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Birth on the Nile
Stephen Barber came into the world with a hole in his heart. On the eve of World War II, he was home in Egypt, not long out of Bembridge, an English boarding school on the Isle of Wight, eager to enlist. A doctor put a stethoscope to his chest and declared him unfit to serve….
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The Turkish Girl
I often wonder what became of the girl we ran over on the afternoon of Tuesday, August 8, 1967, somewhere between Troy and our tent by the Hellespont. She would be about 70 now. Does she have grandchildren? Has she told them how she got that dent on her forehead? I recently found a photograph…
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Funeral of a friend
I am just back from a couple of days of thrarrghing around the hills and hollows of southern and West Virginia with my friend Roland, he on his Harley, I on a BMW whose early years were spent under the bum of a New Mexico Highway Patrolman but which remains remarkably lively, nonetheless. In the course of…
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Chicago Rashomon 1968
I am looking at a photograph taken on Chicago’s Michigan Avenue a little after 8 on the evening of Wednesday, August 28, 1968, and wishing my father was still around to fill in a few details. It’s a dramatic image. Center foreground is a cop in a riot helmet who seems to be weighing whether…
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V. Doña Quixota
The Serbs sent the Berry unit to Vrnjača Banja, a spa town in the highlands 80 miles south of Belgrade. Margery arrived on April 19. For their HQ and hospital, the Berry’s had chosen the Terapia, a grand sanatorium gone somewhat to seed but where water and a generator could be made to run with…
