GUESS WHO’S COMING TO DINNER?

Have you ever wondered why we have pubic hair? Why we are scared of the dark? Why we are sometimes wary of people who look ‘different’?

Danny Vendramini offers some interesting answers in his book: ‘Them + Us’.

Danny speculates on how humans evolved and survived, on our relationship with Neanderthals and why they disappeared. He reckons we killed them all in the first genocide, because they were our ‘neighbours from hell’ – savage carnivores and apex predators of the stone age, who, from at least 100,000 until around 48,000 years ago, raped us, ate us, hunted us to the point of extinction in the East Mediterranean Levant, until Cro-Magnon Man got smarter, fought back and wiped them out, using tricks like the bow and arrow. According to Danny, the adaptations we made to survive Neanderthals helped to make us modern humans: hairless and highly intelligent hominids who communicate through language.

He calls this idea: Neanderthal Predation Theory (‘NP’).

Nuts, right? Some scientists want ‘more proof’. But people said that about Copernicus Galileo, and even Darwin’s ideas, first published in 1959, were not understood at the mechanical-molecular level until the 1950s. Danny is pro-Darwin but reckons the master may have missed something important about evolution, which brings us to his second theory. Before I explain, here’s some background.

Danny was not trained as a scientist. He was a theatre and film director who became curious about why so many cultures have scary myths and sagas about monsters and dragons, good and evil. He wondered if all this ‘fear’ has been somehow ‘hard wired’ into our genes and, if so, why? He claims to have read 8000 scientific papers looking for answers, none of which satisfied him.

Instead, over time, he developed a theory of his own: maybe our cultural myths originate in scary events that so shocked early humans they were encoded in their DNA and passed down the generations. He calls this ‘teemosis’, the inheritance of Traumatically Encoded Emotional Memory (‘TEEM’), and suggests it might explain the mysterious function of the ‘junk DNA’ that makes almost 99% of our genome. He postulates that nasty memories were stored in our junk DNA, passed down over countless generations and re-emerged through culture, where, from the dawn of humanity until today, they have been expressed as stories and sagas, paintings and films that tell the audience: Be careful, it’s dangerous out there. In other words human culture is not just entertainment it’s about survival.

Danny developed his ‘NP’ and ‘TEEM’ theories concurrently, as he sought answers for the biggest question of all: what scared us, so profoundly, so long ago?

As an answer, his book cites archaeological and genetic evidence to argue that Neanderthals began hunting us about 100,000 years ago and that by 50,000 years ago, the original human population that had moved from Africa to the Levant was reduced to as few as 50 individuals. He claims that Neanderthal Predation caused  ‘selection pressure’ that transformed the tiny survivor population of early humans into super-smart modern humans that spread around the globe, passing their survival skills and group experiences – good and bad – to their children through DNA and culture. He believes ‘teemosis’ worked alongside natural selection to determine who survived and who did not, and reminds us that Darwin said: “It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent. It is the one most adaptable to change.”

Did we adapt to survive Neanderthals? They were exceptionally strong and their bones prove it. Danny reckons they probably looked more like gorillas than cavemen. He compared the large eye sockets of a Neanderthal skull with the smaller ones of a human. Neanderthals evolved extra large eyes, he says because, like most mammalian predators, they were nocturnal hunters. Hence our fear of the dark and ogres in the forest?

NP theory argues that, like all prey, early humans became hyper-vigilant for signs of their top predator and we have inherited this sense of ‘them and us’, which we express through culture: from the wild and hairy ‘forest man’ of illustrated medieval manuscripts, to the Himalayan ‘Yeti’ and bug-eyed zombies on that DVD you saw last week.

But enough scary stuff. In 2006, Danny also proposed that Neanderthals interbred with early humans and in 2010, the Draft Sequence of the Neanderthal Genome proved him right. He also has some ideas about why men idolize  – and idealize – women like the ones in magazines such as FHM, with perfect curves and bumps.

He says males almost exclusively exercised artificial selection and that any females who appeared to carry Neanderthal genes were killed. Over time, the ‘ideal’ woman emerged and even ancient art reveres the same body ratios that you’ll see in FHM, because our preferences reflect our fear of Neanderthal females.

As for pubic hair? That survived because it disguised our body odours, which Neanderthals detected from afar, like bears. After we wiped out Neanderthals, says Danny, we started killing each other because aggression was hard-wired. Hence xenophobia, war and genocide.

To learn more, visit: http://www.themandus.org/us.html.

One last detail: there exists only one fossilized footprint of a Neanderthal. It’s in Romania, in Vărtop Cave, in the Bihor Mountains, near Cluj. And that means they arrived before the Hungarians.

(This story first appeared in FHM in Jan 2012 and reappears here with permission from S.C. Sanoma Hearst Romania SRL).

***

Get married in Azerbaijan?

Every Saturday morning, Tania comes to clean my apartment in Baku. She’s a middle-aged Russian lady, very jolly, with dark hair and missing teeth. My landlord recommended her.

We communicate in sign language because Tania doesn’t speak much English and all I know is niet, from my time in Yekaterinburg when I would get offered vodka morning, noon and night. Tania is an ex-schoolteacher. Times are hard.  I make her cups of tea and we get along fine during her visits.

She works hard but not very fast. It takes her about four hours to clean my place. Most of the time I try to keep out of her way, give her space. Around 3 pm she usually points to my ironing: shall I do that, too? I say ‘niet’, and she leaves.

One day, Tania thrusts a glossy card into my hand on her way out. It shows a lurid photo of a huge dining hall, its tables exquisitely set with flowers and candles. Will I come, to her daughter’s wedding? Da, Tania.

When she is gone, I phone a local friend who advises me to take an envelope with some money as a contribution, because Azerbaijani weddings get expensive for any family.

On the night, the taxi ride takes forty-five minutes at Formula 1 speed. I used to think some Romanian drivers were too fast and irresponsible. But compared to drivers in Azerbaijan, they are snails. By the time I walk into the reception hall, I’m ready to throw up.

The place is packed, about 400 people, the men dressed mostly in black, the women in bright frocks and heavy make up. The band has ten members belting out folk music on a variety of bizarre looking instruments. Waiters hurry around like an army of ants, filling glasses, serving food. The celebrations must have cost a fortune and soon I’m wondering: how can Tania afford it? Why so elaborate?

She greets me with a kiss and takes me to meet the happy couple. The bride and groom sit on thrones onstage, behind a big table laden with food and drinks. They’re young and dark-eyed and very good-looking, gazing down like a king and queen at the rest of us. I give them my envelope, pose for photos. I leave the stage and sit at a table with seven other guests. My grinning neighbour Ali has a Borat moustache and points to the circle of bottles: “Russian vodka?”

Over our sumptuous meal, we chat about football. Ali is curious about wages in the Premier League. I watch the guests dancing an Azeri version of the hora and I ask him about the logistics of this wedding. Ali rolls his eyes, as if to say: Crazy huh?

“The bride’s dress cost €500 to hire, for one day,” Ali says, “Her jewellery cost €5,000, a gift from her husband. They saved for two years. It’s all show. Peer pressure. You want some Russian vodka? Please, drink some Russian vodka. Which brand you want?”

The dancing seems strictly regimented – men with men, women with women. The bride descends from her throne like she just won the Oscar for Highest Heels, and wobbles around to a few lively songs. Two little girls in white dresses hold her train up, hopping around after her, making sure she does not trip and break her Louboutin shoes. It all looks very sweet. Those musicians are talented and fast. Ali sips his drink and whispers in my ear: “Peasant tunes.”

“They sound pretty good,” I say.

Ali looks a bit worried and tells me: “Have some Russian vodka.”

I’m tempted to dance the hora but maybe not. Last time I tried that, many years ago, at a lavish wedding in the lovely village of Miercurea Sibiului, Romania, I kicked some guy up the ass.

Towards the end of the night, a convoy of guests carry flaming torches into the hall and stand in rows, opposite each other. Down this corridor come a couple dressed in traditional clothes, like they’re from medieval times. The place is so crowded I watch them on the flat screen TVs instead, like in a sports bar. The medieval couple carry a bowl of fire to the top table and give it to the bride and groom. It looks like an accident waiting to happen. 400 guests barbecued at wedding party. I glance towards the exit, just in case. Ali pats my shoulder and tells me: “We’re Zoroastrians, fire worship is part of our culture, from years ago. Have you visited our famous temple, where the fire comes out of the ground?”

I shake my head but promise him I will try, if I get out of here alive.

It’s late. Time to call the F1 Taxi service. I say my farewells to Tania and wave to the happy couple. The bride is too busy dancing to notice my departure. The two little girls are still dancing around after her, holding her train, dreaming of being queen for a day. They look very sweet, until a third, smaller girl approaches and tries to hold the dress up too. They scowl and push her away: Hands off, bitch.

(This story first appeared in FHM in December 2011 and reappears here with permission from S.C. Sanoma Hearst Romania SRL).

When a difficult person enters your life, they will stay until you learn the lesson that they came to teach you. Or so I heard.

Mick Wormwood entered my life when I was twelve. He left it fifteen years later. Perhaps I’m a slow learner.

Mick was a tough lad from inner city Liverpool who moved to our suburb ten miles out. I first met him playing school football.

He was smallish but strong, fast and fearless. He had flame red hair and beady eyes. His broad back hunched when he ran – Quasimodo in a football kit. He had a terrible temper – ready to fight anyone, including the referee. He scored three goals, including the winner, and smirked when we shook hands at the end of the match, captain to captain. “Nice team you got,” he said.

Next time I saw him, he was leading a gang of local troublemakers around town. He pointed at me and they laughed. Nice team, asshole.

Mick was mad, bad and dangerous to know. Always fighting. Even his surname – Wormwood – sounded like Wormwood Scrubs, the infamous prison of Victorian London.

But there was another side to him that I witnessed by accident, one day when I was carrying my books home from school. Mick never carried books, but that day he was carrying shopping for two tiny old ladies, up a steep bridge over our local canal. He seemed surprised to see me.

“Nice team,” I said, and wished I hadn’t.

Mick stared at me and said: “I know where you live, mate.”

He knocked at my door an hour later in his jeans and Dr Marten boots. I thought he had come to beat me up. “What you doing?” he said.

“School work,” I said.

He rolled his eyes and said: “Want to play football?”

I told him I would meet him on the field in twenty minutes. But I was there in fifteen, in case he changed his mind.

We were soon firm friends – both named Michael with the same red hair and the same love of football. I liked the contradiction in his character – Mick the hooligan with a good heart. Maybe he was curious about the jerk that did homework and loved football.

I kept my distance from his gang, though, after I saw Mick kick some rival black and blue, and smash a hammer through a car window. Next day he was sitting on my parents’ sofa, drinking tea.

“He’s a gentlemen, your pal Mick,” my Mum would say. I wanted to say: try schizophrenic

 Mick left school at 16 and got a job tending the local parks. His face was soon tanned like an old boot and lined by the merciless wind that blew in from the Irish Sea.

When I went to college in Cardiff, Mick would hitchhike down for the weekend, arriving at midnight, dripping with rain. My flat-mate at that time was some spoiled rich kid, a film student who was always leaving his soiled clothes on the bathroom floor. Once he asked Mick: “Have you seen ‘My Beautiful Launderette’?”

Mick replied: “No, but I’ve seen your dirty washing.”

He was quick with jokes but also depressed at not being a professional footballer. Big clubs tried him but his temper was a liability. After too many beers one night, he told me:

“When I get angry a black curtain comes down and I cannot see in the darkness.” Then he asked me how come millionaire Bono still had not found what he was looking for? Bit of a philosopher, was our Mick.

The final time I saw him, Mick was in London, suit pockets stuffed with cash. He was now ‘a businessman’ in the East End.

Oh really? I suppose I could imagine how his roguish charm might play well with Cockney wide-boys, but I was disappointed that he thought they were a solution to his broken dreams, dead end job and failed marriage. He was no longer digging parks. But was he digging his grave?

Sure enough, a few months later, some kids found Mick’s body swinging from the bridge over our old canal in Liverpool. I heard he had been knocking on doors around the neighbourhood, asking for a washing line so he could tow his car, which was odd, since he never learned to drive.

If you’ve ever lost someone to suicide, you know how I felt. If not, i hope you never do. Grief and guilt wrestle in your soul and it never really goes away. Mick was a rare individual, tough but funny, violent but kindhearted, McEnroe, Tyson and Mother Theresa, combined.

I suppose he taught me not to judge a book by its cover. I picture him now, playing football in heaven, as captain of the fallen angels, arguing with St Peter about the offside rule.

(This story first appeared in FHM in November 2011 and reappears here with permission from S.C. Sanoma Hearst Romania SRL).

In a few minutes, as you finish reading this, I will suggest a simple but interesting exercise to test your mind and body at the same time. But let’s start with how I learned about it.

In 2008, I spent a weekend hiking in northern India. I slept in a tent, swam in the strong current of the freezing clear Ganges, I rode in a battered bus with people sitting on top, I saw the snowy Himalayas, far in the distance. It was fun. On those steep hills, my skinny guide was as nimble as a goat and as strong as a bear. At dawn, he would do stretches, lithe as a cat, outside his little tent. I asked him how come he was so healthy. He was standing on his head at the time. “Yoga,” he said and closed his eyes to meditate, breathing deeply. I sipped coffee in golden sunlight by the misty river, and promised myself: Someday, I’m going to try that.

