Home - Bohemian Writers Club

through prose to see the world more clearly

About the boo

The Bohemian Writers Club is an experiment in writing courageously, creatively, uncomfortably. It responds to Ottessa Moshfegh’s call for stories that live in an amoral universe, past the political agendas on social media. We have imaginations for a reason. We need characters in novels to be free to range into the dark and wrong. How else will we understand ourselves?

It is thus a space for story truths more than happening truths: stories designed to catch-and-release the firestorm that is our world. Of what it feels like to be caught up in something you don’t control. For stories judged not by factual accuracy but by their resonance: stories that restructure worlds and make people feel stuff.

And it can be a space for intelligent polemics and behind the scenes confessionals on the experience of fieldwork and theorising. A space for the psychedelic and ruminative — beautifully rendered, always.

This then is where we promise to write thoughtfully, candidly, experimentally about whatever it is which we have come into this world to say — and damn the consequences.

Want to be a member?

Consider yourself one.

London Pride Banner by STIK, 2016. STIK is a sculptor and painter known for his emotive stick-figure style and dedication to radical social causes. The Hackney based artist has painted some of the largest public artworks across Europe, Asia, and America since emerging from the British street art movement of the early 2000s. STIK’s artwork is now in many major international museums and collections.

Day breaking in apple valley

(for odie, who went for us, and william, who inspired me to tell of it)

by Richard O’Quinn

Things were already underway by the time I arrived. Word had made it back of the explosion, injuries, and deaths and the place was awhirl with movement. Hushed voices and serious faces hung in every corner. While we were accustomed to losing people, it had been some time since something like this had happened at the unit.

The leadership teams assembled in the conference room and as the commander and sergeant major entered, a stillness accompanied them. Details were shared, but I already knew many of them. The suicide bomber had detonated his vest in the mess hall where soldiers were eating and relaxing after their overnight missions. The explosion had wounded many, and killed several. Some immediately. Others died while they lay askew across tables, chairs, and floors. Some died later, while nurses sat holding their hands in quiet rooms, patiently waiting, comforting. Bodies would be flown home from the front, accompanied by teammates escorting them the entire way.

Next of kin were required to be notified within hours, and in our case, this was complicated. It was three days before Christmas and the wife and kids were already flying home to Texas to be with her parents for the holidays. Mother and father were now divorced and living in separate towns in California, with mother in Apple Valley and father in an unnamed canyon several hours drive away. The commander wanted all three – wife, mother, and father, notified at the same time. Unusual. Normally for married soldiers, only the wife is notified. This would require three notification teams, all racing the clock. I joined team mother as they prepared for the journey.

The team leader was a newly minted young major. It was his first notification, but it wouldn’t be his last. His deputy, the slightly older troop sergeant major, was also on the team, but just as inexperienced when it came to notifications. I was concerned about them and wondered how it all would turn out. We didn’t have long to prepare. It was only a matter of hours before the cross-country flight departed. The team leader called his own wife to let her know what had happened and went home, packed his dress uniform, had a bite to eat, and explained to his three young children that he needed to go away for an important trip. He promised he’d be back to watch for Santa and squeezed them tightly before leaving. Seeing it all made me melancholy as I thought of my own wife and three children far away, but I would see them later.

Holiday travel meant the team was spread out across cabin of the packed plane to Los Angeles. Everyone sat in their own trance, staring into the distance, into the depth of the situation, into the pain that they now carried to pass along. The minutes hung. The hours crept. And the sun raced ahead of us into the distance, leaving us swallowed by darkness. Many other passengers slept.

But the major didn’t sleep. Instead, he thought of his own mother, wife, and how they would feel in the same situation. He read, re-read, re-read, and re-read the regulation. It said he would be given a script. He wasn’t given a script. No one had given him a script and goddamnit why hadn’t he asked for one?

Section 5–9. Notification scripts: The Casualty Assistance Center will provide the casualty notification team with individualized scripts tailored to the specific incident, based on items 31–44 of the casualty report, and to the family members being notified, using the following templates—

Death cases. “The Secretary of the Army has asked me to express his deep regret that your (relationship; son, John or husband, Edward; and so forth) (died/was killed in action) in (country/state) on (date). (State the circumstances.) The Secretary extends his deepest sympathy to you and your family in your tragic loss.”

He rehearsed the wording dozens of times.

“The Secretary. The Secretary of the Army. The Secretary of the Army has asked me. ME?! To express his deep regret. Bullshit. The Secretary of the Army hadn’t asked me a goddamn thing. Who the hell is the Secretary this month anyway? Has asked me to express his deep regret that your (relationship; son, John or husband, Edward; and so forth). That your son Robert (died/was killed in action). Which is it? If we’re fighting a War on Terror and a shithead terrorist detonates a vest bomb in the mess hall in (country/state) on (date) is it ‘death’ or ‘killed in action’ for god’s sake? (State the circumstances.) The circumstances. Really? The circumstances?! I’m sorry ma’am, your son died trying to eat a bowl of goddamn Fruit Loops for his dinner after having sweat his ass off all night, crawling around the backstreets of a shithole city trying to find bad guys and put holes in their heads. The Secretary extends his deepest sympathy to you and your family in your tragic loss.”

It was excruciating just watching him struggle with it all. With each repetition, I got more and more angry. I knew he just wanted to do the right thing and was probably really stressed. But as stressed, frustrated, mournful, and pissed off as he was, his perspective was really just a footnote in the whole scenario. Finally, after some time, I couldn’t watch anymore. I just wanted him to stop.

But he continued reading…

Section 5–10. Don’ts of personal notification:

Do not notify primary next of kin (PNOK) by telephone unless the Director, Casualty and Mortuary Affairs Operation Center authorizes or unique circumstances dictate spontaneous telephonic release (for example, a Soldier is very seriously injured, just died, and family calls for status update).
Do not call for an appointment prior to making the initial personal notification.
Do not hold your notes or a prepared speech in hand when approaching the residence of the PNOK.
Do not disclose your message except to the NOK concerned.
Do not leave word or notes with neighbors or other persons to have the NOK call you.
Do not speak hurriedly, or continuously refer to notes when talking to the NOK.
Do not use code words or acronyms that may have been used in the casualty report.
Do not touch the NOK in a manner that may be misunderstood. If the NOK faints or has an extreme emotional response, assist the NOK as required and request appropriate assistance.
Do not discuss entitlements for death cases at this time. If asked, advise the NOK that a Casualty Assistance Officer (CAO) will be assigned to discuss such matters.
Do not discuss disposition of remains or personal effects at this time.
Do not inform the secondary next of kin (SNOK) that they will receive a visit from the CAO. Do tell parents who are SNOK that the casualty notification team will remain available as needed to render assistance and to keep them updated on the situation.
Do not commit your organization or Commander, Army Human Resources Command (AHRC) to a given time to carry out an action or obtain particular information. Promptly forward all requests for information or other assistance to the proper agency or through the casualty reporting chain of command.
The casualty notification team members should not have alcohol on their breath or be inebriated.

“Inebriated. If only…”

I really wanted him to get a grip. It was as though he was feeling sorrier for himself than the mother he would soon face. I wanted to say something but couldn’t. He was too lost in his own story, in his own anger, his own doubt. I left him by himself for awhile.

The plane landed and the sergeant major got the rental car while the major called the unit to let them know we’d made it to LAX. It would be another couple of hours before we got to Apple Valley. The ride from the airport to the hotel was long and eyes burned from fatigue of the long day. There would only be a couple of hours to sleep before it was time.

