Tou’le monde sait le bateau coule
Tou’le monde sait le capitaine a menti
There were just so many people I had to meet, but now it’s winding down.
So many conversations, so much this and that, so much frick and frack, so many people who had vanished from your life and then you by chance meet others who also knew them.
They will tell you, she became a ballerina, and lives in America now.
And you again picture the smiling little girl with the pigtails and a checked tablier in the petit lycée in Zamalek with the biggest smile you had ever seen, and you think, is that really what happened to her, or is she just, to quote Cohen, a shiny artifact of the past?
How many others did you look for? How many ghosts have you haunted? How many invisible demons did you do battle with? How many old chums were you so glad to meet who turned out to be worthless pretenders?
I am going back to the US in 10 days.
The grifter jig is pretty much up for the toxic orange pig and his scammy pals.
It’s only going to get much worse from now on.
Tonight there is a big football match: Real Madrid vs Juventis. 8:45PM,
I will be sitting with ordinary people cheering a team for no other reason than the love of the beautiful game, even as I hear the lamentations of the children in Gaza being mowed down by Israeli snipers, not too far away from here.
The 15 meter boats now must all be registered, and you cannot go past the nearby Red Sea islands toward Sharm.
There’s war in the mountains, and blood in the sand.
Yesterday I went to Mood’s again, and watched one of the Sawiris regal yachts go out for a spin. The little people said nothing as the masters of this particular universe floated by on a breath of mostly inherited money and privilege.
Then someone said they are all nouveau riche here, baladi vulgarians with no real class who think Trump and his ilk are great. Empty suits who all decamped to London for cover when things went south a few years ago but then came back bigger and more lavish than ever with their private planes and discreet mistresses and sordid down-low affairs.
I have nothing in common with them.
Nothing at all.
I am just a guy, with no illusions any more about anything. All I want to be able to do is to write the truth about what I see around me. At least one honest sentence a day, is what Hemingway preached. Tough order, but doable.
Leaving Amerika 