I finally got my chance here in Azerbaijan. One Friday night I was having dinner with some Azeri friends, talking about our busy week, the stress of city life. Samira with the bright eyes and corkscrew hair told us that Saturday morning yoga was the perfect solution. “But can you stand on your head?” I asked. She just smiled – silly English – and looked at her watch.

Soon, I joined Samira’s yoga class: 90 minutes, three times a week in a gymnasium on the 9^th floor with a spectacular view of Baku and the Caspian Sea. I’m glad I did. We do a variety of stretches – asanas – and finish off with five minutes of breathing exercises and fifteen minutes of meditation, lying on our backs listening with the lights dimmed, listening to chill-out music.

To be honest, it was a bit difficult at first. I found some yoga positions hard, despite all my years of running and swimming. Yoga also gave me headaches afterwards. But it gets easier and after just a few weeks I now feel stronger and more flexible. It’s a different sort of fitness. Something has changed in my mind too.

Our teacher is the quietly spoken Mr. Rasim Hasanov. He is a gentleman and a scholar, and I asked him a few questions about yoga, just for you.

FHM: Rasim, how did you discover yoga?

Rasim: A book fell on my head! I was 17, visiting a friend. His dad was an academic. I was browsing his home library in Baku and an old book tumbled down on my head. It was about yoga, published before the Russian Revolution. I borrowed it and started teaching myself.  That was in the Soviet era and yoga was banned. My parents feared the KGB would arrest us!

FHM: Why did you persevere?

Rasim: As a teenager I was feeble and always getting sick. But after three years of yoga, I felt like a new person. No illnesses, no more medication. I’m 60 now. I’ve been doing yoga for 43 years, in my spare time.

FHM: What did you do for a living?

Rasim: I was a researcher for gold mines. I have a PhD in geology. But after Azerbaijan gained independence, I became a geography teacher. I also compose music.

FHM: What advice would you give to someone just starting yoga?

Rasim: Find a teacher, learn properly and take it slowly.

FHM: What are the most common misconceptions of yoga?

Rasim: Some people think it’s a religious sect, aerobics or psychological training. But in fact, it’s a way to re-discover yourself. There are over 20 different types of yoga. Some people prefer the meditation to the physical exercises. But you should beware of ‘hot’ yoga, in a hot room – that’s a dangerous gimmick, trust me.

FHM: What are your worst and best experiences of yoga?

Rasim: I hurt my legs when I started. That was the worst. The best was when my masters – B.K.S. Iyengar and Ravi Shankar – approved me to teach yoga. I was also pleased to give a class at a symposium of 2000 teachers near Zurich, and to publish my first book. I’ve written two – yoga for the spine, yoga for pregnant women. Now I’m writing about yoga for children.

FHM: Is yoga popular in Azerbaijan?

Rasim: Well, these days, I have military generals and politicians in my classes. It’s funny how times change! As for the future, I want to start my own academy. I need investors. I hope for the best. The world would be a better and more beautiful place if everyone did yoga. My best wishes to Romania!

That’s all from Rasim. But finally, dear reader, try this: Remove your shoes, stand straight and bend your right leg back at the knee, holding your right foot behind your bottom with your right hand. Extend your left arm vertical, reaching for the sky. Close your eyes and try not to wobble. Tricky huh? This is one version of the Lord of the Dance position. It will tune your body and mind. And by the way, I’m typing this standing on my head.

***

This story first appeared in FHM (Romania) in October 2011 and reappears here with permission from
S.C. Sanoma Hearst Romania SRL .

Some ideas take days, weeks. This one takes three seconds.

It comes to me in a flash, at 5.30 one Saturday morning, when I’m knee-deep in snow in Yekaterinburg, 1400 kilometres north east of Moscow, temperature minus 40C. I’ve had enough of this place, this job. I need time out from training journalists. I need a change. I want to chase my dream. I will move to California. It’s as simple as that.

Twenty minutes later I reach my desk at BBC School. I sit at my computer, log into the chat room and type with numb fingers: Sorry I’m late, 35 cm of snow last night. My five colleagues are already online. Most of them are in Los Angeles, where it’s 5 pm on Friday, and they’re chatting about going later for cocktails by the ocean. We’re learning how to write and sell a movie script. I ask our trainer if I should move to Los Angeles. He replies with an icon : )

Six months later, I’m standing in an empty apartment looking down at tanned swimmers. The landlord tells me those neighbours are friendly and work in the industry – actresses, editors and producers. He’s probably bullshitting but the apartment is clean and well located. “Twelve months?” I ask, and he hands me the lease form. “Welcome to LA,” he says. His wig is the worst I ever saw.

I spend a week furnishing my new home, buying a car, registering for screenwriting classes at UCLA. The neighbours are curious more than friendly. But Daphne from next door is very helpful, smiling with those big blue eyes. She’s 70, Jewish, born and bred in LA. She knows the score and she senses I could use a friend. Soon, she is my best one.

When I’m not attending class I do my laundry or cycle the boardwalk at Venice Beach or drive up to Malibu and swim in the breakers. I sign up for the LA marathon, why not.  Best of all, my script is going well, sci-fi with a twist. You always need a twist. My tutor Anne seems genuinely interested in helping me get it right. She knows people in the industry.

One weekend, my block buddy Daphne invites me to a barbecue at some big house on a hill to meet her family and friends. We sit on a terrace sipping beer. The other guests are real estate agents and teachers, programmers and surf dudes who say Hey instead of Hello. They’re easy company and wish me good luck. But the guy who arrives wearing a bathrobe and flip-flops is morose and distant, chews a chicken leg and seems as if he could not care less about this pale-faced Brit who took a sabbatical to develop a script. He drifts back to his buddies.

Driving home, Daphne asks if I had fun. Then she tells me that Bill-the-bathrobe recently earned $2m for co-writing a comedy, starring Jim Carrey. I stare at the traffic on Santa Monica Boulevard. Why was Bill so unfriendly? “Because in LA, you’re competition,” says Daphne.

“No way Daphne, I’m a neophyte.”

She smiles and says: “Not if you know words like that.”

The millionaire’s attitude leaves me in a state of paralysis for a few days. I stare at my laptop, convinced that my sci-fi script is weak, amateur. I should have stayed in Russia, training journalists in the sticks. At least they were friendly. Screenwriting is lonely. Why even bother?

My luck turns after my next session at UCLA. My tutor Anne introduces me to a friendly middle-aged couple visiting campus. John is an experienced movie director and Mary is a well-connected producer. They respect my spontaneous decision to move to LA. “Decent script too,” says John.

A week later, I visit their home in the Hollywood hills and inspect their stack of videos. They have worked on almost 300 TV movies. We sit at a big black table. Mary flips through my script, scribbling her red pen, telling me how to improve it. “And then what?” I ask. John pats my arm and says: “We’re going to make this movie.” I stand in silence, stunned, staring at the ocean through his big window. A gull soars on a thermal because it’s easy when you know how.

I drive back to my apartment. Is this a dream? No. I work my ass off for two weeks, night and day, swapping drafts with them by email. Finally, John is happy and Mary will chase the money. They’re confident and I’m walking around in a bathrobe and flip-flops.

They take a short vacation. I fly to Indonesia to train journalists for 2 weeks. I tell people oh sure, my first movie is in development. But I get worried when the emails from LA stop coming. Eventually, John writes and tells me he’s bored with Hollywood. He wants to teach at UCLA. Mary has applied for a job at the Gene Autry cowboy museum in Griffith Park. They need a change. My move from Russia was kind of inspiring. The idea came to them in a flash.

(This story was first published in FHM Romania, Sep 2011 and reappears here with permission of S.C. Sanoma Hearst Romania SRL)

He’s very friendly, the man standing outside our hotel in shorts and polo shirt, with pink knees and a tennis racquet. He’s waiting for his ride. We look at the blue sky and chat about the weather here in Chad – it’s warm again, 35C at 08.45 am. He reckons it will be even hotter in a few weeks. He sounds fed up, restless.

He checks his watch and suggests we should have a beer sometime, get together on the hotel terrace. He asks my room number then says: “Hey neighbour, I’m right next door!”

He climbs into a dusty jeep. I can hear him complaining to his driver. How come you’re late, every Saturday?

As for me, I’m going to get a haircut. I stand and wait for my lift, watching lizards doing push-ups in dry grass.  They stare back: what’s your problem? It’s a fair question. My problem is security: every place I go, I’m assigned an official driver who takes me from A to B. Even for a haircut, 300m down the road. Fair enough, except when he’s half an hour late.

Eventually he turns up we drive down the main street. It’s full of honking cars and grinning kids but the salon is closed so we cruise around for an alternative. I spot one that looks OK. My driver parks the car, reclines his seat and pulls his baseball cap over his eyes.

The large African lady in the salon puts down her magazine and says: “Good morning! Haircut? No problem, hop in the chair, you’re my first customer.”

I hop in the chair and notice it’s a bit dusty. I also notice she doesn’t know how to tie the shawl around my shoulders and she squints at the buttons on her electric clipper. It sounds like a broken lawn mower when she plugs it in. She runs it over my head, yanking my hair out in clumps.

“Sorry,” she says, “I don’t know where they put the best clipper.”

I catch her eye in the mirror. “They?”

She checks my head and says: “The previous owners. I just took over the business.”

We get chatting. Ella is from just across the border in Cameroon. She asks me what I’m doing in Chad. I tell her I’m a media consultant, and she seems satisfied. I don’t tell her I am mentoring local journalists whose job is to produce and distribute radio programs that will counteract radical Islamist propaganda and promote religious tolerance. I don’t tell her people are worried about the thousands of unemployed young Chadian men who are bored and disenchanted and vulnerable to the influence of charismatic preachers and sometimes drift off to Pakistan. I don’t say the Chadian government is worried about extremist ideology. Because after fifteen minutes of the lawn mower, right now I’m worried about my hair. It looks like a dog got bored chewing it.

The hairdresser pokes her tongue from the side of her mouth like pink bubble gum, while she works. I ask, politely, where she trained. She squints at her clipper again and says:

“I’m not trained. You know what? I think maybe I need spectacles.”

I stare at her in the mirror. “But you are a hairdresser, right?”

She shrugs. “Me? No, I do manicures and pedicures. Would you like one? It’s only $50.”

“But your sign outside says hairdresser. You said I was your first customer today.”

“That’s an old sign. I meant you’re my first customer ever. For a haircut, anyway.”

I look at Ella. I look in the cracked mirror. No wonder my head resembles some old carpet. Ella squints outside towards the busy street and says: “Do you know where there’s an optician?”

I ask Ella if she knows where the previous owners put the best clipper. She says: “Good idea, I’ll have another look.”

She leaves me sitting in the dusty chair with my shawl hanging. I sit in silence, gazing at my reflection. A kid taps on the window: Ca va?

Next morning, I’m my hotel room when Benjamin knocks. He works here as a cleaner, but he’s also a budding musician. Benjamin plays in a church band and once a week, I give him a short lesson on my guitar.  He’s making progress. His friends are jealous. I show him the blues scale so he can practise. Halfway through the exercise he looks at me and says:

“Mister Mike, you have a funny haircut.” I tell him about Ella and he says: “You know, those Cameroonians…”

Later, I meet the friendly tennis player on the terrace. His name is Jim. He works for an embassy, spends a fortune building model aeroplanes and is single, which doesn’t surprise me. What does surprise me is the fact that Jim has been living in room 107 of our hotel since 2007. I gawk at him and say: “Four years, are you serious?”

He looks at my head and says: “More serious than your barber.”

So I ask Jim if he knows of a good salon, or a good optician.

***

(First published in FHM Romania, June 2011. Republished by permission of S.C. Sanoma Hearst Romania SRL)

It’s the little things we remember

It’s a cold winter’s night at Anfield, home of Liverpool Football Club. My Dad and I watch the match from our seats high in the famous stadium. It’s a treat for his 70^th birthday.

We hold our red and white scarves up and sing the songs we know so well. We swap opinions about who is playing well and who is totally useless. Liverpool win and Sheffield lose. It’s a good game, but not memorable, except for two minor incidents afterwards.

First, as we’re leaving the stadium, walking down steep concrete steps, my dad loses his footing. He wobbles like he is drunk, spins on his heel and grabs the handrail. We laugh and think no more about it. Second, in the cobbled streets outside, among fans and street hawkers, Dad forgets which way is home. I point to the right but he looks puzzled. I ask him if he is drunk. He laughs. We had only a cup of tea, at halftime.

“Better hurry or we’ll miss the bus,” he says and walks on, tying his scarf. He has no idea that this is the beginning of the end. Me neither.

In the queue for the bus a guy in a flat cap is smoking a roll-up cigarette. The smell reminds me of being a kid, watching my Dad roll a cigarette in thin white paper. He would pop the lid on his shiny green and gold tin, then pluck some tobacco and tease it into shape with nimble fingers, like a magician.

He would puff the fragrant smoke, give me a wink and say: “Don’t smoke, you’ll end up in a box.”

But he seemed to like smoking. And drawing. Sometimes he would sketch a funny cartoon on an old envelope. I would watch the pencil, waiting to see what came out of the end: usually some fat lady with big boobs complaining to her stupid husband, or a dog talking to a deaf cat. Dad was good at that stuff. He could make a joke out of anything, although he usually seemed a bit fed up with life, probably due to lack of sleep.

Whenever his tobacco tin was empty, he would add it to his growing collection in our garden shed. That shed was his private territory and always a bit of a mess even though he insisted there was a system. He would point at the shelf and say:

“For example, that big tin is for my nails, that big tin of for my screws, and that little tin is for my brain.” I would look at his finger. The tip was missing, from an accident.