Everyone tried to get some shuteye, but really only drifted in and out of wakefulness. Dress greens was the uniform as everyone met in the hotel restaurant to get a bite before sunrise and the last short drive to her house. It was a pretty hushed affair with the team mostly pushing food around their plates. An elderly man shuffled up, paused, and in a clear, quiet tone said solemnly, “Thank you for your service, boys.” His watery eyes told us that he knew why we were there and as he departed, his sombre nod offered his condolences.

We pulled up short of her house and parked on the side of the road. It was just before 7am and the sun was beginning to shine in the eastern sky. In silence, we climbed from the car, donned our berets, and walked the final steps to the house, spit-shined jump boots reflecting the clear sky.

Deep breaths, three knocks, and the major cleared his throat. The door slowly opened and there she stood with a broken smile and tears in her eyes. “There he is. That’s my son,” mama said, pointing at the profile painting of me in my Green Beret hanging just inside the doorway as it had for years now. As the major fumbled through his speech, I wept uncontrollably. “Mama. Mama!,” I cried again, just as I had when the blast ripped through my body, just as I had when I lay writhing on the mess hall floor, just as I had when the nurse held my hand and I drifted away. Had she heard then? Did she hear now? She stood silently, head tilted slightly, as the major expressed the Secretary’s deepest sympathy. She already knew. She found out from my wife who was notified a few hours earlier, as I stood silently by. The other team would be notifying dad over in the canyon soon, but I’d be there in time. For now, we all sat quietly in mom’s lounge.

The team perched three across on the edge of her sofa for a while, too long, shifting uncomfortably. Then left clumsily, not really knowing how. The major stammered a feeble goodbye at the door and mom and I watched them walk back to the car, heads hung. We stood together in silence as the sun finally peaked that familiar summit to the east and shone in her eyes. And I admired the etched lines of her face.

Depressing is hardly the word

(nonfiction)

by Henry Mintzberg

“I hope your visit to the refugee camp is not too depressing.”

This was just an innocent comment in a message that arrived on my final day. Yet that last word leaped off the page, indeed coalesced my thoughts about the entire experience. When I showed it to Abbas, my host, he laughed. “Depressing” is hardly the word.

As the plane headed for Nairobi, I wondered what I was doing in there. Sure I was drawn by the sheer experience of the visit. But why go to a place of such tragedy, so foreign to anything I had ever known? Down below, parched Africa floated by, dried up arteries in the sand waiting for some energy. Like life in the camps, I imagined. Like me in that airplane? On that abysmal screen above, Tom was chasing Jerry yet again, perhaps to keep our minds free for the purchase of the overpriced, “duty-free,” perfume. No shortage of energy for all that.

At the airport, I was met graciously by a Red Cross official. She took me to a proper hotel, which might just as well have been in Napoli. She warned me to be careful about walking beyond its grounds, especially at night. Later we toured the nearby game park, where all the animals duly appeared as our cage rolled by—giraffes, zebras, gazelles, a hippopotamus or two, a lion within leaping distance. Into Africa?

I was to spend two days at the camps, and then had another two free before having to return to France. So the official proposed that I do a real safari, deeper into Africa. Meanwhile, hoping to get a little bit of Africa into me. I asked about the local cuisine for dinner. New to the city, she didn’t know any such restaurant. So, we had the buffet at the hotel.

Early the next morning, I was driven to another airport, for small planes, to fly to N’gara, in western Tanzania. Here a different kind of traveller appeared, not your usual tourist or businessperson—matter-of-fact types, casually dressed. Ten years earlier they were probably doing India. Now they had a job to do.

Five of us boarded a plane that displayed the Red Cross insignia. This reminded me of health care, some kind of infirmary with the smell of medicines. Relief work was just an abstraction to me, something you read about in the newspapers. That was to change soon enough.

I sat sideways—most of the regular seats were piled with boxes—and off we went. I tried to look out the fuzzy plastic window but could barely make out even Mount Kilimanjaro when Juan, my neighbor, pointed it out. A Mexican with the Red Cross, he was on his way to a conference in N’gara, on “camp management”. (Never an escape from management for this professor of management.) Fortunately, the windshield was much clearer, so as we prepared to land, I caught sight of a beautiful strip of red earth along a high crest. As we bumped to a stop on it, I could make out several white four-wheel-drive vehicles with about fifteen people milling around, waiting for us or for our seats. That was it for the airport, aside from a few tiny huts.

As I went out the door, that proposed safari went out the window. Why rush away from such a magnificent place? The wide hills, barely forested, were dusted with that wonderful green of the start of the rainy season. All so delightful, and the scene of such incredible butchery. What would I encounter in the camps?

Abbas greeted me warmly. He is a tall, mild-mannered guy, no different here, in his element, than back in class. We had set up an international masters for practicing management and invited to participate what is officially called the international Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, alongside a number of large companies. They sent Abbas, who turned out to be be the only member of the class from Africa, although he was working in the headquarters in Geneva at the time.

Now Abbas was managing the Red Cross “delegation” here in N’gara, just beyond the borders of Burundi and Rwanda, from where the 700,000 refugees had come. They were divided into six camps, two under Red Cross responsibility: Benaco with 175,000 Rwandans and Lukole with 20,000 Burundians.

We drove in one of those Red Cross vehicles—reminders of health care again—to the “compound.” I had never been in a compound before. This one was for the “delegates”, meaning the ex-patriot staff, sent by the Red Cross Federation offices in Geneva. Next door was a much larger compound for members of the Tanzanian Red Cross Society.

I met Felicitas, who ran the hospital, and Hans, in charge of the workshops, both from Germany, Gier, a Norwegian doctor who headed up all of health care, Georges, from Montreal, my home town, who dealt with finance and administration, a Russian named Sasha, who assigned use of the vehicles (a position of great power if you wanted to leave the compound), and Stephen, like Abbas a Kenyan, who had direct responsibility for the Red Cross camp operations.

Abbas grew up in the Red Cross. He belonged to the youth wing, and in his early twenties spent several months with it in western Canada. After working in the Federation headquarters for several years, Abbas had moved his family back to Kenya and promptly came to N’gara, just eleven months earlier.

When Abbas arrived, this delegation, with 38 people, was the Federation’s largest.

But as things settled down, responsibility for some of the camps had been handed over to other NGOs, so that now the delegation was down to 17. The contingent from the Tanzanian Red Cross Society numbered over 500. Some of its senior people were paired up with ex-patriot delegates, as “counterparts,” to develop their managerial skills, as their Society was taking on increasing responsibility for the operations. There was also a paid refugee staff of about 1500, from workers who unloaded the food trucks to “the professor” who came to the compound every day to work on software for health monitoring.

Such a compounds is what sociologists call a “total organization”: in this case, the delegates worked here, lived here, ate here, socialized here, and played here. This contributed to the “burn-out” they all talked about, which limited their stays at N’gara to not much more than one year. Of no greater help was the exclusion of spouses, although Hans tried to circumvent this by arriving with his wife. That was indicative of the problems Abbas faced in his total organization.

The delegates had lived in tents until recently, but now the buildings were more permanent, with a pleasant little room for each one, clustered in little rows, like motel rooms. They called one “Beverly Hills,” another “Downtown,” a third “the Bronx,” Each was surrounded by newly planted trees and banana plants. Felicitas was especially proud of the flowers she had grown in Beverly Hill, although she was about to move to the Bronx. Hot showers had just been installed too—considered a real treat. No more having to splash water from a bucket.

