GOING NOWHERE

By the time I snap the lid of my little laptop shut, dusk is falling; my neck is stiff and sore, my back aches, my knees are stiff, my eyes are watering and my wrists do more than twinge.

I have spent the day in my hotel room at my little desk, tapping out what I hope will be more than a memo, it will be a mission statement, a manifesto, a document to chart the course for the future of emergency medicine in Palestine. But it's going to be dark soon and I've done nothing but sit on my duff all day - I am restless.

I get up and decide to go for a walk, it doesn't matter where. I walk by Pronto, the little Italian restaurant that happens to be one of the few places open during Ramadan, recognize nobody, and walk up a side street. I'm finally becoming familiar with some of the shops and landmarks, and then I realize that there are a lot of people here I don't know, looking up quickly when I pass by, then returning to whatever business they were about, closing stores, carrying things in plastic bags, draping sleeping children over their shoulders.

There are groups of young men walking in clusters down the street, and since I am walking alone in a strange place I remember that I should be careful, I think. I remember what was probably the dumbest thing I'd done, walking by myself through the oppressively hot, dusty streets of Konduz in northern Afghanistan in the gathering twilight obscured by more dust, dim figures of men in the distance, in June of 2002, shortly after the Taliban had fled, and I understand that this dark, this heat, this fear, this must be what hell is like. In the process of getting lost I began to understand how stupid I was, how alone, how away.

It's nowhere near as bad here, though; the locals are mostly disinterested, accustomed as they are in this fairly cosmopolitan city to seeing foreigners. I do get the occasional "welcome to my store!", interspersed with some "nihao!"s or "konichiwa!", to which I give a half-smile and reply, "nope - Amreeka." That seems to throw them in some confusion, so I keep walking.

That confusion is probably a good thing; I am a single foreign man alone in a city, I'm wearing cargo pants and flip-flops, which probably were not the brightest thing to wear, self-defense wise, but what do these people have to know? I try to project cool strength, I'm bad, I'm Bruce Lee for all you know, while I try to remember what the movies tell you to do in these situations, I can never remember - do I sweep the leg? Do I not? Which was it?

I walk past street vendors with funny hats and bottles of juices, big metal pots with frying oil and felafels ringing their rims, there is some dust in the air, mingling with the scent of Arabic coffee, unknown fluids on the ground to which scraps of newsprint stick. It is a wonder, I tell myself, that I was born like this, born in a place like this, with smells that I now find too strong, streets that seem too dirty, how did I come from this to what I am now, Amreeka.

I finally realize that I am getting lost, I turn around and walk until I find some landmarks I recognize, a bad-ass Brea ninja who just wanted to walk down this street and then turn right around and walk back, no big deal. I've stretched my legs enough, I suppose, so I walk down the hill towards the hotel, to go tap tap tap on my laptop some more.