“When the bandages came off, it hurt like Billy O,” he would say. I had no idea who Billy O was. But I knew I was Mikey O and Dad was Gerry O.

He worked in a factory, something to do with copper wire and cables. He did the night shift for many years. Mum would make his sandwiches before left the house. Dad would say cheese-please-Louise, even though her name was Veronica. He would take his bicycle from the shed. I would stand at the gate and on starry nights he would show me The Great Bear. Then he would ride away and I would watch his little red light until it disappeared. Next morning he would come home in a grumpy mood with eyes like oyster shells. He would sleep until afternoon, but it was never enough.

Sometimes, we would go shopping together. One day he stopped outside the opticians and said: watch this, Mikey. He groped the window, groped the door handle and went inside with his eyes all screwed up like he was blind and asked the man in the white coat: Is this the opticians?

After he retired Dad found a part-time gardening job. He liked pruning bushes. He should have been a barber. He could make your garden look like a skinhead in ten minutes.

He liked football too. That’s why I took him to Anfield.

A few weeks after the Sheffield game he fell off his bike and bashed his head. Sometimes he would wobble around the house like he was drunk. On milky tea?

My sister took him for a chat with a doctor. When Dad emerged half an hour later he said: “Apparently I’m going to die. But who isn’t?”

He had been diagnosed with Motor Neurone Disease, but was spared the worst because, a few months later, he tripped on a carpet at home and bashed his head again, badly this time. An ambulance took him to hospital where he survived a heart attack but not pneumonia.

My brother was with him at the end. Dad scribbled a last request on a scrap of paper – want my radio – and died listening to a Liverpool match on his headphones.

I left Liverpool many years ago and these days my base is rural Romania. I recently received some of Dad’s ashes in one of his old tobacco boxes and last week, at midnight, I scattered them on a hill in Transylvania. The wind blew the fine grey powder all over me, as if Dad was having a final joke. Or maybe he was just saying: I’m with you.

It was a starry night, so I looked up at the Great Bear, and tried not to cry.

(This story was first published in FHM Romania, July 2011, and reappears here with permission of S.C. Sanoma Hearst Romania SRL.)

“You should stay in an expensive hotel and call room service. Or maybe not.”   

Our Land Cruiser is bumping along a dusty street past barefoot kids. We’re going to a market in N’Djamena, capital of Chad. It’s extremely hot today. But I need to buy a woollen sweater. My driver Isaac looks puzzled. “A woollen sweater, Mister Mike?” So I tell him I forgot to pack one and I get cold at night. Isaac nods. He knows just the place.

We stop and walk through narrow aisles packed with fruit and vegetables, baseball caps and gadgets from China. An elderly Arab is sipping tea from a tiny glass, squatting on a wooden stool among a pile of faded jeans and sweaters. His white turban is wrapped tight, his skin wrinkled like a dried date. He smiles as we approach. I check his sweaters: 75% polyester. I tell him in French that I would prefer wool. He reaches under his stool and pulls out a beauty. Wow. It’s an Aran, a real one. I can tell from the way it hangs over his arm, heavy and creamy-white, like a dead lamb. I check the label and, sure enough, I discover that it’s hand-knitted from County Galway, Ireland. I pull it over my head. I can smell the lanolin in the wool. Perfect fit. I want it.

The wrinkled Arab wants $16. It’s peanuts for this sweater but you should always haggle so I ask for Best Price. He says $15 and sips his tea. I try $14 and he yells: “Pay up or get lost, that’s a good one and you know it!”  I give him $15. He’s not smiling anymore, but I am, back in the Toyota. Isaac looks puzzled until I tell him why.

The traditional Aran sweater is named after the Aran Islands off the west coast of Ireland. It’s a fisherman’s sweater with distinctive patterns, usually a creamy-white colour, or báinín in Gaelic. When I was a kid in Liverpool my Mum would knit them, but not now. I show Isaac the patterns in the wool. “The honeycomb symbolises the industrious bee. The basket symbolises the fisherman’s catch. The diamond is for good luck. See?”

Isaac clicks his teeth. “You were lucky today, Mister Mike.”

He’s right, as usual, and when I drape my new sweater around my shoulders that night on the hotel terrace, I’m as happy as a dog with two tails. It feels almost brand new. I doubt it’s even been washed. But how did this beautiful Aran travel 3000 miles to the middle of Africa and arrive in such good condition?

My luck does not last long. A few days later, my Aran falls on the floor and gets ugly grey lines of dust up the front and down the sleeve. Damn. I phone room service and ask if they know how to wash wool. The little voice on the other end says: “But of course, Mister Mike. This is a 4-star hotel.”

The young guy from the laundry is very keen when he knocks at my door, but I explain just in case: “This is an Aran. You must take care. Use lukewarm water and wool-friendly soap. Squash it in a towel to remove the water. Dry it flat, over a day or two, OK?”

He assures me he knows how to wash wool and disappears down the corridor, swinging my precious sweater like a dead rabbit. I lie on my bed to watch footy. I phone my Mum and tell her about my amazing Aran and the young guy who knows how to wash it.  She replies: “What are you, nuts?”

She’s right, as usual, because the phone by my bed rings two hours later and a little voice announces: “Mister Mike, it’s ready. Shall I bring it?”

I reply: “My sweater? No way. It can’t be ready. It won’t be dry.”

“It’s dry,” says the little voice. He hangs up. I stare at the wall and say a word beginning with F. I say some more rude words when I open the door three minutes later because my Aran sweater is now the size of a teabag, except it has arms. I howl like a dying wolf. I hiss like a cornered cat. The air turns blue with my curses. The laundry guy says: “Is there a problem?” I ask him how he dried my Aran. He replies: “In the tumble dryer, like you said.” He leaves soon afterwards, before I can throw him over the balcony.

Next day I show my sweater to the manager, Claude. “Mon Dieu,” says Claude and agrees to pay me the cost of replacing it. I suggest he teach his staff how to wash wool, seeing his hotel charges $200 a night. Claude holds up my sweater and says: “It might fit a midget.”

On the Internet I find the company that made my Aran. An exact replacement costs €100. I click BUY. I receive the new one a few weeks later. It’s a beauty. The guy from the laundry writes me an apology about how he’s still learning and no piece of work is perfect. I write back: Thanks, do you know any cold midgets?

(This story was first pubished in FHM Romania, May 2011. It reappears here with kind permission of S.C. Sanoma Hearst Romania SRL ).

 ‘Revolution? We’re not angry, we’re exhausted.’

The first thing you notice in Chad is the heat. You step out of the plane at midnight and it feels like someone pushed you into an oven. The desert air thumps you in the chest and sucks oxygen from your lungs. I’ll be halfway through a six-month stay in the capital, N’Djamena, by the time you read this. Most days the temperature is 45 to 50 C. Trust me, I carry a pocket barometer. I have never seen mercury rise so fast.

The second thing you notice is their flag, the same as Romania’s. When I tell the locals I live in Romania, they smile: ah yes. But the shoe cleaner outside my hotel frowns and says: “Your president told us to change our flag. That was not nice. Do you think we should?” I tell him no, and by the way I’m not Romanian, it’s just my adopted home. He asks me how is Romania. So I tell him. He asks if I want my shoes cleaned for $7.

He does a good job. He uses petrol to clean them and three cloths with polish. His name is Jeudi. That’s ‘Thursday’ in French. I’m tempted to ask if he’s read about Friday in ‘Robinson Crusoe’, but I don’t. Jeudi tells me to check inside my shoes every morning for scorpions. “Are you serious?” I say. “About what?” says Jeudi. He looks tired, bored and I’m not surprised. He has few clients. He used to work in construction, but the work dried up. He needs contacts. Do I have any? I slip him $10 and promise to keep my ears open. “And also look in your shoes,” he says, with a smile.

Chadians are friendly but have a weary air, as if they’ve lost hope. You would probably feel the same if your country had recently emerged from a 50-year civil war. There are plenty of bullet holes in N’Djamena.

Lots of soldiers too, hundreds of them, wearing all sorts of uniforms and hats. The elite troops outside the presidential compound cradle their AK 47s and stare at you until you look away.

My driver, Abaka, is a nice guy, quiet and safe with gentle eyes. He wears a long white turban around his head and neck, like we’re riding camels, not a Land Cruiser. I’m in the back seat, asking how’s life. He says life is OK, thanks. I ask if he has kids. He says two girls, but he used to have three. I lean forward, watching the road. “How do you mean, Abaka?”

Abaka says: “I sent my eldest to visit her grandparents in our village. But after two weeks she got malaria and died. She was 12. I was very sad.”

He sounds so matter-of-fact I hardly know how to reply. I assume it happened a few years ago and he’s had time to grieve. Now he’s dodging the potholes, lost in thought. A pick-up truck overtakes us, full of soldiers in smart uniforms with guns and radios. The smallest soldier, sitting on the tailgate, gives me a hard look. He’s just a kid, 12 years old, maximum.

“When did your daughter pass away?” I ask. Abaka shrugs, as if counting in his head. Finally, he turns and says: “About seven weeks ago.”

Over the next month, three of my Chadian journalist colleagues come to work bleary- eyed, walking around in a daze. I learn that their young cousin has just died of a bad tummy; their auntie got knocked off her motorbike; their uncle passed away with meningitis. In Chad, death stalks the land. That’s life.

Life in a hotel, of course, for the privileged few, is easier. Mine has a pool, a small gym and barbecued fish. However, as I write, a mosquito the size of a wasp is howling around my room, waiting for its chance.

I’ve been watching the Arab world ignite on a flat screen TV in the hotel bar. I ask some Chadians if a revolution would happen here. They just chuckle and say: “Mister Mike, we are not angry, we are exhausted.”

One of my friends in Chad is named Laguerre, which means ‘war’. He invites me to a hip-hop show and we sit on stone steps around a low stage under an open sky, studded with more stars than I’ve ever seen. The rappers are strutting their stuff. The guy to my left is dressed all in white, chewing a little stick, his head wrapped in a turban that cascades down his shoulders. His eyes are closed and his flip-flop is rocking to the beat.

Back at the hotel, I ask Jeudi about scorpions. He says they sit on door handles, so watch out. Then he laughs. “When we were kids, we used to pick up little ones by their tails. But you have to know how or they sting.”

“Does it hurt?”

“Like hell for three days. But the big black ones are worse, Mountain Scorpions.”

“What happens if they sting you?

“You die in three minutes.”

Next morning, I check inside my shoes. Then I check the calendar.

This article was first published in FHM Romania (April 2011) and appears here by permission of S.C. Sanoma Hearst Romania SRL.

‘Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration’ (Thomas Edison)

We arrive at Baku Jazz Centre and check our coats at the door. My Azeri friend has been insisting we should come. She knows something that I don’t. Tonight’s the night, she says.

Inside, the atmosphere is Vegas 1960: waiters and cocktails, tables with lamps, a hundred chic clients talking non-stop. We watch some loud band and a cheesy crooner with a beer belly. It’s not jazz, it’s tedious and after an hour I’m bored and restless. But my friend says: No, wait.

The band leaves the stage. A skinny young man in a black shirt sits at the piano, wipes the keys and starts to play, repeating one chord like a funeral march. The audience falls silent. Eventually, I recognise the music: Mahler’s 5^th Symphony in C, the mournful Adagietto. But I’ve never heard it like this, with jazzy frills. He’s playing faster now so I stand up for a better view, hairs prickling on my neck. He’s hammering at the ivory keys like he’s possessed. My friend whispers: I told you, it’s like the piano is growing out of his hands. And she’s right.

He plays so fast his hands are now just a pink blur under the spotlight. He is some kind of genius, no question. The music is so complex, ferocious and beautiful that I almost want to cry. I don’t believe in angels but I am watching one tonight in this smoky club in Azerbaijan and nothing else matters. I stare open-mouthed at the stage. My God. Who is this guy?

His name is Isfar Sarabski and, next day, we meet in a café downtown for an interview with FHM. Isfar wears a leather bomber, black jeans and red sneakers. He has an aquiline nose and eyes that sparkle when he smiles. He stirs his drink with long and elegant fingers. He’s friendly, shy and modest, even though he won the Montreux Jazz Festival when he was 19 years old. Now do you believe me? Here’s our chat.

FHM: You work very hard onstage, Isfar. How do you feel after you play?

Isfar: Exhausted, but the audience reaction compensates.

FHM: Do you plan your repertoire, or do you improvise?

Isfar: Mostly I know what to play but sometimes I change direction

FHM: According to Wiki, your grandfather was an opera singer. And your parents?

Isfar: Mum is a violin teacher, Dad is an amateur singer. Music is in the family.

FHM: What’s your daily routine?

Isfar: I’m a music student on a Presidential scholarship. After class, I like to watch AC Milan on TV. I like PlayStation too. At night I go to a club, jazz, classical or house. I play with DJ’s sometimes. I play at least 1 or 2 hours each day. But sometimes I play 15 hours, or more.

FHM: No wonder you’re so good. How was Montreux?

Isfar: I was scared when they invited me, I did not feel ready. It’s not just a festival, it’s a contest and I wanted to win. For three months, I practised 16 hours per day.

FHM: Wow! What happened after you won?

Isfar: It was a difficult period. I was in a daze, thinking: Where do I go from here? It took me a while to get my head together. I was young, lost.

FHM: But bombarded with invitations?