One corner of the compound contained the work area, a quadrangle around which all the offices were laid out: signs on the doors announced activities such as Logistics, Telecom, Security, Health, Relief (meaning camp management), and Head of Sub Delegation (Abbas’s office). Beyond this was a clutch of satellite dishes and antennae—links to another world.

In that world, I was doing research by observing managers as they went about their work. Here was a manager, Abbas, and me with little to do beyond trying to figure out what was going on. So, the next morning, at 7:15, I reported for research at the Office of the Head of Sub Delegation.

I saw a good deal of training, mentoring, and supervising, as I expected, given the counterpart system and the brief tenure of the delegates. What I did not expect was the degree to which managing took the form of controlling.

Politically and socially this place was in a very dicey state. It could have blown up in an instant, for any number of reasons. Abbas’s job was to make sure it didn’t. So, he monitored every detail as carefully as he could, prepared to leap in for correction. Everything had to remain completely on course.

Course, in essence, was municipal government. With so many people in need of housing, plumbing, food, and health care, the delegates had to establish systems and procedures galore. So, what I saw was rather conventional management in a rather unconventional setting—or perhaps I should say, because of such an unconventional setting.

I came to N’gara from a world of hot showers, so the real treat for me was getting into the camps. That we did after some early morning meetings at the quadrangle. What to expect? Teeming masses, squalor, depressing scenes, I suppose. Had I expected that, I would have been disappointed.

Approaching it from a distance, set on a large hillside, Benaco looked vast: 175,000 is a lot of people. The camp was open: the refugees were free to wander out; in fact, could be seen along all the nearby roads, mostly carrying back firewood on their heads, for cooking. The Tanzanian government had recently announced a four-kilometre perimeter for refugee travel, but no-one had yet figured out how to identify it, let alone enforce it.

We arrived where the food arrived, in an area restricted to designated workers. Here the food was eased into the camp in three stages. So was I. The heavy bags were unloaded from trucks by paid refugee workers, stored in shelters made of plastic sheets, and carried to “chutes”—which were really rectangular surfaces—on which the bags were handed over to refugee “team leaders” once a week. These people carried them through gates in a fence, into the camp. Next thing I knew, I found myself at one of those gates, before throngs of people waiting anxiously for their weekly rations.

Entering that gate offered my first glimpse of what a refugee camp is supposed to be like. And my last. For once I got past the dense crowds, my way opened up by polite people who were looking me over the way I did them, I entered a vast urban area that proved to be rather clean and spacious. (A quick calculation suggested that this camp was less densely populated than Paris. But then again, Paris stacks its people six stories high.)

Off wide roads were rows of small huts, well separated, with cooking areas on one side and latrines on the other. I saw no evident squalor, few flies, and no refuse. I was told that whie malaria existed, it was not widespread. (I was taking those awful pills, yet in the compound encountered not a single mosquito. Not so back near Paris a few days later, here my bedroom was inundated with them.) The people of Benaco were going about their business. Except, of course, the kids, who, like their counterparts everywhere, followed us around as that day’s curiosity.

I saw markets in Benaco where various kinds of fruits and vegetables could be bought, some grown on the lands allotted to the refugees, the rest bartered for in nearby Tanzanian villages. There was an area where tailoring took place and a corner where people were converting old tires into shoes. We passed a restaurant too, called “Le Petit Matthieu,” operated by an enterprising Rwandan refugee.

All of this had to be quite a contrast with the events of two years earlier, when a quarter of a million people crossed the nearby border in a single day. Abbas believed this to have been the largest such movement of people across a border ever. Yet the German Red Cross had water available for everyone within eighteen hours, and the Federation had a camp up and running within thirty-six.

Not par for the course, perhaps, but for this institution the unusual is usual. When a boat overturned on Lake Victoria a few months earlier, with the loss of a thousand lives, Abbas gathered nine people from here and headed for the site overland, grabbing every stretcher, body bag, and can of disinfectant he could find. They arrived the next day—the first NGO on site—and set up a morgue in the local stadium. Forty thousand people came to look for lost relatives on the first day.

My time in the camps was proving to be all too brief, so I proposed to do more research. The next day I was following Stephen around. That too started with meetings at the compound. Stephen and his staff discussed speed bumps on the roads, the building of new latrines, some meningitis cases at Benaco, and refugee porters who were found not wearing their Red Cross bibs. Then he met a representative from ECHO–the European Community Humanitarian Assistance Office. The man from Brussels, who had come to audit the use of its money, asked highly detailed questions, to which Stephen provided equally detailed answers.

At one point, Stephen described the food distribution system as 98% effective, meaning that people were receiving almost all the food supplied. No, said his colleague, “I want to know what actually ends up in their stomachs.” He was worried about food being “taxed away” and sold: “That, for me is ‘food monitoring’,” he said. It was an impressive performance, especially for anyone who might be worrying about how thosebureaucrats are spending our money.

After the meeting, we headed for Benaco. It was noon, time for lunch. “Le Petit Matthieu” was not where I expected to eat, but the food was fine, although Matthieu had mysteriously disappeared back to Rwanda, leaving behind all sorts of rumors as well as a brother to run the family business.

Then we headed over to the food distribution area, which was quiet after the morning activities, although some of the porters were still hanging around. Stephen chatted with a few of them and then, as we left, announced to me that here were no problems. “I used to work here from eight until six, when there were all kinds of problems. So, if anything was wrong, they would be telling me.” In America, they talk of management by “walking about.” Here, one step better, it was management by “being there”! But walking about too. We headed for Lukole, the small camp. Stephen wanted to check out a problem. The head of the refugee committee had written a complaint to a United Nations official about a particular manager in the camp. “You need to put your ear to the ground Stephen,” Abbas had told him the day before, to “find out more about what the feelings are among the refugees.”

The map labelled Lukole a “settlement area.” As I stood in the centre of it, I wondered where it was. A half-acre was allotted to each household, so the place felt more rural than urban. It also looked lovely. Having been established longer than Benaco, many of the houses had been converted to mud brick, a perfect match for the terrain.

Stephen was transformed in this place. He became positively gregarious, greeting everyone he saw, with a smile, a laugh, a few words. If Swahili did not work—it’s the language of Kenya and Tanzania, but not of Burundi or Rwanda—or English, then he used his smattering of their own languages. His enthusiasm was contagious, for everyone he met. For me too.

The next afternoon I was to fly back to Nairobi, to catch an overnight plane to Amsterdam. So I had only part of one day left. The workshop on camp management was in full swing in the Tanzanian compound next door, so I suggested to Juan that I could present some of my initial observations. Thus, the next morning I found myself before a couple of representatives each from the Red Cross Societies of Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia, Sudan, and Eritrea.

I read that line from the message I had just received, to convey how really impressive I found such a potentially “depressing” situation. So called top management certainly has a role to play, I suggested, but the real job was being done right here, on the ground.

It was not easy to manage across such a mixture of cultures and organizations. Fifteen different NGOs were working here—although down from a hundred and fifty at the height of the crisis. Add to this the system of counterparts, with its own cross-cultural confusions, and you end up with something like Churchill’s democracy: the worst possible system except for all the alternatives. What especially struck me was Abbas and Stephen’s abilities to bridge: across cultures, across languages, across refugee and Tanzanian needs, and across that delicate line between the International Federation and the National Society. Perhaps the queen bee is a good model for such management, I suggested: she issues no mission statements, nor formulates any strategic plans; she just emits a chemical substance that binds everybody together. It has been called “the spirit of the hive” Abbas and Stephen were the spirit of the Federation’s hive.

