Love You, Zyra, Part 3

VI. Now. At 3:30 in the afternoon, we ambled as a group, in single file, up a foot-path which skirted a mountainside. There were about 40 of us in…


Love You, Zyra, Part 2

IV. Closer. We caught a bus that took us into the foothills of the Pamirs. By now, I’d gone quite native and had put on my all-purpose Islamic grey…


Love You, Zyra, Part 1

I. Trouble at Gatwick Airport. And JFK. Make that Heathrow. What the fuck does it matter? Anyway, there was talk amongst the check-in staff that I…


Wavelength, Part 4

XIV. Adolf was already waiting outside the art-house cinema box office when I arrived. He looked smaller than I remembered, and, on his own, without…


Wavelength, Part 3

XI. Speaking directly into the tannoy, he made his pronouncement. “Take this bitch from this place and circumcise her according to the very letter of…


Wavelength, Part 2

III. A month after that, and I found myself in the heart of the spiritual state of Israel: in a little piazza surrounded by charming stone-built…


Wavelength, Part 1

I. London, late summer, 1970: a grey Friday evening, overcast but not raining. September the 18th, I think it was: the very night Jimi Hendrix died.…