Books.

The Five Most Recent Books I’ve Read

White Teeth, Zadie Smith
One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez (sort of.)
Passage to India, E.M. Forster
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Muriel Spark
Cuban Diaries: An American Housewife in Havana, Isadora Tattlin

Five Books I Could Read Over and Over

The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Count of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas
In the Time of the Butterflies, Julia Alvarez
The House of the Spirits, Isabel Allende
The Harafish, Naguib Mahfouz

Five Books That Blew My Mind and Would Be On My Syllabus If I Were a Teacher

Reading Lolita in Tehran, Azar Nafisi
The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Screwtape Letters, CS Lewis
Orthodoxy, GK Chesterton
The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde

Five Authors With Whom I Would Like to Have Drinks

Rudyard Kipling
Naguib Mahfouz
Azar Nafisi
G. K. Chesterton
CS Lewis

Five Books That Make Me Want to Have Kids Just For The Books

Just So Stories, Rudyard Kipling
Caddie Woodlawn, Carol Ryrie Brink
The Westing Game, Ellen Raskin
The Owl who was Afraid of the Dark, Jill Tomlinson. Actually, ALL of the books in this series are fantastic.
The Chronicles of Narnia, CS Lewis

Five Books the Rest of the World Loved and I Sort of Hated

Good in Bed, Jennifer Weiner
One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain
Beloved, Toni Morrison
The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway

Five Books I Just Could Not Finish, No Matter What

Last of the Mohicans, James Fenimore Cooper
Moby Dick, Herman Melville
Emma, Jane Austen (I think I'll give this one another go, though.)
The Brothers Karamazov, Fydor Dostoevsky
Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert

Five Books That I Am In Awe Of and Are Pretty Much Perfect Pieces of Writing

The Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald
To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck
The Cairo Trilogy, Naguib Mahfouz
The Alexandria Quartet, Lawrence Durrell

Five Books That Made Me Weep Buckets

Anne of Green Gables, LM Montgomery
All Creatures Great and Small, James Herriot
Goodbye, Mr. Chips, James Hilton
Les Miserables, Victor Hugo
Little Women, Louisa May Alcott

Five Books Set in Africa That I Love

The #1 Ladies Detective Agency, Alexander McCall Smith
Out of Africa, Isak Dineson
Seven Pillars of Wisdom, TE Lawrence (well, it's sort of Africa)

...I think that's all I've read that's set in Africa, although in my defense, I've read TWO of the #1 Ladies Detective series, so that's something.

Five Things That Turn Me Off of a Book, However Unfair
The feeling that it would Not Be That Hard to Turn This Into a Movie and What's Up With the Lame Dialogue?
Science fiction
A big sticker on the front that says it is now a major motion picture
Chick lit
Slippery pages

Five Things I am a Sucker For in a Book
Plotlines that span generations
Magical realism
Conniving protagonists
Fashionable women
Exotic locales

Maybe it's to show off your fancy cell phone.

InStyle.com says this is one of this season's Hot Trends:

That, my friends, is a clear purse. Chanel. $895.

I would just like to point out that I don't have to spend $895 to show the world that the inside of my purse may or may not contain a combination of: lip balm, pens, old grocery lists, last week's receipts, as assortment of plastic utensils, tampons, mascara, credit cards, picture IDs, a cell phone, a blackberry, keys, hand sanitizer, Neosporin, Lipton tea bags, hair bands, yesterday's earrings, candy wrappers, $1.43 worth of spare change, and, occasionally, my dance shoes.

On Luxury

After much, much deliberation with Qatar Airways, I finally got a ticket to go to Doha on Saturday night, March 17, at 11 PM. What they didn't understand, obviously, was that by flying on Saturday night, I was going to miss the all-night milonga at the tango marathon. This, clearly, was a major inconvenience to me and are you SURE that there aren't any LATER flights? Really? Because it would be really great if I could leave on like, say, Sunday morning...

There were no later flights, and it was just as well, because I was still fighting a cold on Saturday, March 17th. Sasan and I bundled up, drove through the unexpected snow, and took the lessons, all three of them, back-to-back; I looked at the tango shoes, which didn't fit; and I embarrassed myself with my weak abs that could hardly support my volcadas. And then I went to the airport and flew business class to Frankfurt, then Doha.

