Category: autobiography
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Overheard
“What’s it like in the place you live?” a friend asks me. The answer, today, is easy. Within just a minute from each other, I overheard these two sentences today on my morning walk. The first sentence. “We just arrived from the Himalayas!” A young woman with perfect teeth talks into her mobile phone in […]
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What’s it like in prison
All right, a bait-kind title for once. But I just took some photos of these historical buildings for my novel and thought I would share some of them with you. The walls here are thick and the doors are heavy and have always, of course, been heavily guarded. Less so these days in this particular […]
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Chapters from the past
I took these photographs yesterday on a quick bike tour. They represent places that I write about in connection with my childhood. Most of these locations will eventually be a decor in my book and the photos work as reminders in the process. The rail road bridge, or what’s left of it, used to be […]
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Borders, Questions, Answers
“Muhandis” I said at the Damascus airport, happy for knowing some Arabic and picking “engineer”, of all possible professions. After that I thought I would have to stick to that answer each time I visited the country again. But people do change careers too, alas! Is that suspicious, or what? What do you say when […]
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Itegue Taytu
L’hôtel Itegue Taitu, construit en 1898 et nommé d’après l’impératrice Taitu Betul, est pour les nostalgiques un petit paradis. L’humidité et l’air frais de la capitale pénètrent le nez déjà au petit matin. Depuis le hall, ils commencent à se mélanger à l’eau de Javel. Les femmes de ménage patinent comme des ballerines maladroites avec […]
Jarmo Pikkujämsä 