On the road to Timbuktu, a dreamwalk reunion under silver dunes — and the night Karim negotiated two hundred metres of Malian scrubland in his underwear with a cooking pot and three unimpressed hyenas. Field notes from The Agbara Chronicles.
Tag: The COMC Files
The Archangel’s Archive
Operational field notes from a KGB archangel who has kept records across centuries — and failed at detachment exactly once. Read free on Kobo.
SIRA: The Swahili Word That Changed How I Write About Memory
Field Notes from Dar es Salaam — Behind the Scenes Sira — the path that was always meant for your feet. There are words that stop you mid-sentence when you first hear them. Sira. Kiswahili for biography — but not the kind you find in a library. Not chronology, not curriculum vitae. The path itself,…
Fieldwork at the Crossroads: Vodun, Twins, and a Wolf in Cotonou
Field notes from editing Book V, Part III The Kivuko Chronicles, of The Memory Cartographer. This week I’m deep in the opening of Book V, Part III of The Memory Cartographer: Elena six months pregnant in Cotonou, trying very hard to pretend this is still just “fieldwork.” Breakfast at the Sofitel, security logistics, anthropologist armour firmly in…
The Memory Cartographer
The Alkebulan Chronicles — Book V is published The Memory Cartographer · Book V · Part I. The Mauritanian desert, a ruined well, gunfire, and a pack of wolves materialising out of the dark. Elena is running. She is also, as it happens, four months pregnant. One by one they emerge — fantastic shapes, silver…
The Memory Cartographer
Book V Part I The Alkebulan Chronicles The car rattles to a gentle stop, dust swirling in the late-day sun. Beyond the windshield: the barren edge of the border crossing, a horizon line between worlds. Karim turns to me, expression suddenly serious. “Elena. From here on, you’ll need to pose as my wife.” I arch…
The Goldfall Chronicles
Excerpt Book IV – Part III Elena Delange is back in London. What happens next, she did not see coming. The room freezes. Every eye flicks to my silk blouse, where delicate streaks of gold crawl down from my breasts, catching the overhead light. “You must be kidding me,” I snap. “Of all the moments,…
The Holographer’s Atlas
Richard Costa Blanca, 2012 Coffee with Irmy and Hans, the neighbours. Stroopwafels, Dutch television, the particular furniture of people who brought their country with them intact. I was comfortable in that atmosphere the way you’re comfortable in a language you grew up in but no longer speak every day. The doorbell announced a bridge friend…
The Holographer’s Atlas
Daan de Vylder ’98. Eight months back in the country where I was born. Not the coast—no bridges, no coffeehouses, no salt on the windows. A border village instead. Meadows, woods, a low sky that made everything feel provisional. I was in a one bar- town. For men. Jan had redone his backyard in honour…
The Holographer’s Atlas
Jan ’98 The coast I knew turned green. The disco drum turned to doves. I put my bikini in a drawer and borrowed a fur coat. I learned the village map like a religion. My sunny frontline apartment became a big old house from before the war. Empty rooms make loud ghosts. My daughter stopped…
The Memory Cartographer 