As I rode the train to work, across a landscape of housing estates and malls, my mind was cruising a lifetime of love, adventures and disasters in Aidan Hartley's The Zanzibar Chest.
At work, I speak about discount rate and revenue recognition criteria; but my heart feeds on names such as Ouagadougou, Kinshasa and Nagorno Karabakh. I can't wait for the academic term to be over.
I remember the war ruins and abandoned bunkers of Stephanakert, Nagorno Karabakh, and nervous late teenage soldiers on the ceasefire line, barely a few years after the last skirmish of the 90s, still fresh in 2000. Maybe I was a war correspondent in my past life.
I love this phrase in the book: Your mind is like a junk shop stuffed full of curiosities: some of them priceless, others of no value whatsoever.
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