Isfar: Sure, too many! I played in Hollywood and many famous jazz clubs in the USA, also Mexico, Germany, Austria, Norway, England, Belgium and Switzerland – lots of countries.

FHM: And the future?

Isfar: Next September, I’ll enrol at Berkeley School of Music in Boston. My manager in America sent them my tape and they invited me to study. I’ll skip the first two years and start at the third. I won a scholarship to cover the cost.

FHM: But eventually you’ll need a recording contract, to make a decent living?

Isfar: Yes, I have a plan. My CD will appear when I am ready, on global release. I compose classical and jazz. I know whom to play with. I want to put Azerbaijan on the jazz map.

FHM: Will you follow the example of your fellow countryman Vagif Mustafazadeh and fuse traditional, hypnotic Azeri ‘mugam’ music with jazz?

Isfar: We’ll see. Mugam is in my blood but it’s hard for people beyond Azerbaijan to grasp that music and hard to blend it with jazz.

FHM: I read that you like the American pianist Brad Mehldhau?

Isfar: My dream is to meet him! His every new album is a like a door to a new life for me. He is more than a musician. He’s a philosopher at the forefront of jazz, truly the new wave.”

FHM: And classical music?

Isfar: I like Rachmaninoff, Prokofiev and Liszt

FHM: Your favourite guitarist?

Isfar: Pat Metheny, he played with Mehldhau!

FHM: Here in Baku, why does everyone talk at concerts, even the opera and ballet?

Isfar: Good question! Azeris are family oriented. When they go out, they love to chat!

FHM: Except when you play?

Isfar: You noticed that, huh?

Yes, Isfar, we noticed.

And so will you, dear reader, one of these days.

And by the way, he’s on You Tube. To see Isfar performing live at Montreux Jazz, please paste this link into your browser: http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Isfar+Sarabski&aq=f

(This article was first published in FHM Romania March 2011 and appears here by permission of S.C. Sanoma Hearst Romania SRL)

The dark-haired woman in high heels slips a key in the door and pushes it open. I follow her into the apartment. The hall is long and wide with a glitzy chandelier.  She shows me around. The bathroom has a plunge pool big enough for six people. A black marble cocktail bar glitters in the lounge. Huge windows offer a view of the bay at dusk.  Lights twinkle from distant oil rigs on the Caspian Sea. “Big apartment,” I say, trying to sound interested, but Sabina can probably tell I’m not.

She smiles at me over her designer spectacles. “Mike, you’re new in town, but trust me, I’m an estate agent and this is not big. Not for Baku. You want big, I’ll show you big. I have apartments with 11 or 12 rooms. That’s big. Big rent, too.  Like to see?” Sabina waits. I shake my head and gaze at the oil rigs.

Five minutes later we’re riding the elevator 19 floors down to the street. Sabina drives me back into the city centre in her dusty Mercedes. She sounds tired and disappointed when we say goodbye – she has showed me twenty flats today but still no deal. “I’m here for two years, I don’t want to rush it,“ I say. Sabina shrugs and drives away. Maybe she’ll get lucky tomorrow, when we start again.

Azerbaijan got lucky after the First World War, because the Russian Empire had collapsed and it became the first modern Parliamentary republic in the Muslim world. Women in Azerbaijan won the right to vote, long before women in the USA and UK, but Azerbaijan’s flirtation with independence was short-lived, because Lenin sent his Red Army troops to grab its oil and by 1920 the country was under the spell of Communism.

Russian is still widely spoken here today but, as in Romania, Moscow’s influence has waned. The Azeri people seem confident of their new place in the world – the Communists are gone and the oil is still bubbling, bringing jobs, infrastructure and foreigners who need apartments, but not always big ones at over $2000 per month. Sorry Sabina.

Next day, a friend-of-a-friend introduces me to Ali, a fast-talking guy in a black suit. Ali works for a different estate agency and assures me we’ll find something cheaper and more central. I’m glad because Baku is a charming city of old streets and wrought-iron balconies – ‘Paris-on- the-Caspian’, some people say, although they probably forgot about the potholes in some of the pavements.

Azeris like to look smart – well-fitted jackets, shiny shoes, carefully cut hair. However, they seem to wear as much black as possible, as if they’re all going to a funeral. But their quick smiles suggest otherwise – they seem friendly, ready to help foreigners and extremely tolerant: in almost every street there are neon signs for Gay Bar, Gay Club and Gay-Time. Eventually, I spot the diacritic under the first letter. It’s not even a G, it’s a C, and Çay means tea: Tea Bar, Tea Club, Tea-Time. For a Turkic people, they don’t drink much coffee. But the men do hold hands. A lot.

Physically, Azeris are dark like Turks and like most Romanians. So, every time my Romanian wife and I go into a café or shop, people talk to her in Azeri or Russian. They cannot believe she’s not local. Nor can they believe I am wearing a brown and white tweed jacket. They eye me up and down as if to say: why not black?

Saturday morning, our man-in-black meets us outside McDonalds, on the edge of a large pedestrian square with swish fountains and modern steel sculptures. Ali has several apartments to show us and we follow him through narrow back streets dodging fast cars. Walking ahead, he points a finger. “See that guy in the Jeep? He killed 140 Armenians, single-handed.“ My head spins towards the Jeep and I see, stuck to the rear window, a colour photo of a beefy guy in combat gear carrying a huge machine gun across his shoulders. He looks like Rambo, except he’s grinning at the camera. “He went into an Armenian camp at night,” says Ali, “Shot them, stabbed them, blew them up. Eventually he got killed too, but he’s a bit of a hero, to some people. That’s why you’ll see his photo.”

“What’s his name?” I say, but Ali can’t remember. Besides, he’s on an urgent mission himself: Operation Apartment.

The first flat we visit is, allegedly, 250 years old: walls one-meter thick with high, carved ceilings and an ancient but freshly varnished wooden floor. It’s a spectacular property, like a Venetian palace, but it lacks daylight. Sorry Ali.

After an hour of zapping around the city centre, we choose a flat with a sunny lounge at a decent price, in a classy-looking block built during Stalin’s era. Later, walking through the elegant streets, I feel sad, despite my excitement at a new home in a new country. Eventually, I realize why: Baku is how Bucharest might look today, if not for Ceausescu and the people who helped him to wreck so much of Romania

***

The story above was first published in my ‘Frictiuni’ column, in FHM Romania, Feb 2011. It reappears here by kind permission of S.C Sanoma Hearst Romania SRL.

….I know some folks who are

Are you xenophobic? Anti-Semitic? Is your family, your best friend, you partner? If so, why? If not, why not? While you think of some answers, I will explain why I’m asking. It starts with an Englishman. And by the way, we English invented the concentration camp, during the Boer War.

As you may know, Jeremy Clarkson is a British celebrity and ‘New Lad’, who reviews cars that go fast and writes books that expose the limits of his intellect. A little while back, he made headlines in the UK, following his comments about Muslim women who, he claims, wear a burka on top and a thong underneath. He seemed to believe this was worth our attention. Hundreds of TV viewers phoned in, to tell him to mind his own business.

A few days later, a Romanian friend of mine – let’s call him Marcel – expressed support for Clarkson, on Facebook.

I posted a reply to Marcel, telling him I disagreed, and we got into an argument. My position was this: Clarkson enjoys popularity and power, but had forgotten his responsibilities. In other words, if you’re famous you should watch your mouth, because you are also influential. Think of Lennon and his infamous ‘Jesus’ comments in 1966, think of Bowie and his Hitler salute outside Victoria Station in 1976. In short, unless Clarkson has something helpful to say, he should stick to talking about cars and not make provocative comments in a fractured world.

Marcel became increasingly hostile online and asked me if, during my recent 6 months in Sudan, I had ‘’turned Muslim.” Next, Marcel tells me he prefers Jeremy “to some asshole in a suicide belt.” I replied that such comments revealed a superficial grasp of international politics. Next, Marcel said he did not buy my “hypocrite shit” and suggested I should leave “comfortable Bucharest and move to Gaza.” Since the power of his argument was so overwhelming, I said goodbye and deleted him from my list of friends. With friends like that, who needs an enema?

Next day, Marcel emailed me: “Mike, sorry if you think I’m a dickhead, but like many Romanians, I am xenophobic, homophobic and I don’t much like Roma. I cannot help it.” I told Marcel we were wasting our time and should stick to talking about football.

Until that point, it had never crossed my mind that Marcel might be a dickhead. I just considered him a bit myopic, someone who needed to watch less TV and read more widely. I was wondering about all this when the story took a new turn.

The problem with them and the problem with us.

My friend Valerie contacted me. She had just had a nasty argument on Facebook with… Guess Who. This time Marcel had been making nasty anti-Semitic comments about a Romanian coin showing an Orthodox cleric. I won’t repeat them here.

It seems Marcel lost some more friends on FB and I’m not surprised, because it seems to me that racists and xenophobes are about as convincing as people who believe the earth is flat.

But I was intrigued by his antipathy to Jews and asked Valerie if she could shed some light on the issue, for two reasons. First, because she has family in Romania, and second, because I’ve encountered anti-Semitism in Romania quite a few times, over the years, even in young people. Puzzles me no end, that.

Anyway, Valerie reckons that anti-Semitism is rooted in Romania’s past, particularly the early days of the Communist takeover. She says her own parents suffered because of this and they ‘cannot forgive’. It still causes arguments at home.

It rings a bell, because I too know how it feels to be angry with a different tribe. In my case, I reckon the British government got what was coming in Northern Ireland. I say that, not because my great grandparents were Irish Catholics, or because Protestants spat on my Dad on as a kid in Liverpool, but because I’m pro-democracy and the British government, for 200 years, was not very fair to Catholics in Northern Ireland. But time moves on, the duty of the next generations is to build bridges, and I was never anti-Protestant. I played football with them every day, as a kid.

Which brings us back to Marcel. Why does an educated, middle-class Romanian adult think it’s OK, even cool, to slam Muslims and Jews, and anyone else who does not belong in his ‘civilised’ world? How do anti-Semites in Romania feel about the Israeli doctors who rushed to help the survivors of the recent horrific fire at the Giulesti maternity unit – would they say it was for the money?

There’s a twist too – Marcel asked me, when I was in Sudan, to bring some banknotes for his collection, because he is ‘fascinated by foreign countries’. Just not by the people who live in them, perhaps.

To conclude, and before any of you tell me to get out of your country, consider this: America can do without Sarah Palin’s down-home, disingenuous racism, the UK can do without the Nazi-mindset of the English Defence League, and Romania can do without xenophobia. It reduces us all and the country has enough problems. So, guys and girls, please, rise above.

By the way, I’ve invented a new word: Romaphobia. Remember where you read it first, here on the back page of FHM. Perhaps we’ll discuss it some time. Next month: why I hate Martians.

First published in ‘FHM Romania’ magazine, Oct 2010. Republished here by kind permission of SC Sanoma Hearst Romania SRL

How many hats do you own? I don’t mean baseball caps or fleecy bonnets. I mean a Panama for summer, a tweed cap for autumn, and perhaps something elegant for special events? While you are counting, here’s my own answer: zero, because I can never find a hat that fits. Recently, however, I was walking along the cobbles of Strada Sepcari behind Hanul Manuc in the centre of Bucharest and spotted a little shop with a big sign: Palarii. The hats inside were well made in various styles, reasonably priced and, of course, none fitted me. The friendly owner Mr. Nicolae ‘Nicu’ Zdarco measured my head and since that memorable day, I have bought several more and we’ve had some nice conversations. Next time you are in Bucharest, pay Nicu a visit and ask him: ‘How are you doing?’ He usually replies: ‘I’m doing hats’ He has a mischievous smile, a dry wit and lots of stories from a long career. Here’s a selection of my questions, and his answers.

FHM: Why should a man wear a hat?

Nicu: A hat strikes an elegant note and completes your look

FHM: In old movies, almost every man wore a hat, whether he was a cowboy, a gangster or a guy selling newspapers, but not today. Why did hats go out of fashion?

Nicu: “In Romania, I think it was due to Communism. A smart hat looked too bourgeois, anti-regime, you would get booed on the street. Only Russian hats and berets were appropriate. Towards the end of Communism, our VIPs began to travel abroad and hats were OK again.”

FHM: How did you get into the trade?

Nicu: “I was one of 11 children living in Mierea Bilnicii. Times were hard in our village so I came to Bucharest to live with my uncle. I trained four years as an apprentice hat-maker, unpaid. During the Second World War, when the bombs were falling, I used to cry because the boss wanted to send me back to the village. I did not want to go. I loved my work, I still do. When I was 20, the boss was sent to the Front and got killed, I was the oldest hat-maker in our atelier, and took over his job. I served 3 years in the army but when I got out, the Communists had nationalised the trade. I was nominated to run a co-operative. I was the youngest supervisor.”

FHM: How did you survive, if most hats were considered bourgeois?

Nicu: “We diversified and made bed linen, ties, baby clothes, whatever would sell. After Communism, I got invited on national TV and showed 20 of my hats. Next day, I got lots of orders, there was a queue halfway up the street. Synthetic fur hats were very popular, back then.”

FHM: What skill is most important in this job?

Nicu: “You have to enjoy the work. What I like most is when someone leaves my shop happy. I make hats for men and women, rich and poor. It’s all about making the right hat and making them smile.”

FHM: How many styles do you know?