At the break we were served some wonderful little snacks of meatballs and samosas, which got me thinking about that local cuisine I missed in Nairobi. Not here: Abbas and I were invited to a lunch of wonderful grains and tough meat in the Tanzanian compound. But not exactly a free lunch: Abbas informed me that he had scheduled my presentation a second time, at the Federation compound, for the delegates. So back we went, where I got a chance to say a personal good-bye and offer some reflections in return for that fo wonderful hospitality.

I had some spare time after that, so I decided to take a walk. Abbas, always on the job, suggested that I head over to the stores and the shops. There I was greeted warmly by Hans and once again shown everything with great pride. Hans was certainly in charge of the workshops: he looked like a smaller version of Schwarzenegger. As we completed that tour, with great delight he pointed to a little device in the back of a truck bay. It was the pan of a wheelbarrow that had been set on four wheels, with a little handbrake added on. Had I seen the little kid with the bad legs, Hans asked, the one who hung out at the nearby junction of the road? He had polio as a child and couldn’t walk, so his friends carried him there every day. Hans and his staff made this vehicle so that his friends could push him there instead. The gift was going to be presented that Saturday. Hans, the tough guy, was very excited about this.

It was the perfect closing experience before getting into the car for the ride to the airstrip. The plane arrived, I tried to express to Abbas how deeply I appreciated the visit, and then climbed into my seat—a real one this time—and off we went. The view out the window was no better, but this time I had too much to think about. All that energy and organization, all that generosity and enthusiasm, all set in that place of such calm beauty. And all so fragile.

A sign on each of the gates of the Red Cross compound illustrated a machine gun with a red slash through it. Neutrality is absolutely critical to the functioning of the Red Cross. Its role is to save lives, not to decide whose lives are supposed to be saved. So guns are forbidden on its premises.

It didn’t always work out that way. Some months earlier, a group of drunk refugees invaded the compound in the evening. They held some of the staff, including Stephen, at gunpoint, shot up a few of the doors and locks, and finally left after finding some money in one of the offices. And on my flight back, I read in an east African newspaper about a Swedish field hospital in Zaire, much like the one I had just visited, that had been attacked by rebels. They slaughtered all the patients and some of the staff members.

In Nairobi, I caught my flight to Amsterdam, where I disembarked early in the morning to a modern, efficient airport. Back to the “developed” world, of buy-buy-buy—or as those shopping bags scream out here in bright yellow: “See-Buy-Fly”. Back to the world we know so well, flowing past us like inattentive fish in polluted water. But not me, not on this day at least. Acutely aware of how blatantly sex and image were being used to peddle expensive junk, it struck me as so much horseshit, so much human energy wasted on nothing, while so much of the world was in flames.

Then I caught sight of a red cross on a sign pointing to a health clinic, and for a moment I choked up. Now the association was reversed. How could I ever look at that symbol again without thinking about the extraordinary dedication of these people.

A couple of months later, on a Sunday toward the end of December, I was awakened by a disturbing dream. Abbas was trying to tell me something. He seemed to be saying that his work had been a failure. He began to explain why, but it was as if we had been cut off. All I could recall was a faint comment that he had not really changed the lives of the refugees.

Half in or out of the dream, I wanted to tell Abbas why he was wrong: Think about your success, it is quite remarkable. The Red Cross has ensured the most basic needs of the refugees for these two years.

As soon as I could, I called Abbas at the compound. It only occurred to me later that he was supposed to have left weeks earlier. After a few tries, I reached him on the satellite phone. “I’m a little bit tired”, he said at first, only later admitting to being “physically and mentally worn out”.

“Everything is up-side down. Benaco emptied out over the last ten days. It has officially been declared closed!” An active city of 175,000 people gone, just like that. The situation had blown apart a few weeks earlier. Rebels had attacked the camps in Zaire, again, which forced a huge migration back to Rwanda. Watching the international reaction, the Tanzanian government ordered the Rwandan camps shut by December 31 and the people sent home.

Many grabbed what they could and headed out, the other way, deeper into Tanzania, some as far as a hundred kilometres. “I decided to stay here,” Abbas said, to arrange water and health services for those left behind. “I thought this would never happen” said the guy who had seen just about everything that could happen. In the camps themselves, the Tanzanian government allowed only the Red Cross people inside. This was quite a compliment, Abbas reported, but in the ensuing chaos, no gift.

The Tanzanian militia rounded up all the refugees, no matter how far they had gone, and marched them back to the border. In ten days, 400,000 crossed over, at one time forming a line sixty kilometres long. Was there a wheelbarrow in that line?

Abbas had tried to reach me on Friday to tell me of these events but left no message. “We thought Henry would write quite a long story had he been here!” he said. “It’s unbelievable.” The camp that, weeks earlier, had been “thriving and full of life, now an empty ghost town!” It was to be brought to the ground and kept empty for fear of land mines.

Lukole and the other Burundian settlements remained; indeed 30,000 new Burundian refugees had recently crossed into Tanzania from the south, and a new camp was being set up for them.

“I leave this afternoon”, Abbas said, preparing to take the Red Cross plane to Nairobi. The next day he would be home with his family in Mombasa, just in time for a truly new year.

I hardly needed to tell Abbas about the importance of his work. “Depressing” is hardly the word. But how about “inspiring”?

(Originally published at: https://mintzberg.org. Reprinted with permission.)

Dad’s hands

(NONfiction)

by Madeline Toubiana

Fingernails jagged,

tanned and thick

Aged, well worn

like rough leather

Spotted with white,

from cortisol’s touch

His hands,

they swallow me up

Those hands, they kept me

held me tight

In their comfort,

everything was safe

Love is a squeeze

an understanding of mutual need

No need for words, they said it all

your hands

I feel them now, although

they are a distant star

How can I hold them

far as they are

A dad’s hands can hold it all

until they are dust,

in a jar

over there

Fast Boat Real Boat Thunder Buffalo

(NONfiction)

by Chase La Rosa

Nav always had to take a shit twenty minutes into his Officer of the Deck watch, which was funny to everyone except Weps, who had to stop eating his off-going meal and re-take the watch. This was the daily routine. Weps would stand his eight hours, and Nav would come up around the seven-hour mark and ask the normal questions. Where are we in the world? Still in the Red Sea. Any mission updates? We came up to periscope depth about 3 hours ago, low sea state, Dive had no problem keeping us up. Copied the broadcast and pulled message traffic. No updates. Grabbed News and Sports too, which is nice. Contact picture? No one. Just us out here. Had a trace come in from our stern at PD, so we held and did another baffle clear… turned out to be biologics. They come in a lot stronger once we’re shallow here than they did in the Atlantic.

