Summer Postcards
A Perfect Arch
I had seen many South Asian women in Dar, most of whom had perfectly nice eyebrows. And, being Indian, I know this was not natural. One afternoon, I got in a taxi and asked the driver to take me to a salon frequented by Indian or Arab women. This isn’t a strange request in Tanzania, where most small businesses have neither public phone number, nor address, nor name. They’re just that stationary store near that nursery school whose owner has a kid named Abdullah.
The Letters of Others
And if you are not particularly important, but rather a 21-year-old college student writing a thesis, you may find yourself in this strange kind of library for the dead’s private thoughts. Someone will have to send a fax explaining who you are. As you are waiting, you may begin to feel simultaneously very small and conscious of every part of your body—in particular, its sudden awkwardness. This whole time, since you arrived in Italy five days earlier, but even before, when you were writing grant applications and talking to your thesis advisor, you have had a creeping suspicion, which has evolved into a definite knowledge: You are a fraud.
Purchasing Power
Les soldes (in English, “sales”) are state-regulated, biannual sales held throughout France. The government designates two, six-week periods beginning in early January and late June for nationwide sales on anything from clothes to shoes to electronics. Discounts start low at about 25 percent and can reach 80 percent in the sales’ final days.
Candles and Canals
I’m not sure whether I disregarded that warning or missed it altogether. Either way, on my 19th birthday, I jumped into a Venetian canal.