Nicu: “For men, at least 20, not including the hats I make for stage and screen. Over the years, I’ve made hats for some of our great actors – Beligan, Birlic, Puiu Calinescu, Giugaru. The bowler is the most difficult, it takes skill, observation, years of practice.”

FHM: Where does the best material come from?

Nicu: “The best black felt, and the best hats, are made from rabbit fur in the Czech Republic. Timisoara used to have a good wool felt factory but it closed down. Chinese imports are OK but nothing beats traditional skill and a personal service. I’m the only hatter in Romania who makes real gabori hats for the Roma, the gypsies. One day, some of them were passing through my home village and my brother asked where they got such nice hats. The gypsies told him: “We have our special guy in Bucharest, Uncle Nicu!”

FHM: You’re 83 with no apprentice, are you concerned your skills will not be passed on?

Nicu: “Yes, and I’m one of the last people in Romania doing this job. It’s the same for many of our tailors, dressmakers and shoemakers. I’ve had lads come to learn, but they leave after a few months. I wish someone would stick at it but they want jobs that bring fast money.”

FHM: Can any man wear any hat?

Nicu: “Certain styles fit certain heads. My job is to suggest the best match. A hat should fit not just physically, but also in terms of character. If people laugh at my clients in the street, that’s bad for them and for me. Then again, some people have no idea how to wear a hat, like these idiots with baseball caps backwards.”

By the way, dear reader, I’m writing this wearing my new black bowler. It’s stylish, hand made by Uncle Nicu of Bucharest and, for once in my life, it fits. As we say in English, if you want to get ahead, get a hat!

(This story was first published in  FHM Romania, issue November 2010, and reappears here by kind permission of SC Sanoma Hearst Romania SRL. )

Have you ever worked abroad? If not, you probably know someone who has. Someone like Cristi, maybe, my favourite Bucharest cabbie. He’s an excellent driver, punctual and polite. Back in 2005, all he wanted to do was work abroad.  But it was not so easy. Over a Coke in a café, Cristi explains why….

Cristi: I was 26 my friend was working in Spain and asked if I was interested. It sounded good, why not? I just wanted to get away (m-am dus sa scap). Next thing I know, I’m on a bus to Valencia with four friends – three lads and a girl.  At the time, Romania was not in the EU so at the Spanish border the cops took lots of us off the bus, because we had no formal invitations or permits. We had only reservations for a hotel in Valencia, like tourists.

FHM: So how did you get into Spain?

Cristi: We went to a train station, where a French calauza offered to get us into Spain for 150 euros each. I accepted but my friends declined, they wanted to try by train. I went with the calauza and three strangers from the bus. We put our bags in his car and drove to a border crossing used by French and Spanish locals. We got out of his car before the border with little rucksacks. Nobody suspected us, there were no cops. The calauza followed with our bags, we met on the other side.

FHM: Success?

Cristi: Not quite. I took a train to Barca then a bus to Valencia, arriving at 1am. When I got off the bus my big bag had vanished. It belonged to my cousin and I did not want to lose it, so I grabbed a bag that looked like mine. I took a cab to the hotel and opened the bag. The clothes were better than the ones I had lost and fitted me well!

FHM: So you’re well dressed but unemployed. What next?

Cristi: We looked for work on building sites but we needed papers. We stayed 1 month in that hotel until a Romanian helped us rent a place in Castelleon. We moved there and after 6 weeks I got a job renovating and building houses. At weekends we’d go to Valencia for the beach, visit the zoo and stuff.

FHM: Did you save?

Cristi: Yes, my brother came too, we worked together, saved up and bought land outside Bucuresti, we hope to build a house.

FHM: Did you learn Spanish?

Cristi: In 3 months, on the street and watching TV!

FHM: Did you mix with locals?

Cristi: We Romanians tended to stick together. We would go bowling or play billiards. The Spanish preferred bars and nightclubs.

FHM: Did you hope to settle?
Cristi: No, I knew everything has a beginning and an end. After 5 years the crisis hit so I came home to learn to be a truck/bus driver.

FHM: How did you feel to be back in Romania?

Cristi: The traffic seemed aggressive. I prefer to drive properly, defensively.

In Spain it was a lot calmer.

FHM: What would you say to a young person who fancies working in Spain?

Cristi: It’s hard without good contacts. I would say: stay in school, education is important.

FHM: Did you go to bullfights?

Cristi: Beautiful!

FHM: Not violent?

Cristi: Not really, it’s a Spanish tradition, same as our Christmas pigs!

FHM: But Romanians kill the pig for food, not for sport.

Cristi: The Spanish eat the beef! Besides, bullrings provide jobs.

FHM: And Spanish cuisine?

Cristi: Excellent. I tried to cook seafood paella but it’s tricky.

FHM: How do you like your job in Romania?
Cristi: Awful traffic, bad drivers, no parking spaces for taxis, si politia sta pe capu nostru cu amenzile. Not enough clients, lots of stress. On Friday nights, when people go partying I must work. I have no choice, so I’m training to be a truck driver.

FHM: How is it going?

Cristi: I paid for my tuition but halfway through my instructor said we should stop because I was good enough. I was disappointed. He’s lazy. So, I told him that if I don’t feel confident about my test I’ll come back for more lessons, because he owes me. I’m 31, been driving 13 years, but a truck is not a car.

FHM: Would you try to bribe the police to pass your truck test?

Cristi: Never. Years ago, I failed my car test 3 times and passed on the 4^th attempt. But I would rather do that and be confident of my skills than to pay spaga, pass first time and have no skills.

FHM: So, your ambitions?

Cristi: To drive lorries around Europe, especially Spain – and to live in Romania, in a house I will build myself.

FHM: Marry a Spanish beauty?

Cristi: No,  because in Spain, the woman rules the roost, she wears the trousers. I would want a more equal relationship.

FHM: But isn’t it the same in Romania?

Cristi shrugs, smiles and sips his cold Coke.

This story first appeared in FHM Romania, Dec 2011, and reappears here by kind permission of SRC Sanoma Hearst Romania SRL

I climb the steps of the Greyhound bus in New York, destination Denver. The driver smiles and checks my ticket. It unfolds like a paper concertina, tumbling to my knees. “Wow,” he says, “Colorado? Long ride, son. I’ll take you as far as Pittsburgh. You’re English? Sit up front, best view.”

I follow his advice and sit gawping at America through the big window. It’s like TV, but real. I’m feeling pleased with myself. I’m 18 years old, travelling to a summer job on a construction site in the Rockies. Americans are friendly, no airs and graces.

“First visit?” says the driver.

I smile and tell him yup, like a cowboy in the movies. He smiles back.

Halfway to Pittsburgh, we stop at Philadelphia. The city looks cold and the bus station seems to attract the wrong sort of people – beggars and bums - or so my driver tells me. By now we’re buddies and he asks for a favour. He’s short of cash, needs a 6-pack of Coors for later, but he has to see his supervisor before we drive on. “Could you buy it for me, and I’ll settle up when you get back onboard? You’ll see a store one block up. We’ve got 20 minutes, plenty of time.”

“Sure,” I say, and hop off the bus.

The owner of the liquor store seems too impressed with my accent to check my age. I buy the beer and stroll around the block, stretching my legs, looking at the traffic, the people, the ads. It’s quite different to the UK.

When I climb back on the bus, there’s a different guy in the driver’s seat. He sees the beer and says: “You can’t bring that on a Greyhound.”

“It’s for the driver,” I tell him.

“He’s all done for the day,” he says, “I’m your driver now and I leave in three minutes. If you want to ride in my bus, dump the booze.”

“But the other driver told me he would pay me back.”

“And you believed him,” says the new driver.

I spend the next two minutes standing outside the bus, with the 6-pack at my feet, waiting for my friendly driver, but he doesn’t come to settle his debt. He comes for his beer, of course, and picks it up from the sidewalk. But by that time, I’m watching from the back of the bus, heading for Colorado. He waves and grins, as if to say: “Have a good day, sucker.”

I sit and curse my stupidity. I must be the biggest dope in the world. Not clever like him. My guard was down. It won’t happen again.

We stop in Chicago at 7 am and two passengers get off our bus for a walk. They return, 30 minutes later, looking like something the cat dragged in, dazed and dishevelled. They got mugged. So, I guess I’m lucky.

All this happened many years ago, when America was more dangerous than now, especially in big cities like Chicago, and like New York, where Mayor Rudi Giuliani and his ‘zero tolerance’ campaign had yet to take effect.

Fast forward to Bucharest, 15 years later. I’m older, wiser and new in town. I’m teaching journalism. Romanians remind me of people in my hometown Liverpool – they’re sharp, sentimental, they’ll give you the shirt off their back if you need it. I love them. I want to stay as long as I can.

One night, I’m out drinking with my trainees. They teach me to say HIGH-SAH-NEM-BAHTAM. I have no idea what it means but the beer keeps coming. Soon our table is full of empty bottles and I learn my next phrase: LOO-ATTZ-MORTZI-VAH-ROG. This time, the bottles are whisked away.

The handsome young dude sitting next to me is the brother of one of my best trainees. He’s quite camp, he’s been giving me the eye all evening and swapping places until he’s up close and personal. I think he might be gay. “Hi, Mike,” he says, “I’m Lucian.”

“Hello Lucian, I’m drunk.”

Lucian sounds intelligent, more intelligent than me right now. He’s a young businessman. He sells antiques, home and abroad. Romania, you see, is full of beautiful old furniture that sells well in Bucharest, Paris and London.

“I never knew that, Lucian.”

Lucian sips orange juice and says: “There’s probably lots you don’t know about Romania.”

By the end of the night, I’ve agreed to lend Lucian $200 to buy a rare cupboard from Sibiu. I can afford it. He will sell it in Milan for $2000, and I’ll get $400. We go back to my bloc, I give him the cash and he vanishes.

Next day, in the seminar room, I tell his sister Doina. Her mouth drops open. “You did what?” she says. She tells me Lucian is a fantasist, a conman. That’s when I remember the frayed cuffs on his shirt. I did wonder. It takes Doina 2 months to get my $200 back.

By the way, last night, I got an email from this cool guy in Nigeria….

ex Africa semper aliquid novi

It’s cool where I’m living at the moment, but only after I switch on the AC. In June, temperatures can reach 50C. It’s so hot we put suntan oil on the car. All the donkeys wear Ray Bans. OK, maybe not all of them, but welcome to Sudan, Africa. I can see the Sahara from my balcony. Almost.

A Romanian friend came round last night. He works for the UN.  We were swapping tales. Here’s one he told me, from south Sudan. True story.

Imagine you’re a middle-aged African man. Business is booming. You own a big house and drive around town in a flash car with the window down, showing your Rolex. The locals gawp: We ride donkeys and that smartass drives a Lexus?

One day you stop at traffic lights. A beggar comes up to your car. The good news is he likes your Rolex. The bad news is he pulls out a machete and chops your forearm, just above the wrist. But the blow is not clean. “Damn,” he says and puts his foot on the side of the car while he tries to pull your hand off. He fails, but you won’t be playing piano for a while.

“Scary, huh?” says my Romanian friend. Then it’s my turn. So I tell him about the scariest thing I ever heard in Africa.

Picture this. I’m living in Congo and a gang of friends hire a big jet to fly to Zambia for the weekend. Wanna come? You bet. Off we go.

We stay in a hotel on the Zambezi River. The itinerary is flexible: visit Victoria Falls, then swim in the pool, go quad biking, rafting, whatever.

I choose a kayak trip. My guide is Tony, a white Zimbabwean. He’s a computer expert who fled the Mugabe regime. He looks fit and reliable in his green uniform. “I work as a tour guide to relax at weekends,” he says.

The other kayaker is Dr. Sanjay, an Indian medic who works in Livingstone, a local town. He’s overweight in a sweaty shirt and a big hat. We set off, driving in a jeep alongside the river to avoid the rapids.

I chat with Dr. Sanjay, who treats people with HIV and malaria. “Six out of ten Zambians have HIV,” he says, “But the last time I explained to a patient that he was infected, he tried to strangle me. So, these days, if my patients have HIV, I treat them for HIV, but I tell them they have ‘flu.”

“Is that ethical?” I ask, “What if they infect their partners? What about the Hippocratic Oath?”

Dr. Sanjay smiles. “I’d prefer to tell lies and stay alive.”

Soon we’re gliding down the Zambezi in our three kayaks. We stay close to the riverbank and Tony points at uprooted trees, broken fences, squashed grass. “Damage caused by elephants,” he says, “They go where they want, wreck farms.” Next, we pass a family of hippo bobbing in the water. “Very dangerous,” says Tony.

It’s good to know. We smile at the hippo. They don’t smile back.

“Any crocodiles?” I ask. Tony shrugs and says: “Don’t worry, their favourite food is dead hippo, floating in the water, although sometimes they’ll attack a kayak. Anyone can make a mistake, right?”

Tony grins at us but the Zambezi River no longer seems quite so idyllic.

“Actually,” he says, “I’ve heard there’s a pregnant croc around, looking for some quiet place to lay her eggs. So keep your eyes open, guys.”

I watch the water and the riverbank. It all looks like a Tarzan film. But there’s no croc, just sun and silver ripples. Tony is talking about plants and, little by little, it’s nice again on the Zambezi. Oh, look, a cute monkey.

At the next bend, I spot a dead tree trunk, halfway up the bank. It looks like it has been hit by lightning, all grey and cracked. The tree trunk rises up on four short legs, zigzags down to the river and slips into the water. I look at Sanjay. We look at Tony. “Ah,” he says, “There she is.”