Satisfied with his briefing, Nav would flip through the messages likely to be sent off the boat at his PD trip and drink his first coffee. Once everyone completed their tours, the watch leaders: Nav, Dive, Chief of the Watch, me, Engineer of the Watch, everyone would go to the wardroom and fill up their coffee cups again and go over the plan for the next 8 hours. Then us officers would sit and eat our on-coming meal. Nav would eat quick and relieve early. The rest of us would eat slowly, talk about anything to postpone relieving the watch until we absolutely have to, and say hi to Weps when he came down from Control for his off-going meal. Happy to be off watch, he would normally come down and talk shit; Weps was a good guy and we liked him a lot. I would listen to him for a little while, and then go up to control and relieve Torp-O Dan. Once I did, Nav would grab Torp-O Dan’s arm and say “can you get Weps? I need to shit.” Torp-O Dan would snicker every time and say “you got it sir.” I would snicker every time, anticipating Wep’s exasperated groan that he made every time. It never got less funny. Weps would come back to control, every time halfway into his meal, and cut off the Nav, who tried to give him a proper watch turnover. I have no questions Nav I relieve you. Nav would run out of control and take half an hour to shit, while Weps steamed and bitched about his meal getting cold. It was my favorite part of the day.

Every submarine is named after a state or a city. The ballistic missile subs, the “boomers,” the ones with the nukes on board, those were named after states. Their only mission was to be quiet and hold the big stick. If you ranked every country in the world by their firepower it would go: USA, Russia, China, a single USS Ohio-class ballistic missile submarine, and we have a bunch of them. But they didn’t really do missions; they drive in quiet circles and wait to start and end World War Three. The subs that do everything else, those are called fast-attacks, or fast boats. They’re named after cities and do the real stuff. There is a saying in the Submarine Force: fast boat real boat. Every submarine is named after a state or a city and has a slogan. My boat was the USS Newport News, a real boat. Our slogan was “Thunder From Below,” which if you say fast enough sounds like “Thunder Buffalo.” Three of my sailors got a thigh tattoo of a buffalo head with lightning bolts for horns. An officer friend of mine got Real Boat on his fingers. I have a scuba diving rooster on my right foot and a pig in an inner tube on my left. On submarines we don’t really get anchor tattoos; gone are those days, or maybe that is just a surface thing. Compensating. You don’t need serious tattoos when your job is in the real shit. Fast boat real boat, thunder buffalo.

When in port we wore camo, but at sea we wore our coveralls, called poopie suits. Submarines recycle air; that’s how we can stay below the water’s surface and not die. All air is recycled, and apparently it was not a perfect system back in the day. The air in the sanitary tanks would also get recycled. You wouldn’t notice you smelled like shit while underway, but once you got home, all the wives and girlfriends would bitch about how your coveralls smelled like shit. So, poopie suits. The CO2 scrubbers and air cleaning mechanisms are better these days but the name stuck. Everyone wears poopie suits underway, but only one person is allowed to wear the poopie pants. That’s a rule I instituted in my watchteam. Everyone can be having a bad day, but only one person is allowed to complain at a time. You had to request them poopie pants, from me, and the appropriate announcement would be made: “Attention in Control, Fire Control Technician 2^nd Class Mezzadra has the poopie pants!” Everyone would echo the announcement back and grin to each other. Normally someone else would get mad throughout the course of the watch, and it was a real battle to keep the poopie pants the whole time. One time I was getting yelled at by the XO, who was stopped by a junior sailor. “Excuse me sir, you have to request the poopie pants.” That was the end of that.

Our sanitary tank was pumped overboard by, well… by a pump. Apparently it was a small pump, and there was a pretty small opening from the tank to the pump itself, which would suck all the contents of the tank into a vacuum and out of the hull of the boat. You couldn’t flush anything that wasn’t shit or toilet paper from a toilet; that was gospel. If you did, the pump could lock up, or jam, or the opening could be covered. We had a special-super-secret-squirrel team come on board once, and on the first day they ate all the strawberries, and one of the technicians flushed his brass belt buckle down a toilet. Auxiliaryman 1^st Class Henson volunteered. We got one of the nuclear-disaster big yellow radiation suits and put him in it and gave him a pair of swimming goggles for extra measure. He opened the tank, and I made the announcement for no one to shit for as long as you can hold it (which was overkill; we could do a code yellow, which means you can piss and shit but just not flush and is a semi-common thing for when there’s sans maintenance; we have signs for it and everything. I just wanted to make that announcement). After about thirty minutes in the tank, Henson found the belt buckle, which he handed back to the special-super-secret-squirrel technician unwashed. We hosed Henson down and the captain gave him an award at the end of the deployment. Since we were technically in a combat zone, Captain gave him the “Global War on Terrorism Combat Expeditionary Medal,” which sounded super badass and was well-deserved. No one else wanted to climb into that tank.

He’s shit – An insult

He’s a shithead – An insult

He’s full of shit – An insult

He’s the shit – A compliment

He’s got his shit squared away – A bigger compliment

He’s shit hot – An even bigger compliment

Scared shitless – Pussy

Shit boat – A bad boat

Really shit boat – A very bad boat

Real shit boat – A good boat that does the real shit

Engineering Laboratory Technician 1^st Class Cooke got married before his first deployment on USS Newport News. We were in the Atlantic and other places, doing unique and specific things. We were gone seven and a half months, and when we returned, his wife was gone, as were his kids. She divorced him. Engineering Laboratory Technician 1^stClass Cooke got married before his second deployment on USS Newport News as well, to a different woman. This deployment we were in the Mediterranean, Red Sea, and other places, doing other unique and specific things. His second wife emailed him a few months in and said she was going to divorce him when he got home. At an all-hands call, COB talked about our current mission and said something to the effect of “I know this is a very different situation that what we are used to,” and Cooke interrupted. No COB, this shit is pretty much the fucking same if you ask me. Even COB had to laugh at that one.

Any coffee besides Maxwell’s Regular Roast is shit coffee and heaven help the junior officer that puts in French Vanilla-flavored coffee into the coffeepot because it makes the coffeepot taste like flavored coffee for weeks after which will have the Captain privately stewing and Torp-O Dan will see that and decide to yell at whatever sonofabitch shithead who did it.

Submarine life is a strange life, for strange people. It’s not for everyone. Those people say it’s like prison but with less windows. Some submariners feel like they’re in Hell. Maybe we all died and went there. Most people don’t know that when a person dies, they lose control of their bowels. That would make sense, that we all died and ended up here in the shit. Sometimes deployment drags on forever, and it feels like we’re trying to turn a wheel that’s off its latch, getting nowhere.

Whenever a SEAL team comes on board, we play a trick on them. There is a big lead door that separates the submarine forward and aft. The engineroom is in the aft part of the boat, with the reactor and engines and turbines and such. In the case of a major steam line rupture, flooding, or nuclear meltdown-type situation, the sailors up forward can shut that hatch and isolate the aft compartment until the casualty is over, or everyone aft is dead and the rest of us need to get in there. The way to shut that door is through a giant wheel. You have to spin it. The door is so heavy, you’re not getting it open or closed without that wheel. The wheel can be latched or unlatched, which is to say you can make sure that door moves or never budges. When a SEAL team comes on board, we would have a junior sailor take them on a tour of boat. As the tour nears our favorite door, that sailor will explain the door, and how important it is. At that exact moment, hell will break loose onboard. Every alarm in Control will be tripped, and the Officer of the Deck will make announcements that sound as if everyone is about to die. The junior sailor will start to run away, stop, and yell at the newly onboard team: “CLOSE THAT DOOR.” He will not have told them about the latch. That SEAL team will, convinced their lives depend on that door being closed, try and shut it with the wheel, which will do nothing. Sailors fully decked out in Fire Suits, Steam Suits, whatever they can get their hands on, will run by with hoses and light torches, and scream at the SEAL team to get that door shut, which of course is impossible off the latch. The lights in that compartment area will be turned off, making the latch impossible to find. The Officer of the Deck will order hard angles upwards or downwards, which will make the SEALs fall and trip over each other and crash into the walls in pitch black. After we ensure every one of the SEALs thinks they are going to die, we secure the prank, and make fun of them endlessly. That’s just real boat Thunder Buffalo shit.

