Tour

I fell to the ground and crawled under the bob-wire on my back, pushing myself paddle-wheel legs a caterpillar crawl, a near-kissment from the strung wire, live-fire tracer bullets streaking overhead, dragging my rifle and helmet on my head, inching towards no-man's land like in the army; the sentenced obstacle course of basic-training. What happened here ? Am I tired ? It's been a long driving-day. My male-sprong had gone AWOL. Not only a driver, I was being treated to a garden of - I-did-not-know - delight. And I failed. This was worrisome. Would there be a second to-come or not-coming ? Very disconcerting.

Dropped in the middle of Istanbul. Morocco - the Morocco of the movies, was the anywhere middle-East of Hope, Bing-Crosby or Casablanca-Bogart. This was not the movies. I went down a narrow street and took the first hotel I found, more like a rooming-house than a modern hotel. In that street was something astounding to the core of my being. Men were plying the streets up-and-down, hunched-horizontal-over, their hands to the pavement grasping leather straps, strung-from great-wood crates the size of stoves or refrigerators on their backs. They were doing the jobs of trucks. They were old-gray and thread bare, wearing auto-tire sandals. She simply deserted me in the city. She couldn't be-seen with me. Her father was a prominent lawyer. Women with men in public, must be married or related in some way. I being western, and looking like a Nordic wild-man, prone to drug-addiction, she obviously must-melt into the crowd. It would be dangerous for her. I was to meet-her in a day or two at a secret location.

She was the crossroads between East and West. We were entering former Turkish Empire territory, but she was English to the letter with perfect accent.

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