The crocodile is about four meters long. I watch her swim under my kayak, flicking her tail, gently, left and right.

“Holy Mother of God,” says Dr. Sanjay.

I’m struck dumb. I have not been this scared since the day I was chased by a baying mob of Chelsea fans around the London Underground. At the time, I was 13 years old and stuffing my Liverpool scarf down my pants.

“Don’t worry,” says Tony, “She’s just checking us out. She’ll find a quieter spot.”

We paddle on, passing two men spearing fish from a narrow canoe. They are naked, pre-historic, a vision from the dawn of time. Women are cooking over fires in a clearing.

Later, back at the hotel, I sip a drink and watch a huge red fireball on the horizon. It’s the most spectacular sunset I have ever seen.

My friends from Kinshasa are swapping stories of rafting and bungee jumping. I tell them about the pregnant croc and they whistle: wow.

But I keep Dr. Sanjay’s anecdote about HIV to myself. I don’t want to spoil their holiday. It is the scariest thing I heard about Africa, so far.

***

< This column first appeared in FHM Romania, May 2010. My thanks to and S.C. Sanoma Hearst Romania SRL and Angela Nicoara.

(Author’s note: This story was first published in FHM Romania, December 2009)

December? Another year, almost over? Hard to believe, but I’m looking on the bright side: children will soon be gazing at Christmas lights; Three Wise Men will be riding their donkeys, and, of course, two unwise men will be standing in honking traffic on a slippery Romanian street, arguing about who caused the accident that just mashed their precious cars. They’ll blame each other or the snow that made them skid when they jammed on their brakes because… YOU are a bad driver. Who me? No way, Domnule.

Ask a western European what they think of Romanian drivers and most will not be impressed. Why? Because to us it seems that too many drive too fast and lack road sense. In other words, rather than driving defensively to anticipate trouble, too many drive aggressively and cause it. Before you get upset with such opinions, please consider and compare road accident fatalities per million inhabitants: 45 for Holland, 50 for Switzerland, 54 for UK, 115 in Romania*. It’s the same for most Balkan countries: far more people die on these roads than on the roads in Western Europe. This affects cyclists and pedestrians too. Romania’s roads are not very safe; they are dangerous and stressful places. Why?

A driving instructor once told a friend of mine  – a Bucharest woman – how to pass her test: “Just sleep with me, like most of my clients.” Shocked, the woman replied: “That’s all?” The instructor nodded, so she asked: “Can I interview you? I’m a TV reporter. This is a good story.”  The instructor got worried: “Just joking, Miss.”

Let’s hope so, eh? Meanwhile, here’s another example to think about.

Andreea is a buddy of mine, a sensitive and intelligent young woman with a bright future, she hopes. Perhaps that’s why she is puzzled by the advice from her driving instructor in Constanta. You should read her emails:

“Mike, what can I do? He’s insane. In the theory class he jumps from subject to subject, nobody can keep up. In the car, he presses the accelerator even though I ask him not to, because I’m nervous. He breaks the speed limit. He makes oncoming drivers swerve into the ditch and says I’m not waiting behind that caruta. Once we were doing 100 in an 80 zone, behind a new driver: I hate these damn beginners, he said then yelled from the window: who taught you?”

According to Andreea, the guy works 8 am to 9 pm and has stomach problems because of the stress. I suggested she find a new instructor, poor girl.

Last week I asked a taxi driver to slow down. He replied: “I’ve been driving fifteen years, no accidents.” I replied: “So why waste your money on insurance?” He told me: “Because of the law.” Then I said: “What about the law that you cannot drive 120 kph on this street?” He turned the radio up.

My pal Sorin is 27 and has lived in New York for 5 years. He came back recently and drove to the Black Sea. When he returned to Bucharest, he said: “What’s happened to Romanian drivers? On that Sun Motorway, they’re all trying to prove who’s got the fastest car, like kids or something. Nuts.”

I suspect the real reason is not insanity but post-Communist Balkan machismo: on Romania’s roads, rules are for wimps? I apologise to – and sympathise with – all drivers who obey them. Nice guys finish last, eh?

I recently asked a Bucharest traffic cop about vitezomanii on motorbikes, driving past Parliament on one wheel, like they belong in a circus. “We lack manpower,” he told me, “Not enough cops.” How ironic – what would happen if those boy-racers tried the same trick in Washington, London or Paris, 100m from the nation’s lawmakers? I wrote to my mayor asking for speed bumps. No reply three months later, despite a cyclist being killed on a crossing near the Senate.

No doubt, it’s similar in Cluj and Iasi, Tulcea and Piatra Neamt, or any town or village in between. It worries me, because I know how easy it is to come unstuck. In 1996, I drove from Sarajevo to Braila – about 500 miles – in 28 hours, non-stop except for food. King of the Road in my big old Merc, right? Wrong. By the time I reached Braila, I was wired on coffee and lack of sleep. One mile from my destination, the truck driver behind was beeping, flashing lights, desperate to overtake on a narrow road. I accelerated, but he still wasn’t happy. I twisted my mirror to send his beams back. Suddenly, the truck in front braked hard. Oh f**k. I skidded 75m, rammed into it and wrecked my bonnet and radiator. I did not go through the windscreen because I wear a belt. When the cops came, the driver in front blamed the caruta (horse and cart) farther ahead. I blamed Romania. But first I blamed myself.

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, and, if you drive, please watch your speed and wear a belt. That way, we might both still be here this time next year.

It was my third visit to Pineapple Nightclub. I needed a drummer and the guy onstage seemed promising – never missing a beat, young and athletic. Cool too, always in a different baseball hat, worn sideways. I had watched him a few times and I was ready to make my offer, but I was wary. A good musician will be in demand, they’ll have obligations, and if your obligation is to pay him, you better honour it, especially in a place like Kigali.

Pineapple was almost empty, even though it was Thursday night. Cobra the big Burundian manager noticed me at the bar. As usual, he wore a Hawaiian shirt and a cynical grin. “So Mike, what about this new band you promised me?”

“Soon,” I replied, “Don’t worry, Pineapple will be packed.”

“One fine day,” said Cobra, wiping a glass.

The musicians took a break from playing Celine Dion and the drummer came to get a drink. I was the only white guy at the bar. We got chatting. Maybe he was curious. Maybe it was destiny. His name was Voltage and he had scar on his bicep like a Rottweiler had bitten it. I bought him a beer, told him I liked his playing, and waited. If he was arrogant, forget it. Luckily for me he was modest, and puzzled. “Thanks, my friend. But start a new band in Kigali?”

“That’s my plan. Blues, soul, rock. There’s a gap in the market. With all respect, do you see anyone dancing? Look around, the floor is empty.”

“What gap?“ said Voltage, ”Anyway, it’s early.”

“It’s almost midnight,” I said, “The white folks, the muzungus, are home in bed.”

Voltage shrugged. “My friend, if you need a drummer, I need the work. Just pay me what you can. But forget muzungus. Not here.”

I leaned closer. “That’s the gap.”

Within weeks we were firm friends, practising hard. Within six months, we were the biggest band in Kigali – 12 musicians, including brass. Our name was Blak Blu Zungu: black folks playing blues with white folks. Our secret was simple: all the ex-pats living in Kigali were desperate to let off steam and as soon as they started dancing to our tight covers of James Brown and Etta James, the relatively conservative locals joined the party and Cobra’s smile stretched from his ears to his wallet, except when he ran out of beer.

Most of our earnings went to our pro black musicians like Voltage, and Big Mary with her Kampala cool and voice like Aretha Franklin. We also had Cleve, a beefy Jamaican ex-boxer, who sang like Otis Redding. The rest of us had day jobs and played for the craic, as the Irish say. But it was more than just fun, because if you believe – like Van Morrison – in the healing power of music, then our band was perhaps part of Kigali’s healing. You know about 1994, right? Three months of machete mayhem when radical Hutus slaughtered 100,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus, the fastest genocide in history, faster than the Nazi Holocaust.

By now, Rwanda was calm, generally peaceful. President Paul Kagame – a Tutsi – was insisting that ethnic terms such as ‘Tutsi’ or ‘Hutu’ should no longer apply, because his people were all Rwandans together. If only it were true.

One night after a show, I invited Voltage to a hip jazz bar called Liberty, on a hill in a posh part of town, full of tall and beautiful Tutsi women with their elegant Tutsi men in fine suits. Voltage was quieter than usual, tense even, especially when the well-dressed manager invited himself to our table, full of compliments, although he ignored my shy friend.

“Mr Mike, I’ve seen you play guitar. Perhaps your band will play here. May I offer you a drink?”

“Thank you, we’ll have a beer each, please.”

The manager raised an eyebrow. “You expect me to buy a beer for HIM?”

“He’s my drummer,” I replied. Voltage got his beer and wandered off to watch the band. I got into a tricky conversation with the Liberty manager, who told me he loathed Hutus and was glad he had killed some. He had been in Kagame’s army in ’94, which had chased the radical Hutus into Congo, ending the genocide.

Later that night, I gave Voltage a ride home. We chatted about the band, about life, and finally, about the genocide. “I saw it happen, Mike. Look at my flat nose. I’m Hutu, like my Dad. But we helped Tutsis to escape. The radicals found out, chopped him to death. I got shot in the arm, woke covered in blood, but I hid and I survived. That manager at Liberty? He can see I’m Hutu, but that’s all he can see. This country will never change.”

I left Rwanda in 2005. I recently saw President Kagame on BBC, reasserting that Rwanda is a peaceful place where ethnic labels no longer apply. Voltage is still playing drums and enjoying his beer, but not in the trendy Tutsi bar on a hill.

(Author’s note: This story was first published in FHM Romania, January 2010. Some names have been changed. Republished here by kind permission of S.C Sanoma Hearst Romania SRL).

CO-PILOT

It’s Saturday 8^th April 2000. I’m strapping myself into the passenger seat of my buddy’s yellow sports car. He turns the ignition key and listens. The engine growls like a tiger waiting to leave its cage.

“How fast does this thing go?” I say.

Mark gives me one of his laconic smiles. “It’s a Lancia Delta HPE, Mike.”

He visited me in Romania once and saw my Dacia papuc. He smiled then too.

Soon we’re zooming out of central London towards the south coast. We’ve got the sun in our eyes, and The Clash on CD. We like The Clash. We saw them, live, in the early days. They still sound good.

Mark and I have been mates since we met in 1977. We’re different. He’s southern, posh school, rich family. I’m northern, state school, working class. But we’re similar. We love books and writing, football and music. In the ‘80s, we were in bands together, wannabe punk stars. Those bonds don’t break. Now I teach journalists around the world and he’s a successful businessman. He asks if I miss being a reporter. I tell him no. I ask him if he misses rock and roll, he says not much. He’s more into rallies now.

“Ever been a co-pilot before?” he says, as we cross the Thames.

“No,” I reply, ”I’m a rookie. What will I have to do?”

“Just enjoy the ride,” he says, and passes me a leaflet about our destination.

I read the leaflet. It says Goodwood Circuit is one of the most famous in England, a home for speed-lovers since 1948. Graham Hill made his debut here and went on to become F1 World Champion. Stirling Moss crashed a Lotus here in 1962 and had to retire, paralyzed. Bruce McLaren died on a test drive in 1970. Stuff like that. I stop reading and listen to Brand New Cadillac. We pull in at a garage and I buy a disposable camera for £5; it’s a beautiful morning. Maybe I’ll take some shots. Focus on the positive.

We arrive at Goodwood at 8.30. The track has white wooden fences, a grandstand, and green fields all around – very English. I snap some photos. The other rally drivers are standing in tight groups, sipping coffee. A mechanic is checking tyres, brakes, whatever. I take more photos, gawping like a tourist. Every car is a Lancia. “Because it’s Lancia Day,” says Mark, signing a form. He’s registered. He’s ready. He’s joking with the other drivers. I’m wondering why I’m here. Any minute now I’ll be zapping around Goodwood, poo-ing my Pampers. I hear an engine and look up.

A small plane is droning through the blue sky of West Sussex. Looks familiar, distinctive wings, like it just flew out of a film about the Second World War. “That’s a Spitfire,” says one of the drivers, sucking on his pipe, “Vintage. 2 seats. Rare bird.”

Spitfires stopped Hitler invading Britain in 1940. They are iconic, part of our national culture. We like Spitfires. I take some photos of it coming in low, engine coughing. It turns sharply and disappears behind the grandstand towards tall trees. We hear a dry crunch, wood snapping. Then we see the smoke. Curious, we walk out of the pits. The Spitfire is 500m away in a field, upside down with its cockpit in flames and I’m running towards it.

I was never good at hurdles, but I’m vaulting white fences like an Olympian. Some of the other guys are running too, I can hear their shouts behind me. A red Land Rover tears across the grass ahead of us, siren wailing, lights flashing.

Ten of us reach the plane and try to lift the tail to free the pilots. One of them is dead already, mashed and bloody, head split open. The other guy is groaning, but we can’t lift the fuselage and the emergency guys are in charge now. There’s nothing I can do, but the sun is good and I have a camera. Once a journalist, always a journalist? I whip it out and start snapping, walking quickly the burning plane. Stop and shoot. A guy in uniform asks me to back off, and I do. I’ve got what I need. Maybe this is why I am here.

The rally at Goodwood is cancelled that day, out of respect. Mark and I drive back to London, hardly speaking. I call some newspapers from his flat. “No thanks,” a top editor says, “I got pictures already of the plane covered in tarpaulin. Our photographer was there half an hour after it crashed.” I tell him I’ve got pictures of the plane in flames, of the two pilots, because I was there one minute after it crashed. “When can I see them?” he says.

