Water Torture
soweto—“Shoot the may-or, the may-or, the may-or! I shot the may-or, the may-or, the may-or!” Roughly 500 men, women, and children march down Rissik Street, through the business district of …
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Money for Nothing, a Reno For Free
cairo— In Khan al-Khalili bazaar, near the two-hundred-year-old al-Fishawi café where the Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz penned his magnificent sagas of Egyptian life, two tiny girls in ragged party dresses …
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A Ridiculously Brief History of Rwanda
Like all major events, there are both complex and over- simplified versions of the Rwanda genocide. While there were distinguishable groups called Hutu and Tutsi before the colonial era, these …
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Land Mines and Looters
phnom penh—I was climbing across the crumbling remains of Beng Melea, a one-kilometre-square temple complex built early in the twelfth century in northwestern Cambodia, and said to be the model …
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China Beach, Then and Now
danang—“Charlie don’t surf – but you can,” promises the Internet brochure for the U.K.-based Wild Frontiers “Apocalypse Now 2004” tour of Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. The line is a paraphrase …
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Stopping the Presses
harare—It is disconcerting to visit a newspaper with no newsroom, but surreal experiences are not uncommon in Zimbabwe. Take The Daily News: when I was there in early February, the …
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