Where’s my darbouka?
Last night I dreamed I went back to America and was arrested in Grand Central for being a free man. I remember John Lindsay was standing not far away from me and I cried out to him for help but he did nothing.
I remember the cop who was messing with me was mad that I wouldn’t respond to his provocations, and the last thing I remember was being cuffed and shoved into a squad car and driven by a different cop up the Major Deegan.
This was no fusha, no Sunday picnic; I was in serious trouble and had been found guilty without a trial for not believing any more in America’s bullshit. I woke up in a sweat, and my wife came asked me what the matter was, and I said, it’s a prison, America’s nothing but an open air prison to me now, and I’m never coming back.
Earlier in the day, we had some non-alcoholic Banana Coladas at Jobo’s.
Very tasty and the guy gave us a 15% owner’s discount without my asking for one. I guess we look like we belong in Gouna now.
After that we went to the Turkish House, which offers the best lentil soup in town, and had as the main course the extravagant House Special: lamb, beef, and chicken kebabs, as well as two lamb cutlets. The owner Ezzat even threw in a delicious side dish as lagniappe, and also cut us a 15% discount.
We saw a desert wolf walk by.
And women strolling.
Downtown began to fill up, but it was mostly residents, from the looks of it, all dressed to the nines, as if they had come out of Church in their Sunday best — which probably many of them had, given that it was the Coptic day of nativity.
Later in the day, we went to sit by the pool at our villa, and I put on the earphones, and danced around like a young man in the warm afternoon sun to Life during Wartime and Betty Davis Eyes. I was as a content as I ever have been.
Life was good right then, but the clock was ticking. I never want to go back to that fucking country, but in a few months, I must — but not for long, for I will come back here, far away from the American Gulag, which is crumbling before our very eyes.
If true Liberal Democracy in the 21st Century is largely a mirage, I say better spend one’s days among one’s own, than in a foreign Jahannam, especially when one’s own correct the horsefeathers about the ME published by American newspapers.
I’m speaking metaphorically of course, for I’m a True Believer in nothing at all but ingrained scepticism of anything not backed by peer-reviewed, scientific fact, as opposed to say, shroom-enhanced mystical insights, or better yet, self-serving attempts to construct vast, Foucauldian Panopticons to enslave the disenfranchised, who might one day pose a threat.
All else — even the most sophisticated political analysis — is usually non-empirical, retrospective, provisional mulligatawny.
Thus spake Gouna Man.
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