Both of those aviators died in that field. My photos appeared in seven national newspapers the next day. The official investigators asked for copies and used them to calculate angle, distance, and impact. They reckoned the rookie co-pilot caused the crash.

(This story first appeared as my monthly column ‘Frictiuni’, in FHM Romania, April 2010. My thanks to Editor Eddie Tone and S.C Sanoma Hearst Romania SRL for permission.)

“Your wife decided to become a stripper?” I asked my friend, wondering about how that might have affected his status as a university professor. Dave nodded and smiled, briefly.

“My students would say ‘Dr. Dave, we saw your wife last night’. I knew they meant  ‘all of her’. Soon I was a laughing stock. Eventually, I divorced her.”

He told me this sitting on a large shaded terrace in Kigali, where beautiful yellow flowers hung over our heads. My wife and I were renting the house for a couple of years. I was working for an NGO. We had a nice dog. I was in a blues band. Life was good. Dave the academic had become our friend.

Every year since the genocide, he would visit Rwanda from his home in California to lecture voluntarily on journalism in Butare, a town in the south where, in 1994, some Rwandan professors had organised massacres of their own students. He was American. Perhaps he felt guilty about Bill Clinton’s failure to intervene. He loved Rwanda and was learning the language, bit by bit.

He was quite a character: 55 years old, teetotal, non-smoker, global cyclist and fit as hell. He liked target shooting and had climbed Kilimanjaro. Sharp as a razor and best of all, he was fun. Crack a joke and he’d crack two back.

But today he was in pain. He had twisted his back that morning, reaching for the alarm clock in his hotel room. The dull ache now seemed a source of considerable irritation, just like his ex-wife, although I found her rather more interesting.

“Did she ever explain?” I asked.

“Not really, actions speak louder than words.”

“Meaning?”

“One day she collected me from the airport, LAX. I couldn’t believe my eyes: she had new tits, like nuclear warheads. Then she got her lips done and became a waitress. Next thing I know, she’s pole dancing with $300 stuffed in her thong. Fun for everyone on campus, except me. Now I’m with Mary. She’s a lawyer. I needed one. Christ, my back is killing me. Glad I’m on my way home.”

We met again that night at his hotel, where the British Embassy was throwing a party for the Queen’s birthday. The lavish event coincided with the arrival of a film crew from the UK for ‘Shooting Dogs’ with John Hurt and Hugh Dancy. The stars wandered the party, Hollywood friendly. Champagne flowed and everyone clapped the speeches for Liz 2: God Save the Queen. Smiles all round. Except Dave, who spent the evening bent double with his hands on his knees, staring at the neatly clipped lawn like a best man who had lost the wedding ring.

“I need painkillers,” he growled.

“You need a medic,” replied my wife.

“Good idea. I’ll phone from my room. Night, folks.”

Then he shuffled towards the elevator, twisted like a corkscrew in his tux.

Early next day, he rang us with an update and a request. “I’ll see the doctor at 11 and check out of the hotel at 12. Can I spend the afternoon on your sofa? My flight to the States is at 7pm.” No problem Dr. Dave.

Around lunchtime, he hobbled out of a taxi like he’d been shot in the ass with a bazooka. ”Belgian doctor stuck three needles in me. Where’s your sofa?”

We woke Dave at 5pm and drove him to Kigali airport. When we dropped him at the check-in, his face had lost its usual rosy glow. He looked pale, exhausted. Most of all, he looked worried.

“I have to chair a conference when I get back. But this is an 18-hour flight with three stops, economy all the way, no legroom. Jesus, it’s going to kill me.”

We asked him to send an email when he landed. We helped him with his bags and told him he would be ok. But we were wrong and he was right.

Because the email we got a few days later was not from Dave. It was from Mary, his lawyer girlfriend. Her message was brief.

Dave had landed in California looking very ill, saying he needed sleep. Instead, Mary took him to hospital where grim-faced medics ran tests and put him in an oxygen tent, on a drip. He joked with them about his chances. A few hours later, on June 15 2004, he was dead. Cause: septic shock, a sort of blood poisoning apparently caused by a combination of his twisted back, a possible misdiagnosis in Kigali, the long flight, an infection en route and a ton of bad luck.

Rwanda’s students will remember Dr. Dave’s expertise. Angela and I will remember his friendship. And in some bar in LA, there is a pneumatic stripper wrapping her legs around a steel pole, who perhaps remembers, under the dazzle of the spotlight and the gaze of her admirers, a professor who disapproved.

(Author’s note: This story was first published in FHM Romania, June 2009)

The last time I saw Dino he had a black eye: a real beauty, with touches of yellow and blue and pink, sitting on his handsome face like a badly fried egg. He had a couple of cuts on his mouth too, and a scratch on his square jaw. One of his silver earrings was missing – usually he wore three in the same ear – small, medium and large – like some designer pirate. That was Dino – young, connected and street-smart. By rights, he should have died during the war. But he survived, and I’ll never forget how.

He contacted me recently, on Facebook. Hey Mike, I’m Dino, remember? As usual, he didn’t say much. Just a photo, looking cool in a red hoodie, making gangstah signs. Where it says ‘Interested In’, he has added one word: ‘Women’.

We’ve had no contact since I left Sarajevo in 1997. In those days, I was training journalists: Bosnians, Serbs and Croats. Dino was one of them. A couple of years earlier, they had been sworn enemies, fighting in rival armies. Now they were sitting in my class, taking notes and taking the piss out of each other.

They all had war stories. There was Bojana who looked like Barbra Streisand and had been shot in the back by a sniper. She spent nine months, lying paralyzed. Then one day, she just got up and walked – talk about Lazarus.

There was Lunyo, the class clown but traumatized too. Most times he was OK. But sometimes his behaviour was inexplicable. We’d send him to buy twelve doughnuts and he’d come back half an hour later, with no doughnuts, and ask: “Have you got a bag?” Often, he did not seem to know what day it was, never mind how to write news. “What’s up?” I would ask. His reply was the always same: “I cannot help it… my mind… the war?”

But Dino’s story was the best. So I’ll tell you, just as he told me.

Before the siege of Sarajevo, I worked in nightclubs, sometimes as a DJ, sometimes as security. When the war kicked off, I got drafted into a small mobile unit, Special Forces they said. After dark we would drive around the hills, armed to the teeth, looking for trouble. Usually, we found it. There would be contact, gunfire and mortars, sometimes closer with grenades, bayonets and knives. After a while, we began to wonder if our commanding officer was nuts. Pretty soon, we knew it for sure. One night, after some serious shit, I realised: get out or die.

I stuck my pistol in my jeans, took food and water in a knapsack and started walking. It was tricky getting out of Sarajevo, but I had friends on the barricades. I walked over the hills, heading for Mostar, fifty miles, south-west. That was risky, but I knew how to avoid minefields because I had helped plant them. I hitched a couple of rides, slept rough and arrived two days later.

In Mostar, people needed weapons so I swapped mine with a Croat fixer for a ride to Split, 75 miles up the Adriatic coast, plus a ferry to Italy. It sounded too good to be true. As things turned out, it was.

The trip to Split went ok, except for some Croat thugs who wanted to hang me from a tree and cut my balls off. Luckily, my story checked out: let the Muslim go.

On the ferry to Italy I smoked a pack of cigarettes, feeling damn lucky. By now I had no money and no food but I was alive.

When I landed, the Italian cops were waiting. Someone tipped them off. Two hours later, I was sailing back to Croatia on the same boat. It was midnight.

I walked up and down the deck, smoking and wondering what to do. I knew my luck would not last long in Split. I was a dead man walking. I looked back at the lights of Italy, disappearing into the distance, like my freedom. I saw I had no choice. I stripped to my boxers and jumped over the side of the ferry.

The water of the Adriatic was cold but I was only a couple of kilometres out. I started swimming, nice and slow. I’m a smoker so I can’t go for long. When I got tired I just floated on my back and watched the stars and told myself: “Stay calm and you will live. Panic and you will die”. I was 23, too young to drown.

About ninety minutes later, I walked up the Italian shore, shivering and exhausted and alone. Six months later I was in Milan, selling Armani suits from the back of a lorry, and wearing one myself. Don’t ask me how.

So, that’s Dino’s story. In 1997, back in peaceful Sarajevo, he became a journalist. When I asked him about that black eye, he just smiled and said:

“Unfinished business, from the war. The other guy is in hospital.”

(Author’s note: This story was first published in FHM Romania, May 2009, as my monthly column ‘Frictiuni’, and reappears here by permission of S.C. Sanoma Hearst Romania SRL))

“Do you like comics?” asks Razvan, rummaging in a kitchen cupboard. He’s ten years old and has a large collection to show me.

“Everyone likes comics,” I reply.

“Not in our house,” sighs Tudor, his younger brother, looking concerned. Tudor is five years old, leaning in the doorway, watching us with big blue eyes. He wears green flip-flops and Mickey Mouse shorts. Sunset illuminates the scene like a sepia postcard. The kitchen smells of fried onions.

I’m tired after a long day exploring the delights of Cluj-Napoca: the National Museum of Art with its Romanian masters, the Ethnographic Museum with its bee-pots and animal traps; the botanical gardens with a Japanese bridge, exquisite orchids and huge palm trees. It’s nice to relax with kids. We’re not related but we’re buddies, it seems. Razvan carries a stack of dog-eared comics to the table where I’m sitting.

“Maybe you could read for me?” I suggest, “Your Dad says you’re rather clever?”

Razvan shrugs modestly and ruffles his black curly hair as I peruse the bright graphics and bold titles: Spiderman; Totally Spies; Witches.

“Which one?” he asks, cradling his dimpled chin in his hands.

“Yeah, which one?” asks Tudor. I consider my options and point a finger.

“Scooby Doo in Ancient Egypt?” says Razvan. “Excellent choice.”

“Excellent choice,” adds Tudor, settling beside me.

Razvan reads well, quickly flipping the coloured pages. I can hardly keep up. His Romanian is clear and melodic, music to my ears. But he stops when his mother appears in the kitchen, wearing a pinafore. Tudor groans quietly as she surveys us, hand on hip.

“Comics?” she asks. Tudor whispers my ear: ”Told you so.”

Mum marches past, barking orders:

“Time for dinner! Wash hands and move to the terrace. Quickly now….”

Outside we gather around the dinner table, filling our plates with baked fish, roast peppers, barbecued chicken, tiny sausages, smoked aubergines and new potatoes. There are eight of us at the feast  – six adults and the two boys. A ginger cat lurks below, sniffing the air. The wine flows and lively chat follows.

We talk about Romanian writers, politics and history. Inevitably, young Razvan and Tudor seem to find this boring. So I tell a joke about a duck that goes shopping. At the end Razvan laughs and says: ‘Magnifico!” Tudor looks puzzled and reaches for a chunk of meat, which he dangles above his face. “Magnifico!” he says and chews with his eyes closed.

“I know a joke!” says Razvan and we all turn to listen as he begins: “Three men are building a house. But they can’t use the toilet until they finish. So, the first man – ”

“Razvan!” snaps Maria. Razvan stops. “That’s not a very good joke,” she suggests.

He observes her for a moment before he answers.

“But how do you know,” he asks coolly, “if I haven’t even finished?”

“Yes you have,” replies Maria. And that’s that. We resume eating. “Razvan is very intelligent,” she explains. “Top of every class. So frankly, I think silly jokes are beneath him.”

Razvan blushes beetroot, apparently mortified.

“It was just a joke, Maria,“ I intervene, “and probably my fault for …”

Maria lays down her fork and gives me a severe look: the case is closed. The other adults munch in silence. The cheery mood seems to have evaporated, but not for long.

“I know a joke too!” announces little Tudor, “and there won’t be any problems with my joke like there was with his!” He jabs a greasy thumb towards his brooding elder brother.

“Oh really?” sighs Maria, warily. “OK, let’s hear it.”

“He’s five by the way,” Razvan mutters at me, “Just so you know.”

“And a half,” adds Tudor, flashing a perfect smile.  Then he breathes deeply, inflating his little chest. He scratches his ear and chuckles, perhaps rehearsing the lines in his head. We wait and wonder. Razvan drums the table with his fingertips.

“So?” he asks.

“So what?” inquires Tudor.

“So tell the damn joke!” growls his brother.

“OK,” replies Tudor. “Three men are building a house, but they can’t go to the toilet until they finish. So the first man …”

The rest of us exchange mystified looks.

“Tudor!” hisses Maria, suddenly.

“What?” asks Tudor, eyes widening.

“That’s the same joke, the one I just asked your brother not to tell!”

Tudor blinks, chewing his lip.

“Oh, really?” he replies. Maria nods. He sits down, picking at his meat.

“Try a knife and fork, you monkey,” advises Razvan in a low voice.

“Good idea,” says Tudor, reaching for his cutlery, still wrapped in a yellow napkin. Razvan puts his head in his hands, in private despair. Tudor hacks meat and glances at me.

“Was my joke funny?” he asks. I wink discreetly to signal my approval. Tudor winks back, like he’s got grit in his eye. Then he glances quickly towards his Mum, leans forward and asks me in a low, serious voice:

“Do you like comics?”

