap.
Awake all night... and my mind is fluctuating and dizzy -- my face as if pushing forward around the nose and distracting me-- ideas are made up in an approximate rational state -- occasional terror due to the shape of things to come-- but it is a cool sunny morning out, and one day soon I'll cut my hair again-- and nothing is all right, reasons, methods, conditions, covered portions of the truth in my life-- but che cazzo ci posso fare.

Todo se hace en silencio. Como
se hace la luz dentro del ojo.

-- Jaime Sabinas

the night falls over oaxaca very slowly. for hours the houses and the trees have been shining with a very sharp light, it has been for hours the light of the end of the day, I don't know how it is possible, probably the help of the old consumed stones of the colonial houses-- a light honest and direct like the appearance of the people walking about in the streets, families, kids, old folks, students, politicians, activists, mariachi bands, nuns and clowns; the mexican flags, big and familiar, have been waving against the blue sky with perfection above the relevant buildings; and the vendors, tireless, have been offering, the musicians have been playing instruments. I have been eating another quesadilla sitting at the comedor inside the market, bored to death by the corny mexican music, admiring the ceaseless animation, and the way the light, hazed by the releases of the kitchens working all around in the market house, entered from the above.
Now I sit in front of the monastery of santo domingo, there's still another guy playing, a bagpipe this time, high and trembling like a bird, and a dog looming down from a flat roof above a bar. There's only one thing I am able to think about now, only one person, two persons; but the eyes, in the silence of the visions, do all the dances. I just stay and observe. With a side of my mind, I repeat some spanish conjugation-- I regret the lack of irony and, the weakness. Then it's night time. Of everything else I am obviously unsure.

Could this, Mr. Tagomi wondered, be the answer? Mystery of body organism, its own knowledge. Time to quit. Or time partially to quit. A purpose, which I must acquiesce to. What had the oracle last said? To his query in the office as those two lay dying or dead. Sixty-one. Inner Truth. Pigsand fishes are least intelligent of all; hard to convince. It is I. The book means me. I will never fully understand; that is the nature of such creatures. Or is this Inner Truth now, this that is happening to me?

-- Philip Dick, The Man in the High castle

Early night over the city, wet and rained over, folks from the apartment below yelling in front of the TV for the Milan soccer team to score. Sometimes softly warbles through the floor the chant Milan Milan, and someone else, further away beyond the projects blows a canned horn. But everyone who feels like cheering cheers apart and the community exists only across the TV sets. The land all around is cooling and drying, quieting up. The world of the spectators watches the spectacles.
I went to see Jawa today, tried to talk. Things never go like you imagined them if you have imagined them too much or too hard, because your mind can warp reality and compromise it. I mean, we talked, even laughed over it, because the baby has her own same blood type so "this doesn't help us, does it?". But it seemed so far-fetched to her I just dropped it right away in our laughs. It would have been better to drop it anyway. I left soon, she smiled from the threshold and the little kid was crying his short sob in the commotion of the door opened and closed and the distractions going away. I went for shops looking for a new bag not too big, not too small, but in the bourgeois city all the luggage is sinister and well mannered and is a bunch of boxes on wheels. I looked at the travel books and they all seemed useless. I wanted to buy the I Ching since when I read The Man in the High Castle, I had a couple of questions in mind, but I couldn't find the Adelphi copy I wanted. I met with Libi at home in the afternoon and we went to bed and after a while I managed to let my thoughts crawl away and let the sex work. We lay in bed for a while afterwards, the light from the gray sky gone dimmer and the room cold and under a blanket we stayed against the darkening orange wall. Whenever I looked down at her Libi smiled at me and then she said, you should never forget I'm the one who likes what you do to her. She came closer and against my chest and mentioned all the things she liked and we pictured them and I kept feeling inadequate but I didn't tell her. Then Libi left for the sewing school and the door remained open and I could hear the buzz of the city, the fainted honking and the throb of motorbikes and the tires accelerating on the wet surfaces of the street. Nothing else. Birds were silent or unintelligible below the afternoon onslaught of the city noise.
But that was before the night came, and then late at night, when Libi was sleeping alone in the other room with her head resting on a slim pillow near the orange wall, and the soccer match had been over for a long while, and I was writing at the green table and posting on the blog this post and all around had a duration and it felt familiar and distant at the same time. But that wasn't too original a feeling, and it stayed on the surface and I don't know what to do with it.

...there are still two weeks left, but, you know.

Libi I'm trying to write you this letter though I'm no good at it. I always worry that what I'm going to write in the letters will haunt me later on for some reason. Not that I have anything special to write you about. Anything you can't imagine by yourself probably.
So I am leaving, as you know (do'h). Of course I'll miss you Libi. I'll miss your eyes so intense and sweet when we hold each other, your arms when we fall asleep together, your cheering voice as you enter the door, noises of you in the kitchen, in the bathroom, out on the yellow terrace talking to the neighbor's cat. I'll miss our clothes scattered all over the apartment, your round breast, the way you give me, I'll miss you at night, when I'm awake and I hear your soft snoring coming from the other room, that always made me warm, our moments of bravery with the sex, our plans for dinner every night, the contorted and lengthy summaries of the movies you saw. I'll miss not seeing our plants flourishing this spring or getting sick. Even that corny french music all in minor key you always want to listen to. I'll miss hearing of your mother's cat, whom you nicknamed with the same nickname you gave me. I'll miss the countless ways you found to make me feel not guilty, of being alive, of being what I was, of not always doing the right thing. I always tried to protect you but if I succeeded at lengths it only was because you needed so little. Manifested so little. See, I know that.
I'll leave and miss the warm love that my leaving triggered from somewhere inside ourselves, even if it was forced out somehow.
You know that I'll be away for three months, although I am not so sure it will be three months, maybe it will be more, or less. I want you to be strong and go on with everything because I'll be back anyway. I wish I was leaving you with someone else like a child or a pet. But our lives are still important to take care of if we part. And if I am not coming back, because I die or something, please know that the days were all true, all true. True like fear, like illness, like lust, like hunger, like all that I postponed waiting to find the courage to give more to you. True when I ran away from you, true when I came back, true when I said I was sorry. Sometimes I wondered whether it was true or not, but what is true? Is it a lie to think that it's true all that we can't rationalize? And if I really die or something keep my relatives away from my stuff if you can, except maybe the pictures, and destroy the blog please. The password is written under the drawer of the green table (...)