Innholdsfortegnelse for Nov-03-14 i The New Yorker

MY TRASH, SAYYID’S TREASURE Journalists, human-rights defenders, and the social-media élite of Cairo have been in a bit of a flutter over Peter Hessler’s article (“What the Garbageman Knows,” October 13th). I was delighted to recognize my own dustman, or zabal, in the photograph, only to become disconcerted to read that Hessler had sometimes accompanied his friend Sayyid around the back staircases of Zamalek apartment blocks, and watched as he went through the rubbish of Hessler’s neighbors. Hessler soothed my discomfort when he mentioned the early riser who sometimes supplies Sayyid with a cup of tea—“That’s me!” I said to myself. I thought of the mornings when I’ve heard Sayyid scuffling about on the landing outside my kitchen door in the predawn quiet. I’d have been some combination of…

It isn’t like that Horace Life stresses us out However many hundreds of decades later we’re told to welcome anxiety is beneficial and to quote honor our imperfections You’ve got the Adriatic Sea We’ve got what the Finger Lakes? Not quite as conducive to worrying the infinite question so we worry about other things equities statistics I’m not really a wine man either not in the unmixed sense where Alcibiades might barge in any moment and out-naked us all I’m an American so I prefer pig iron Wildflowers abound somewhere I’m sure I don’t know anything about flowers though Few of us in the cities follow them the way you seem to as if tracking currencies But to speak to your point about an actual battlefront approaching Main Street who…

That girl they found ensconced in mud and loam, she wasn’t me. Small wonder, though, they jumped. To a conclusion. Water puffs you up, and we pale Slavic girls looked much alike— back then. Deprivation smooths you out. Yes, that was the season of self-drowned maids, heart-to-hearts with skulls, great minds overthrown. And minds that could be great if they could just come up for air. Not in that town. Something stank. But me, I drifted on. I like rivers. And I’m all right with flowers. I floated on a bed of roses—well, O.K., rue and columbine. It bore me up not down. That night I made a circle with my thumb and finger, like a lens, and peered through it at the moon—mine, all mine. My kissed-white moon. “Moon…