(Author’s note: This story was first published in FHM Romania, Jan 2009, as my monthly column ‘Frictiuni’. For Romanian translation, click on ‘Dependent’, when it is posted, in the list, right side) >

Photo by Nick Supple



Dora the Doberman sees it first, on the grass in the park. She stops dead and glances back at us. Look what I’ve found. The bundle of brown rags seems to inflate as my wife and I approach, puzzled. It is a hawk, a Black Kite, milvus migrans. There are thousands here in Rwanda. Some people say the genocide boosted the population, all that carrion. We stand and stare at the dark plumage, perfectly engineered. The black bill curves like a cutlass, the tail fans across the grass.

“She’s a beauty,” says Angela. For her, any animal is female until proven otherwise. This is logical to her and a lesson to me; but why is the bird here? Usually, the closest we get to a black kite is when one dives to snatch a sandwich from our hands on a sunny terrace.

“What’s up, dude?” I ask. The hawk glares back: What does it look like, birdbrain?

Angela spots a cord tied around one leg. The talon is swollen, bent and paralyzed.

“I’ll call Peter, the British zoologist.” I pull out my mobile. Dora wags her stubby tail, evidently impressed. Soon I hear the scream of Peter’s battered motorbike down the line. I picture him bouncing up some dusty red dirt track, like he’s exploring Mars without a helmet.

“I found an injured kite,” I tell him, walking in circles. Dora cocks her head. Sorry, who did?

“Put it in a box,” yells Peter. ”I’ll come tonight!“

When I walk back, Angela is whispering to the kite in Romanian, words of comfort.

“OK, eHeHehere’s the plan,“ I announce, “first, we put it in a box.”

My wife replies without looking up.

“Good plan. What box?”

The kite looks at Dora: You know these guys? Dora wags her tail: Wanna hear me bark?”

I pull off my T-shirt. “We’ll wrap it in this.”

The sky is darkening and studded with diamante stars when Peter snarls down our path on tyres that spit gravel at the windows. Dora stands alert, glancing at me. Want me to bite him? Red-faced and overweight, Peter climbs off his bike and sidesteps her like she is a potted plant.

“Hello doggy.”

Dora’s eyes narrow to indignant slits. Say that again, I dare you. I lead Peter onto our terrace and point to a large cardboard box. He lifts the kite out, firm but gentle.

“A young one,” he observes. Huge wings batter the air, a twenty-four inch span. Peter speaks in Kinyarwanda. The bird stops. Dora watches, intrigued: Doctor Doolittle?

A warm breeze chimes through the avocado trees, crickets scratch a beat, and a bullfrog burps like a ship in fog. Peter feels the bird’s breast, examines the swollen leg.

“Foot’s finished,” he concludes, grimly. “Malnourished too, no muscle mass. Some bugger tied it up.” He puts the bird back in the box. “Needs feeding.”

“I owe you a beer,” I reply.

“Cold Mutzig,” he grunts and settles into a banana-leaf chair, wiping his bald, tanned head. Dora curls under the thick glass coffee table and yawns.

Soon we are sipping drinks and gazing at the purple slopes of Rwanda’s infamous Milles Collines. The Thousand Hills, a place of savage brutality not so long ago.

“Saw you out running recently with your dog, and a line of street kids following,“ says Peter, “muzungu amafaranga, I assume?“ White man give me money.

“No, they just want Dora,” I reply. He looks unconvinced.

“The RPF shot dogs during the genocide. For eating Tutsi corpses,” he says.

“I know. But the kids just want to play, with DORLA! DORLA!”

Our dog’s head jerks up and cracks hard against the coffee table. Her eyes swim.

Angela joins us on the terrace. She tells Peter about the street kids: Emmanuel, Bosco, Alex and tiny Claude who runs barefoot carrying mushy blue flip-flops. They have hair like soot and Bel Air smiles minus the bill. When I go running they wheel and flip around me like wood sprites born of magic spells. They kick a football made from bin bags lashed with twine and they can put a twenty-yard spin on it. Peter grunts again and checks his watch.

“Give that bird a month of raw meat.”

Dora catches my eye: What about me, no bone? I smile and pat her sleek head. Peter makes a pinching gesture.

“Use tweezers. Needs a good feed.”

I listen and nod. Then a moral dilemma shivers down my spine like iced water. Because the hawk is not the only one who needs food; so do the skinny, wide-eyed street kids who chase me when I go running, clapping their bony hands like firecrackers. And yet the meat I buy tomorrow from the costly ex-pat supermarket will not be for Emmanuel, Bosco, tiny Claude or any of those who lost their families under the machetes of 1994, the boys who tell us their short stories in low voices. The meat will be for a skinny wild hawk, whose ancestors* grew fat on the land. A warm wet nose is snubbing at my bare heel. Lighten up, dude.

(Author’s note: This story first appeared in FHM Romania, December 2008)

Aged 18, I hitch hiked 800 miles from my parents’ home in Liverpool to the south of France to look for a summer job. It took five days and I got brown waiting under a hot sun for friendly drivers in trucks or preferably a Mademoiselle in an open-top Merc.

Just outside Monte Carlo, I found casual work at an exclusive language academy for rich teenagers: happy Americans, stylish Italians, reserved Brits from posh schools. They spent the summer learning French and swimming in the Med. I spent the summer cleaning their rooms and guarding their shiny little cars. In the autumn I took a train north east to try my luck in the French Alps.

There I found a job in a boutique hotel made from logs of wood, designed by some hip architect. Seven days a week for six months I slaved in a hot kitchen, peeling and chopping vegetables, washing pots and pans. I started at 6pm and eight hours later I would scrub the ovens and dump the bin bags outside. Knee-deep in snow at 2am, I would pause to watch the stars glitter above vast white mountains. I was tired and stinking but glad to be in Val d’Isère, one of the best ski resorts in the world. Because I knew that by noon tomorrow, after cleaning fifteen bedrooms and bathrooms, I would be free to explore the steep slopes. I learned to ski and soon became addicted to snow, like any other ski bum.

I also learned some good recipes from our chef. Madame Paulette was a talented, middle-aged, chain-smoking battle-axe from Lyon. One of her best dishes combined ham, soured cream, paprika, Gruyere cheese and a banana. The plates always came back clean and when a client peeped into the kitchen for the recipe, Paulette just smiled, puffing smoke as she explained. After the guest had disappeared I said: “But Madame, you forgot to mention the paprika.” She winked at me and replied: “Think I’m crazy?”

Every night after work, I would join the waiters and other casual staff for drinks in the basement where we lived. If the windows were blocked up by fresh snow, we knew there would be good skiing tomorrow. We’d drink some wine, complain about Madame and fall asleep in our clothes.  Sex if you got lucky.

All sorts of folks came through that hotel: the Canadian ski team, a British F1 driver, pop stars and hordes of hard-drinking young Swedes who trashed their rooms like Vikings. My morning job was to clean their mess. That night, they’d do it again.

I worked two consecutive winters in the Alps. Today, teenagers call it Gap Year and write blogs; back then, we just went.

As my second winter passed and the snow melted, I began to wonder what do over summer, before University. The answer came from two of our guests: Wayne and Carl, young ski dudes from Colorado who were addicted to French girls.

They told me they had a construction company back home. I asked for a job on their site and they agreed and so that final ‘gap’ summer I used my dishwashing money to fly cheap to New York and took a Greyhound bus to Denver. By the time I arrived three days later I had run out of money and had to pawn my guitar for the final bus to Breckenridge, their little town in the Rockies.

Wayne and Carl had a crew of twenty carpenters who could put up a 3-floor condo in a month. One guy was an ex-sniper from Vietnam, who told me he had scored “94 certified kills.” My job was to carry wood, chainsaw forest and stay out of the way, man.

Their favourite restaurant was Mexican where Carlos the chef had long nails on his little fingers and said I am hate French cuisine. Over tequila slammers, I told him Paulette’s secret recipe, including paprika. He was not impressed: “Banana in ham. Think I’m dumb?”

Next day he turned up smiling at the flat I shared with a mountain rescue guy who liked J.J. Cale. “Good recipe, amigo,” said Carlos, “Can I come in? I am wanting to reward you, real nice.”

Inside, Carlos rummaged through my flat-mate’s vinyl and played ‘Cocaine’, original version. Then he sat on the floor, took a tiny silver and turquoise bowl from his pocket and removed the lid to reveal a mound of fine white powder. He dipped his little finger in then held his nail under my nose.  “They say you like snow,” he whispered, “Want to try some of mine?” Twenty minutes later I was speaking fluent Spanish and abseiling over the balcony.

That’s all from the sports desk, boys and girls. If you want that recipe, email me. And if you kiss a pig, don’t do it French.

(Author’s note: This story was first published in FHM Romania, August 2009)

The hospital smelled of faeces and disinfectant. Skinny patients played cards under cracked windows as flies buzzed the peeling walls. A woman doused broken tiles with a ragged mop, singing a sweet melody in a desperate place. Father Frank wore a faded pink robe and sat on his rickety bed, legs dangling like brown twigs.

“An interview?” he asked, smiling. His French was cute, girlish. Long eyelashes fluttered as he spoke. He was about sixty, small and skeletal. Big eyes dominated a sharp face. His head resembled a walnut.

“Research,” I replied, opening my notebook, pulling a pencil, “Given your reputation?”

He smiled again. A bloodstained dressing clung to his shin, secured by blue tape.

“An ulcer,“ he explained. “Too much contact with Satan.”

According to my sources, Father Frank was diabetic. His followers provided money for medicine. A beautiful Congolese teenage girl sat nearby, staring at us. I told Father Frank I was researching demonic possession, the so-called ‘child witches’ for which Kinshasa was now infamous. At least 20,000 were sleeping rough, every night. Some tortured in the name of Jesus. He listened carefully.

“Easy to spot one when you know,” he replied. A lizard clung to a wall as if listening, its beady black eyes shining like caviar. “They wet the bed,” continued Father Frank, “They steal, resent authority. Their eyes are dreamy. Their belly button glows in the dark.”

I stopped writing to ask a question.

“I used to steal cigarettes, argue with my parents. Was I a child witch?”

Father Frank stroked his chin, watching.

“You’re smart. But Satan is smarter. It takes a religious man to see the perfidité within!”

“And then what?”

“I am guided by a higher authority,” he replied, pointing a bony finger upwards.

ET Call Home.

“Usually I open the belly button, to release the demon. I use my fingers, then scissors.”

“Doesn’t that hurt the kid?”

Suspicion flickered cross his leathery face. Silence.

“Did you study, Father? Were you ordained?”

“I had a vision and started a Church. I have many followers. Perhaps I save souls. But I fail more often than I succeed.” He pointed at the girl. “For example, she is still possessed. Would you like to see me exorcise her demon?”

“Yes, please, Father Frank.”

He pulled on a tatty white cassock and a red scarf with a yellow cross. He said the girl had wanted to join her sister in Belgium for work. But their dead mother had conspired with Satan to block her visa.

“Furthermore, he now resides in her soul.”

He laid a hand on her shoulder. She arched her back with a sexy moan. His eyes lit up.

“Our third exorcism. But perhaps today?” He closed his eyes, singing: Jesus, Hallelujah. Suddenly, he yelled at her.

“Satan, are you present?”

The girl sat up as if electrocuted.

“Yes,” she replied, with a squeaky voice.

Father Frank gripped her arm.

“And why do you block this girl’s ambition?”

She poked her tongue like a snake, eyes rolling.

“Antwerp is costly! She should stay here in Kinshasa! Her sister makes false promises!”

After a few questions, Father Frank turned to me.

“Do you wish to commune?”

“Pardon?”

“With Satan.”

I leaned forward, wondering what to ask the Prince of Darkness.

“Bonjour, Satan.”

“Bonjour Monsieur,” squeaked the girl, chewing air, squirming like a sweaty babe on MTV, straining inside her tight dress. The Devil has all the best tunes.

“Satan, how long will you stay?” I asked.

“Depends.”

“On what?”

“On me.”

Father Frank shrugged: Negotiable.

“Why don’t you trust her sister?” I asked, playing Devil’s Advocate.

“Belgium is a bad place,” hissed the voice.  “I saw it on television!”

Beelzebub has cable.

“What do you think of Father Frank?” I asked.

“He’s powerful, a Servant of God.”

Father Frank folded his arms in satisfaction. Word is spreading in Hades.

“Goodbye Satan,” I concluded. “Nice talking to you.”

“Enchanté, Monsieur,” said the squeaky voice. The girl seemed relaxed now. Until Father Frank grabbed her braided hair.

“By the power of Jesus, leave!”

“No!” she howled, writhing. A button popped open. Father Frank slapped her head, left and right. He grabbed her throat. No more Mister Nice Guy.

“Satan, do you acknowledge Christ?”

She finally gargled her submission.

“Yes!”

Her lifted her up, by her hair. “Relinquish! By the power of Jesus, I cast you out!”

He pushed her backwards, hard. The canvas chair buckled as she fell to the floor, with tears on her face. Father Frank turned away.

“It is over.”

After a moment, the sexy young She-Devil clambered to her feet and looked around, as if puzzled. She tidied her dress, fastened her button and gave me a dignified, superior look. That’s All, Folks.

”She remembers nothing,” said Father Frank, relaxing on a pillow. “Excuse me, I must rest before my medication.”

I slipped him a few ragged banknotes. “For your pills, thank you.”

Father Frank nodded graciously. I turned to leave. Behind us the other patients were kneeling in rows, watching wide-eyed, their hands clasped together as if containing rare butterflies.

(First published in FHM Sept 2008, by Sanoma Hearst, Romania. Photo by Kim Gjerstad)