---

Doha, Qatar, is up the ways from Dubai. Talk on the street is that Doha is where Dubai was a few years ago, and is catching up steadily. I've never been to Dubai, but I can tell you this much: Doha is boring. Boring. Y'all know how I feel about Cairo: it's filthy and chaotic, and even the 5-stars feel a tad dingy. But when you walk down the street in Cairo, it's happening. There are people everywhere, all hours of the night. In Doha, the street feels clean and empty, everyone stays in their lanes, and the cars are smooth and powerful. No one walks, there are no corner stores, no kiosks selling bananas and mango juice and the daily paper. Maybe it's too sandy. There's no Nile or Bosphorous acting as a natural gathering place to keep cool in the hot, hot sun. There's just cement and glass, skyscrapers that light up the clear night with their brilliant lights, manicured gardens and heated pools.

The luxury of Doha is not the luxury I imagine when I hear the word "luxury." The word luxury to me inspires images of feather beds and exotic fruits in mahogany bowls, sunlight streaming through sheer curtains, rich plants spilling over balconies, fruit fresh off the trees, the thick smell of vanilla and moist soil. It means thick, saturated pillows and colorful, bejewelled slippers, a wall of books, papaya marmalade on fresh croissants, strong coffee with warm, frothy milk. It means groomed gardens with scented flowers that permeate the evening air. It means an reliable, old house that creaks a little with age, but not with weakness, crown molding, fresh paint, wide porches that cradle you in the landscape, and appliances that are just as beautiful as they are functional. It means space to separate work from play, bills that don't pile up, and room enough to leave projects unfinished for a while.

Doha's luxury is all business. Sure, there are featherbeds and sunlight, pillows and valet parking. There are new mobile phones, clean leather interiors and heated pools. There are doormen who smile and make small talk, there are cheerful waitresses who attend to your needs, there is room service and busines service and laundry service. It all feels new and modern and streamlined, but it feels impersonal. The luxury I imagine-the luxury I want - is not modern and chrome. It's old wood and good design, the smell of breakfast and fresh linen not in a skyscraper, but in your own home, with your own family and people you love. Of course it involves money. Private jets are really nice. Hired help is fantastic. More importantly, though, is the feeling of your home as a haven, a place the outside can't invade, a place full of magic and peace and extra touches: a bouquet left for you on the side of your bed, fresh blueberries in your pancakes, lavendar sachets left on your sheets to make them smell nice when you get in bed after your shower, because lavendar is your favorite.

Luxury at the Doha Ritz is nice, for a week or so. Waking up in your own bed, seeing someone you love, and finding ways to make them feel pampered, that's better.

---

That being said, flying business class on Qatar Airways? Is fantastic.

So sorry I couldn't make it; I was weekending in St. Barth's.

There is something extremely satusfying about being able to truthfully say those words:

Random co-worker: "Hey there, good morning."
Me, sunnily: "Morning!"
RCW: "...are you ok? Your face is sort of red."
Me, nonchalantly: "What? Oh, that. It's sunburn."
RCW: "...from what? Were you outside a lot?"
Me, carelessly: "Hm, yeah, I spent the weekend in the Caribbean."
RCW: "..."
Me: "Well, I mean, I was working. But yeah, I guess I got a little sun."
RCW: "...What were you doing in the Caribbean?"
Me: "I was babysitting."
RCW: "In the Caribbean?"
Me: "In St. Barth's."
RCW: "What? How?"
Me: "This family I babysit for, they travel a lot and take their kids. They needed a travel nanny this weekend."
RCW: "Wow. So did you fly out of Reagan or what?"
Me: "No, they own a private jet. We flew out of Dulles."
RCW: "You flew their private jet to St. Barth's?"
Me: "Yeah, we landed in St. Martin and then took the boat to St. Barth's."
RCW: "So...three days in St. Barths, and you got paid?"
Me: "Six hundred bucks."
RCW: "...Nice work if you can get it."

And it's true, that's exactly what happened. I, the travel nanny, flew in the private jet to St. Martin, took the waiting van to the boat, which took us to the waiting van on St. Barth's, which took us directly to the resort hotel on the beach. The babies and I stayed in our own villa, and the parents stayed in their own villa. It was three days of putting sunscreen on babies on the beach, feeding them pain au chocolat, dressing them in a multitude of pink sundresses, changing diapers, and putting on and taking off various swimsuits. It involved occasionally dog-sitting, nap-supervising, and snack-making, but this all dressed in nothing but flip flops, wet hair, and un maillot in the airy, 85 degree, white-linen-and-dark-wood St. Barths, , where Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban were, incidentally, also weekending. It was a 24/7 job. But it was in St. Barth's.

I mean, really. Nice work if you can get it.

Why yes, I have been to the middle of nowhere.

I've used the phrase "The Middle of Nowhere" many times. Maybe to describe the location of a Montana town we drove through once. Maybe to describe a road trip that veered through the Mississippi foliage for hours. I'm sure I've used it to describe how I felt in various deserts in the Southwest US.