STORIES FROM UKRAINE

(a cOLLAGE, NONFICTION)

by Ostap Slyvynsky; translated by Taras Malkovych

Here is a selection of short stories — anecdotes more like, or memories — recorded by Ostap Slyvynsky, a Ukrainian poet, essayist, translator and lecturer at the University of Lviv. Taras Malkovych translated them into English so we might get a sense, however remote, of what the experience of war is like for those caught up in it. Ostap and his colleagues collected these stories at Lviv railway station, at temporary shelters and at coffee stands in Lviv’s streets when engaging those fleeing war further East in conversation.

LIFE,Violetta, Mariupol

International Women’s Day, March 8, is my favorite holiday. But this spring in Mariupol, I expected neither presents nor flowers. My sister and I took some plastic bottles, and went looking for water. Something started roaring around the neighborhood but we initially thought it was on the opposite side. And then I heard a whistling sound coming toward us, and I told my sister to squat. I did not want to fall down as the ground was wet. My sister stood there as if frozen. Maybe she couldn’t believe it, maybe she was afraid to seem awkward. An explosion erupted, then soil flew up and started falling down on us. We started running. And when we looked back, we saw someone sitting on a bench near the entrance to the building, right next to where the explosion occurred. Wrapped in a pink blanket, she must have been enjoying the sun outdoors. We saw her lean over the bench and fall down unnaturally.

SILENCE,Ulyana, Lviv

The puppet theater became a shelter for the displaced. We put mattresses on its stages, in its halls, in its foyer. In the beginning, there were a lot of people with children and animals. For two days straight, they were lying silently on those mattresses. I have never seen so many silent people and animals in one place.

TRASH,Kateryna, Vyshhorod

February 24. Russian helicopters were passing our windows, missiles were hitting the ground. I have to leave. I have to take the trash out. I took the bag with organic waste. Should I take the bag with the plastic, with the glass, with the paper? Will it all end up mixed together in the chaos of war? The carefully washed yogurt jars, the bottles, the children’s coloring books …

GRANNIES,Yuri, Kharkiv

The apartments of two grannies from the opposite building were ruined, and they did not want to go to someone else’s apartment, because it was someone else’s. So they were just sitting on a bench near the entrance like that. And there they died from shrapnel. And there we buried them, in the yard, digging holes between the shelling.

BULLET,Mykola, Khmelnytskyi

I don’t know if I took a sin upon my soul. I just aim, and I fire, but I close my eyes while firing. Whether my bullet kills someone or not, one can only guess.

CAVE,Roman, Chernihiv

My whole life, I was into speleology. When I had a free weekend, I would pack my gear and go exploring caves. There is a large bomb shelter in our neighbourhood, under a school. For the first couple of days, there was no light there. I came in wearing a headlamp; it was quiet inside. It seemed that there was no one there. And suddenly, I saw people. I saw children crammed in by the walls. All those people were like stalagmites and stalactites. It seemed as though they had been there for thousands of years. That’s what war does to time.

LETTERS,Nina, Konotop

My husband was a geologist, he travelled all over the Soviet Union. Sometimes he would spend several months beyond the Arctic Circle and write me letters from there. There were postcards of a special kind—he would send me those instead of the typical ones. I received 43 in total. And so, when packing for the bomb shelter, I put them all in the bag. Some people took books, and I took those letters. I’ll be reading those in there, I thought. But I couldn’t really, the light was very poor, so I would just pick each one up and remember what was written. I haven’t read them for ages, but they lived somewhere in my memory. Then, when I went through all the letters, I started coming up with answers in my mind. Because, I am ashamed to say, I did not write him back often. And when I did, I was quite brief. Now I started coming up with long and eloquent replies. But I did not mention the war to him, nor the shelter. Why would he need to know? I only told him that the winter turned out quite long this time around.

Republished with permission. For more, see “A War Vocabulary” at: https://www.documentjournal.com/2022/06/a-war-vocabulary-aaron-hicklin-ukraine-lviv-kyiv-ostap-slyvynsky/

on that final weekend

(a collage)

by Innan Sasaki

The first wild rose of the summer has bloomed. It is early May. The wild pink roses are resilient if fragile, modest but charming and, like the people here, tough.

I arrive early in the morning. The city is quiet and cold. The morning traffic hasn’t yet started. I wait for the bus in front of the country’s best girl’s secondary school. A three-storey historic building, its walls and roofs are white but window frames and edges brown, giving off the appearance if it being a castle. I smile. The air has cleansed my mind and I take renewed pride in my hometown.

After 20 minutes of strenuous waiting the bus finally arrives. I get in and buy a ticket. At three euros, its price has gone up by 50 cents since I was here last. As the bus departs, the vast lake surrounding the city comes into view. It is at least five times larger than all the other lakes in all the country combined with water bluer the cloudless sky above. Pine trees grow on rocks. Fishermen have started their day’s work. Everything exactly like it was one year ago.

A steep climb to my grandparents’ house awaits as I get off the bus. They live on a hill. The view alone is worth the challenge. The city centre below, while small, features dozens of identical buildings at least five stories tall and black roofs, except for one building. It has a red roof and is home to my favourite bakery.

My grandparents live right next to the town’s only Michelin-star restaurant. As I ring the doorbell, I can smell the food they have started to prepare at the restaurant. My mother opens the door, followed by my grandmother, both happy to see me. Her cheeks are red from excitement after almost a year of not seeing me. I notice Easter eggs hanging from the chandelier in hallway and, whispering, ask my mother why the eggs are here given Easter is long gone. She tells me that “mummi” doesn’t want to get rid of them. She thinks them pretty.

I quickly go to wash my hands before greeting my grandfather. Would I like a boiled egg for breakfast, my mother asks.

My grandfather is sitting at the top of the dining table. I walk up to kiss his cheek. He smiles with tearful eyes, saying “my little rose is back home.” He has always called my mother and her daughters his little roses.

He points to the lake and says the wind is mild today. It is excellent sailing weather, and we should go sailing as soon as we finish breakfast. Although tired from the trip, I was prepared for his suggestion. I reply I am readier than ever. I have been practising sailing with my university friends. He says that the wind is strong today. I tell him I can handle it.

As we sail across the lake, the golden monastery catches my eye. I call it the golden monastery because, although most of the outside of the building is white, inside it’s all gold. The icons, the monk’s robes, and the crosses dazzle in gold. Thousands of monks live on the island, keeping the area tidy. Even if one is not religious, it is hard to deny its majestic presence. It is also the city’s no. 1 tourist destination in the summertime.

As we view the city, grandfather quietly says it is a miracle how well the town has been preserved after the war. The city has the country’s best schools and the largest academy, training hundreds of future primary and secondary school teachers each year. It also hosts the country’s largest music festivals, and the museums are filled with the finest art pieces of the country. The huge bridge connecting the city centre with the academy stands proud while countryside barns are kept clean and the farmland is well-taken care.

We stop chatting as we sail along the war veteran’s graveyard where many of my grandfather’s friends lie. They fought together for seven years, from a submarine. Surrounded by lush green meadows, the graveyard is exceptionally well cared for.

