“Where the gods keep office hours” Southeast. The destination is set. Now Elena does what Elena does best — research at thirty thousand feet, tea steaming, gods at the kitchen table. I find a seat in the main cabin—spacious table, panoramic window, high-grade leather. A discreet flight attendant approaches. “A device to research Benin, please….
Tag: zavet
The Memory Cartographer-Book V The Alkebulan Chronicles- Part II
“Where the gods keep office” Tarmo has always known exactly when to look. The belly’s glow doesn’t help. Tarmo sits in one of the plush chairs, his gaze fixed somewhere far beyond, adrift in private oceans. Karim hasn’t bothered challenging the master of the plane in his own territory. Fair enough, I think, wryly amused…
The Memory Cartographer-Book V The Alkebulan Chronicles- Part II
“Where the gods keep office hours” In the private cabin of Tarmo’s jet, somewhere over Mali, Elena collapses. What follows is not a dream. I press my palms flat against the tile, lower my head, and let the water wash over me for a while. But under the relief, the same question bubbles up—the one…
The Holographer’s Atlas
Maurice ’85/’91 In 1985 my mother left with Kahlil Gibran, her piano, and the ice-cold brain food she had served on a daily basis. What remained was my elderly father, a smaller house in the village, and suddenly — space. I stopped cycling thirty kilometres to school. I was tired of doing what was good…
The Holographer’s Atlas
The Constant There are men who loved you and failed you in the exact way that you have others, and you file them under known coordinates and navigate accordingly. Decades pass. Children grow, postcodes change, land numbers too, bad decisions, good ones, everything in between. Coasts remain. You teach yourself to call it nostalgia whenever…
The Memory Cartographer-Book V The Alkebulan Chronicles- Part II
Chapter 21 The White Queen Moves His final words fall cold, deliberate, like a blade laid flat, not put away. “So this one…” A pause, heavy as breath itself. “This one is on you.” I meet him with a glare, unflinching. “Just because I refuse to be used as some anthropological rook in your endless…
The Memory Cartographer-Book V The Alkebulan Chronicles-Part II
Chapter 19 Amellal The airport swallows us whole, its air heavy with dust, sweat, and kerosene. I settle back against the cart seat, my hand resting instinctively upon the curve of my belly. Departures have always lifted me—each voyage a renewal, a flight into possibility. But this time my spirit drags. It begins suddenly—a bloom…
A Birthday Zavet
from one woman crossing borders to all of you Dear sisters, friends, strangers-who-feel-familiar, I have crossed many frontiers in my life. Most of them were man-made. I lived by my own rules. For years I thought this letter belonged only to Russian women. I wrote it with their faces in my mind: ballerinas who escaped,…
The C.O.M.C. Files 