But I've never experienced The Middle Of Nowhere as profoundly as when Lisa and I ventured on the bus to the Western Desert. Somewhere between Cairo and Libya - or, in fact, everywhere between Cairo and Libya - is an expanse of desert so vast, so monochromatic and bland, that you feel as though you could walk and walk and never arrive, as if the sun has baked every hope of life into the hard, grey sand.

First the bus took us through the suburbs of Cairo-stark apartment complexes that stood naked save for halos of smog. What greenery there was seemed to be an afterthought, and did little to soften the impression of heat and concrete. As we left the city further behind us, we encountered stranger complexes-stranger because they were so far removed from any of the history and richness of the ancient city. They were new and freshly painted with primary trims. I wondered aloud what made them so eerie, and then realized: there was no Nile. The further we got from the Nile, the more absurd the buildings seemed. Who lived out here? What was there to DO out here?

Once the suburbs had fallen out of sight, it was just us in the bus and the flat, boring desert. Even I, who adores the clean, invigorating desert feeling, was lulled to sleep by this desert. We drove for hours to a rest stop which seemed to also be a meeting point for wild dogs. Then we continued the bus trip. Suddenly, there was green. There were palms. Handmade signs pointing to a side road. A small mosque. Across the horizon were spurts of green and long sinews of shrubs growing along the tiny streams. We arrived at our desination, Bahariya, which we had assumed, erroneously, would at least have an ATM, and were greeted by a bevy of safari guides, clamoring to snag the tourists who were stretching their legs after the long bus ride. We ended up in an Ahmed Safari jeep, and I wouldn't at all be surprised if all the safaris were actually just subsidiaries of Ahmed Safari. The jeep took us to the Ahmed safari headquarters, where we settled in to negotiate our desert trip.

Ahmed Safari Headquarters

We ended up with a tall guide, whose name might have been Ayman, a French freelance photojournalist, a Gereman student, her Brazilian boyfriend, and a Korean woman traveling across Egypt solo. First stop: the Black Desert, which Rebecca rightly described as, "You know when you have a campfire and then the fire goes out and leaves sort of a heap of ash? Yeah. Imagine that, but bigger heaps." So the Black Desert was not that exciting.

The Black Desert and our trusty jeep

But our next stop (which felt like it was about a week away) was the White Desert. First you drive through the remains of the Black Desert, which reminds you very much of Southern Nevada, and then it's flat, flat, and then mounds of white chalk appear on the surface of the sand. The further you drive, the larger they grow, until they very closely resemble something Dr. Seuss might have seen on his way to Solla Sollew.

Tracks to nowhere

We drove through the white formations into-and past-sunset. Our poor fasting guide must have been starving, but he kept driving, perhaps because he has "his spot" - all the spots looked exactly the same to us foreigners, but I supposed if one knows the white desert, one has one's favorite spots. Twilight was just seeping out into the horizon and the air felt cooler and stiller. It was dead silent. It was a silence I could hear your heartbeat through. It was almost deafening after the hubbub of Cairo and the roar of the Jeep's engine. The white shapes are tomb-like, rising still and cool into the air, bumping the stars with their mushroom-cap heads.

We ate a meal prepared by our two guides over the campfire, listened to shrill, but upbeat!, Arabic music on his mobile phone, and laid our sleeping bags in the protection of the windbreak between the two jeeps. It was then that the realization of The Middle Of Nowhere sunk it. We weren't in Nevada, a few hours awy from Vegas. We weren't in Wadi Rum, only an hour or two from Aqaba and the Red Sea. We were an easy nine hours drive West of Cairo-probably further. We might be closer to Libya, actually. If we had been lost, there's no way we could have found our way to civilization before we collapsed of thirst. All the white shapes looked like all the other white shapes, and the horizon never changed. Nothing mattered except the sky and the stars and our heartbeats and the white tombs around us. Everything else seemed completely irrelevant and unecessary.

Sunset

The next day we returned to a little bit of civilization: the oasis towns, built up around springs. Farmers worked out in their fields, planting, weeding, with their donkeys and children around them.

We dipped out feet in one of the springs, feeling fresh after a night in the desert and some long, long hours in dusty vehicles. We were still in the middle of nowhere, but in a slightly more orderly middle of nowhere, where someone would probably notice if you were injured on the side of a road and the silence was just quiet, not the echoing, lonely stillness of the previous night.

And we returned to Cairo that evening, on the last night of Ramadan, and were welcomed by the chaos of horns and pedestrians in Giza, Ramadan lights blinking on and off, men yelling as they leaned out of open bus doors, women with their Eid purchases pushing their way through crowds of rowdy young men. It was like a jolt of caffeine. I couldn't remember what silence sounded like.