The lake reflects the intense sun and I’m grateful for the warmth it brings. Spring has finally arrived in these Northern lands and for a moment it feels as if all my worries have disappeared.

The next day, my sister joins us at our grandparents’ house where we enjoy cloudberry cake and raspberry juice prepared by my mother for the occasion. Today’s the start of the town’s long-awaited annual music festival. My mother says she doesn’t want to go seeing as she hates big crowds.

Walking down the hill, we join an enthusiastic mass of people crossing the bridge from the city centre to the concert area of the town. The women wear colourful flower dresses – the most popular colour being a reddish orange – and my sister points out that even those without dresses wear either bright pink or orange shirts or scarves. I have got to buy myself one of these dresses before leaving town.

We spot our uncle. He’s exceptionally well dressed in a stylish black and white striped shirt, grey jacket and black trousers. Our cousin is about the same age as my sister and me and in a bright national dress. My sister and I admire her natural beauty. My grandmother’s best friend has come along too, with daughter, wearing the same kind of dress and glasses. Although their flower dresses were blue, her daughter made sure to wear a bright red cardigan with a matching red neckless. Even the mayor of the city is here today.

A group of elderly female artists sing and dance, jumping joyfully around the stage, their singing too quick for anyone to catch the lyrics yet able somehow to remove sorrow and worry and sickness, or so is the belief of many of those listening.

As we walk back from the concert along a street lined with birch trees, I too feel cured of all the pain and worries from work, recharged and ready to leave my hometown and return, alone, to my home-away-from-home in a university town far away. I say my goodbyes. They say theirs.

I do not know then that I will never again share their experience of joy. That I will never again be set free by their music. That the next time I visit, the city will be a ruin. That farmhouses will fall and rot. That my grandfather’s yacht will go up in flames. That the lake will no longer be ours.

That life as it once was will be no more.

mark de rond ate my hamster: how i learnt to stop worrying and love plagiarism

(a collage)

by Neil Stott

Not many people know that. With the ten-yard stare of an academic who had delivered the same material to an MBA class since 1922 he yelled; “hamsters to the Southwest, thousands of em!”

Some people just want to watch the world burn. Or blow the bloody doors off. I am not sure why they would want to eat Myron. A hamster who ran and ran, got out and had gone nowhere. Nowhere.

But his soul was mad. Being alone in the wilderness, it had looked within itself and, by heavens I tell you, it had gone mad. The horror. The horror. Sunk into his beanbag muttering; “Shadows? On me soul? I’ve been eaten away. This is the end of me! Oh, God in heaven help me.” I felt like an errand boy, sent by grocery clerks to collect a bill.

I put him on double secret probation and told him that thin, sober, and clever was no way to go through life. Knowledge is not always good. One must put up with the good, the bad and the ugly. “I am beyond their Timid Lying Morality, so beyond caring” he replied.

I rang 111. I reported an ontological drama. Listen I said he is playing all the notes but not necessarily in the right order. He is unstuck in time. He has seen his birth and death many times, he says, and pays random visits to all the events in between. He says. But the computer said no.

“Choice. The problem is choice. Too deny our own impulses is to deny the very thing that makes us human.” he said. “Has anybody ever told you you have a serious impulse-control problem?” I replied. “Hey, Neil. Isn’t it great being next door to someone who’s recklessly impulsive?” Me: “Actually, it’s aged me horribly.”

“I should be loyal to my nightmares of my choice,” he says “I don’t like work–no one does-but I like what is in the work-the chance to find yourself. Your own reality-for yourself not for others-what no other person can ever know. They can only see the mere show, and never can tell what it really means.”

We penetrated deeper and deeper into the heart of his darkness. Trouble is, I’d been back there, and I knew that it just didn’t exist anymore. “Do you know why you can never step into the same river twice?

“Never get out of the fucking boat,” he replies.

half the size of a man’s hand

(a nonfiction)

by Mark de Rond

This exhibit has been removed for maintenance.

big uli

(a fiction)

by Philip Stiles

Everyone’s piling in on me, but it’s not my fault. And if you want to know the truth, I’m the only one who seems to be trying to rectify the situation. I’ve cycled as far as the riverfront, and then back out west to the A10 this morning, big distances, pasting posters on trees and lampposts, on shopfronts. I’ve put messages on Facebook and Insta. I haven’t had a thing to eat. I’m near exhausted. When I get home, Anita is in the bedroom. I call up to her but she doesn’t respond. Her father comes striding down the stairs, “Big Uli” I secretly call him, as he is as tall and wide as a wardrobe, and tells me we should leave the house for a while in a tone which suggests this is not up for debate. Already he is putting on his jacket. I say I should go up and see Anita but he grips my arm above the elbow and propels me along. “Let’s go,” he says.

We take his car. Even though it’s a 4×4, his head, topped by grey hair as dense and shiny as steel wool, touches the roof of the interior. He stares forward, driving fast, and says not a word until we reach the farm shop and garden centre by the marina. Big Uli always comes here with Roos on their visits to us to stock up on chocolate and ginger slims, slabs of “exclusive” Scottish shortbread, pickled apricots, and other stuff they cannot get in Germany and which they can show off to their friends at their “soirees”.

Big Uli chooses a table set for four people. A waitress asks us if we wouldn’t mind moving to a two-seater, as the place is about to get busy. Big Uli says `Just bring us some coffee.’

Big Uli was something big in an international paints company whose products apparently are on the exterior of every major building in Europe. He retired years back with a big pension which he and Roos now spend on trips to Asia and the Galapagos and Sweden and Australia. He buys a car new every year on some leasing plan that is tax efficient and smart, and he has accumulated wealth and I have not and I think this, not to put too fine a point on it, has `disappointed’ him, particularly since his daughter lives with me in a small house with an old car and only take camping holidays to Norfolk.

Big Uli is looking around, watching people coming in, filling up the place. His eyes are narrow, and a little watery at their edge. Since he retired, he has had a few `scares’ – pains in the legs which rendered him unable to walk for short periods, fainting in the street, bouts of dizziness, and so forth. Roos does a lot of the driving now, and keeps check on his diet and drinking. Like all such men, he likes to be fussed over.

This place used to be smaller, more intimate. Anita and I would come here every weekend to have coffee and cake. I had just started my teaching job at the college, sixth form students in the day, pensioners in the evening – drawing classes. I had always promised myself I would never teach drawing or painting – the quickest way to lose your gift – but Anita was just starting out as a graphic artist, so we needed the money. She’s doing well now, and was promoted last year I’m so pleased she is doing better, and you can still call it art, I guess.

The waitress brings a tray and bangs it down hard on the table, spilling the coffee into the saucers. She makes no apology or any attempt to clean it.

“What’s the matter with you?” says Big Uli to me.

I am expecting a conversation of this kind. So here we go.

“You have no plan,” says Big Uli.

“I have lots of plans,” I say.

Now that I think of it, I’m not sure I’ve ever heard Big Uli say my name. I try to remember an instance, right the way back to when I first met him. I can’t think of any.

“You never take responsibility. You’re a child.”

He has a large Adam’s apple, and as he speaks, I watch it go up and down; a bubble in a spirit level.

“I’ve lived with my wife for thirty-two years. I’ve built a house.”

Ah, the house in Cologne, a four-storey brownstone full of kitsch and tribal masks and a huge dining room in which they `entertain’ members of the Masons or Roundtable or whatever. I stare at the coasters, which are of English cathedrals. My favourite is Wells.

