Unraveling history's alternate timelines
By morning my feet had learned the broken paving west of Qinghefang better than my eyes had. Hangzhou under the Heavenly Kingdom is still Hangzhou: damp stone, tea steam, willow fluff in the gutters, ...
Continue readingThe first thing I saw in Bodrum was not the castle, though it was there in its square, stubborn Crusader mass above the harbor, making every new flag look temporary. Nor was it the fishing boats, patc...
Continue readingThe sun in Memphis has the habit of arriving not as light but as a verdict. By the third hour, the streets between the temple walls and the market were divided into slices: white glare on the plaster,...
Continue readingThe road into Niani was doing what roads into important cities always do: collecting everyone’s excuses before the officials could. Donkeys stood hock-deep in yellow dust. A salt trader cursed softly ...
Continue readingThe Avenue of the Dead is not named that here, or at least not by the people who have to sweep it. To them it is a long stone problem that catches dust, sandals, spilled maize, dog droppings, and the ...
Continue readingThe heat had already settled into the stones before midmorning, but it did so unevenly, like a tax collector with favorites. The open street by the cothon baked my sandals through. The shaded passage ...
Continue readingA gray winter light came down the slopes this morning as if it had been strained through millet water. It lay flat on the mule backs, flashed dully on bayonets at the far bend, and turned the dust on ...
Continue readingSnow had gone gray in the gutters by morning, not from romance but from coal, boots, and the patient grinding of Berlin under occupation. Kreuzberg was busy in the old way: women with string bags, men...
Continue readingThe city was still finding its voice after Sunday, and for the most part it had chosen boots. Boots on Sackville Street, boots at the corner of Abbey Street, boots under the dripping archways where me...
Continue readingThe city wall at Datong still has the honest look of a military place: brick shoulders, hard parapets, gate towers with soot on the corners where signal fires have eaten the paint. It is January, and ...
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