We had set out for the First Cliff Walk by Tissot, a metal walkway that clings to the mountainside and suspends visitors over a dizzying drop with panoramic views of the Eiger. It’s the kind of attraction made for Instagram—arms outstretched, smiles frozen over the void.
I wasn’t smiling.
I bought Brian at the Brunswick Bookshop, a modest place in London. There it was—this slim blue book that promised to carry me through the city differently. Predictably, perhaps. Comfortingly so.
Brian’s life is full of chosen predictability: he walks the same lunch spot, the same streets, the same shadows. I liked that. I needed it, even.
A woman centuries ahead of her time. By the time I visited Mexico City, that seed had grown into a quiet urgency. I wanted to find her—not just in books, but in the places where she once lived and wrote. What would it mean to walk her path, to touch the silence she once filled with words?
Created by French-American artist Niki de Saint Phalle, she has floated above Zurich’s station since 1997—golden-winged, radiant, joyful. A figure from the artist’s “Nana” series, designed to offer protection and warmth to travelers. She holds two silver pitchers connected by red-lit wires—lifelines, the artist suggests—echoing the balance and patience of the Temperance Tarot card. In that busy hall, her presence was mythic and maternal.
Anniqua was ready to fall in love. At one moment she was sitting beside Bourdain at a restaurant in the hills of Granada enjoying snails in almond sauce, and the very next in the Asturias feasting on a white bean and sausage stew called fabada. She had no doubt that whatever she ate at this restaurant in the railway station, it would cause “a flood of flavor” to explode within her. Wasn’t that what the tv shows had promised her?
“’Heaven is the place where you think of nowhere else’…I can believe that.” I tell Selma, quoting Pico Iyer.
“I think I’ve been able to find heaven wherever we’ve been, Chakwal, Faisalabad, Lahore, London, California…” I add.
Behind a moat that, in the heyday of Khmer power was filled with territorial crocodiles, was Angkor. For an instant, it felt as though a thousand years had not passed, as if Khmer culture still dominated Asia from Burma to as far south as Indonesia. As if the archaeologist Louis Delaporte had not removed the finest statues in 1873 for “the cultural enrichment of France,” the United States hadn’t bombed, and the Khmer Rouge hadn’t used temples for target practice. Angkor stood.
All this praying will make us thirsty, but I haven’t told anyone yet. I took the cook’s advice. I have fasted like a bird.
Giza was incredible. Our driver Mustafa handed us off to some bedouins, who took us out to the pyramids on camels. Watching a camel run is one of the most awkward things I have ever seen an animal do, and riding one while it’s happening is expectedly unpleasant, but man was it worth it.
I am particularly fascinated by a three-story high, one-meter wide, Casa Escondida (Hidden House) which stands between a Carmelite convent and the Igreja do Carmo for priests. There is nothing spectacular about the tiny house that stands between them, except for the fact that it was made to prevent fraternizing between the nuns and the priests. I want to know more.
Boabdil’s mother, Aixa, lived in the Hall of Two Sisters, Sala de Dos Hermanas, named for two marble flagstones on the floor. But it’s the ceiling that takes your breathe away.
The surrender of Alhambra would be the final war of ‘Reconquista’, with Spain now essentially seeing itself as the guardian of Catholicism.
Malaga is a vibrant cultural hub with a fusion of ancient and modern heritage spread over a 7,000 year old past since the Phoenicians.
We continued our trip and I tried to lose myself in Washington Irving’s The Alhambra: a Series of Tales and Sketches of the Moors and Spaniards, which was published in 1832. I held on to it to force myself into the magical space that I remembered from that black and white photograph in my sixth grade reader.
Does our mother’s life then become the grisaille to our own? That monochromatic grey scale underpainting to which we add the color of our lives.
By Nasser Tufail Enduring splendor of Vienna I am back in one of my favorite cities, Vienna, and am fortunate to have a very dear friend from my IBM ‘Charm… Read more Exciting Discoveries: The Rich History Of Vienna →
Unable to redeem his past glory and a place of honor in the history books of the Raj, Jacob would die a poor, broken man, a tragic figure who would spend his last sad years in obscurity in a modest room. His entire net worth at the time of his death was a paltry Rupees 382!!
The Jersey Devil Whisperer entertained US Secretaries of State, Henry Clay and Daniel Webster, President of the US, John Quincy Adams and other politicians.
For it was right here in Bailen on 19th of July, 1808 that the heretofore invincible almighty military leader who had by then conquered much of Europe and was crowned “Emperor” of France just 4 years earlier, would face his first ever open field defeat of his illustrious career.
King Solomon had a penchant for opulent temples/palaces, obsessively embellished with gold and silver… and a fine collection of 700 wives and 300 concubines!