“You don’t have a serious house or job. I don’t know anyone else who would have a story about their dog like yours. It’s ridiculous.”

Perhaps he doesn’t know enough people with dogs. And what does a serious house mean? A two-bedroom starter-home close to the railway station and a ten-minute drive to the college – isn’t that serious enough?

“The whole thing was an accident,” I say.

Nobody thinks to ask me if I’m upset, or if I’ve been traumatised. I disappoint Big Uli I know. For example, I don’t like beer and have never `shared a beer’ with him in all the family visits we’ve had, settling mostly for water or coke, and he will make some remark about looking forward to when I grow up so that we can have a proper drink together. He is a man who `knows his beer’ and has on several occasions told me of the difference in brewing processes between Belgium, Germany and the UK, differences which indeed seem significant.

“Listen to you. You have no substance.”

“With respect, Uli, you don’t know very much about me.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard you say one interesting thing.”

“You’re not the easiest man to have a conversation with.”

“You haven’t got anything to say. Besides, it’s gone past that stage. The dog is the last straw.”

“You don’t know the facts about the dog.”

“The dog is a symptom.”

He’s warming to the task. He must have rehearsed his speech. This is his moment.

“When my daughter introduced you to us, I told her it was a mistake. I don’t even understand what you do. Maybe you have some kind of charm which is invisible to me, but when I was running my business, there were two types of people, the achievers and the rest, and you would be way with the rest. I’m saying this now because you have upset my daughter and I hope she has the sense to come back home”.

“You’re not my boss, Uli.”

“You’re lucky I’m not.”

“Your daughter has reasons why she loves me.”

“I can’t help that.”

“No, you can’t help that. Uli, I’ve always been respectful to your daughter and to you and your wife…”

He holds up his finger to his mouth and shakes his head.

“I asked you here because I wanted to suggest something to you.”

A waitress, not ours, drops an empty glass while clearing a table. Somebody cheers. That’s England, I want to tell Big Uli. We’re not in Germany now.

“Listen to me,” he says. “Anita needs some time alone. She won’t say it of course because she does not want to admit she has made a mistake. We’d like to take her home with us, at least for a while. I’d appreciate it if you would not make a fuss about it.”

He stops talking, takes a sip of coffee. Then he looks up at me and waits. I can’t figure out which moments in my life with Anita have led to this pass. She hasn’t been a bundle of laughs herself, I could add. I felt her silence when I didn’t sell my big pictures to the galleries, and I’m not handy around the house, which brings its own tension. When she is on the phone to her father, she laughs in a way that she never laughs with me. She loves the dog, too. I know the absence of the dog has hit her hard: it’s her dog – she feels it more, a gift from her parents. She loves the dog no doubt about that, but I have grown used to it too.

“Is that your offer?” I say.

“It’s not an offer,” he says. “I’m informing you. I just didn’t want you having a tantrum at the house while she is so upset.”

“I want to go back and see Anita. Whatever you think of me, I make your daughter happy.”

“Not any more you don’t.”

He looks around the cafeteria, his jaw thrust out as though he were some actor being filmed for a close up.

“I will give you money. Something each month, to make sure you don’t lose the house.”

“It’s insulting for you to say this to me.”

“I’m letting you down lightly. You should take it. Now,” he says, “I’m going to the bathroom.”

People are looking for tables. I feel guilty at occupying the four-seater. I hold my coffee to show I am still busy. I think about his offer. I should call him out; tell him what a jerk he is, how he and his wife are no longer welcome in our house, that Anita and I will be stronger without them both.

A young family come and stand near the table, with a tray full of filled cups and sandwiches. They stand together without talking, hoping their presence will force me up. I weaken and I take my coat from the chair and say “I’m just leaving.”

I pay up and wait for Big Uli near the entrance. I begin to browse the greetings cards. There are some humorous ones about husbands and wives, mostly focusing on men playing golf, or fixing cars, or watching football, while women look frustrated or long suffering. Wry humour, I guess. There is a local book on ghosts in the area I flick through the pages. I wander across to the deli counter. I should buy the cheese with cumin, just as Anita likes, with a pot of Greek olives, take them back and say to her `do you know what your father has just offered me. Do you know what kind of man he is?’ There is a showcase of new cheese – this time from Wales, and some hams that I know Anita would like for lunch. I order a selection.

Walking back to the entrance, there’s still no sign of Big Uli. I worry he may have had an incident in the bathroom. Though the place has grown, the toilets remain just a small room with a few stalls and a cubicle. I push the door open and see immediately that the bathroom is empty. Perhaps I missed him when I was buying at the deli. I make a tour of the farm shop, through the aisles stacked with cakes and rows of chutneys and bottles of cordials and crackers in fancy displays and presentation boxes of specialty chocolates, round by the fruit and veg section and the lines of chest freezers with high priced frozen meals. I walk past the tills and go outside, to see if he is getting some fresh air, or has tramped over to the garden centre. I look over to the car park, by now quite full, and it’s then I realise the car has gone.

I try to call him on my mobile but there is just his dumb voice speaking German on the answerphone. I call Anita on her mobile and then on our home number, but again just get the service. I go back inside the farm shop and ask the cashier if they have a number for a cab company. They ask me if I am alright and I say yes, but please I need to call a cab quickly. The guy goes to check with his manager, who checks his iPad. The one thing playing in my mind right now is what I will say to Big Uli when I see him. This is not the behaviour of a rational man; it is the behaviour of a sneak and a bully, and for once I do not feel inferior to him. Once I get home, I will say my piece; and about time too.

The manager speaks the number and I tap it into my phone and call. Them I dial home again and leave a message: “Anita, your father has demeaned you and me. We must speak with him together.”

I go out into the car park again, to see if I haven’t made a mistake, or perhaps Big Uli had gone to turn the car around. I watch as cars come in and as cars leave. I can’t think of what else I should be doing.

The cab comes after 30 minutes.

“Christ, you took your time,” I say.

“Drivers are off with Covid,” says the cab driver. “And if you take that tone, you’ll be waiting a lot longer.”

“Sorry, I’m in a hurry.”

“It’ll take as long as it takes. If you wanted a getaway driver you should have specified.”

He takes his time of course. The world is full of such people, out to needle you, out to make a point. In the back, I don’t say anything. I don’t want that conversation. I open the window a little; try to keep my mind clear.

We pull up to the house, Big Uli’s car is not on the drive. I open the door and call out but there is silence. I walk upstairs, calling Anita’s name and move into the bedroom. The wardrobe is open, and so too the drawers. It is clear three quarters of Anita’s clothes from the rail, her jackets, blouses, skirts, are gone. Apart from a few odd bits and pieces, the content of the drawers are also gone. I walk back downstairs, into the kitchen.

I think about my life with these people in it, and I think about the dog’s moments, my moments, my wife’s moments, how we have spent our lives together in a sombre small house, under the same sky and how in the park, the dog would enthusiastically greet any stranger who walked close to it on the paths or grass tracks, wagging its tail wildly, dark eyes shining, and would have walked away with them if they had offered a titbit or piece of bone, always pulling on the lead to stretch up to the individual, despite all the hours in training class, her mouth panting with exertion, my arm tired of the tugging and I wondered where she would go to if there were no lead and my hand not through its leather loop, I had felt the tug again and for a brief moment, I held the lead by the tips of my fingers, and then I relaxed my grip and she was gone.