Writing | Travel Stateless in Shatila “I am terrorist”, the teenage boy says and he laughs. His friend leans on his shoulder and flashes a beaming set of straight white teeth. I am on my way to meet the director of the Children and Youth Centre of Shatila Refugee Camp in Beirut… -Read more at Amnesty International Forget Paris. When in Rome… The owner of the English school in Paris where I teach is a tiny French woman in her 60s with a chip on her shoulder the size of the Eiffel Tower and a penchant for reducing her employees to tears.… -Read more at Litro The Bolivian mountain that eats miners All the way down the cobbled streets of Potosi in the south of Bolivia were tour companies advertising adventures into the labyrinth of silver mines in the Cerro Rico mountain that towered over the colonial city – nicknamed “the mountain that eats men”… -Read more at The Big Smoke Sneaking across the Mexican border I got on a bus in a small Guatemalan town not far from the border, where the driver assured me he would take me to Mexico. “Si, si, Mexico. No problem,” he nodded. I should have guessed something was amiss when I saw the first seat was occupied by a clown… -Read more at The Big Smoke When the music is over in Morocco I moved through a tangle of dark alleys criss-crossing under painted-blue buildings down to the crowded main square of Essaouira, Morocco. The small fishing town on the coast of Morocco was an explosion of blue… -Read more at The Big Smoke The prostitutes of Western Sahara Every now and then, a car whooshed past us and disappeared down the highway that stretched from the Mauritanian border up north through Morocco. The sign for the empty petrol station creaked on its chain as it swung in the hot breeze. Through the cracked window of the shop… -Read more at The Big Smoke Slow boat to Timbuktu “Three days,” Mohamed promises us as we hand over our money. “You know, it’s the dry season and the trip take longer this time of year,” he adds apologetically. “But you will be in Timbuktu in three days, inchallah…” -Read more at Litro The English slaughters The Saddler’s Club, Lady Bedford informs me, holds their Annual Members Dinner every year for members. She has to make her way from her residence at the Slaughters in Gloucestershire up to the London flat in order to squeeze the event into her busy social calendar… -Read more at Litro Take me back to New Orleans We are seated in a circle – or more accurately a quadrangle, as there are only four of us. The wooden floorboards of the small room above a dingy cafe in midtown New Orleans creak loudly every time one of us shifts awkwardly…. -Read more at Litro God rides the bus in Sudan “When is the next bus to Dongola?” I ask at what I assume to be the bus station, in Wadi Haifa, Sudan, although there is no sign of any buses, only some men having tea on the floor of an office… -Read more at Litro The night I slept in Trafalgar Square When I was young(er), I was pretty reckless about my safety. I also had two beliefs: (1) that I should always do anything a man could and (2) that people were essentially good so nothing terrible would ever happen to me. And that’s how I came to be sleeping in Trafalgar Square… -Read more at The Big Smoke A spot of midnight rabbit-hunting in Mauritania We were warned in Timbuktu. “Don’t go through the desert back to Mauritania, you must be crazy!” they told us. “If Al Qaeda don’t get you, the bandits will. And some of the bandits ARE Al Qaeda…” -Read more at Go Nomad Dancing barefoot under a Montana sky We never intend to wash up in Livingston, Montana. My friend being a native New Yorker means she has neither a driver’s license nor a desire to gain one, so I’m exhausted from hours behind the wheel… -Read more at Litro Three minutes of fame in New York Hey YOU, want to be a STAR? Feeling stuck and depressed because you aren’t? Want to know how to move forward and reach your DREAMS? Are you frustrated, sad and tired of not being seen for the talent you are?… -Read more at Litro Tea and tear gas in Turkey “Don’t go to Taksim Square today,” the carpet-seller warns. “Everyone knows there will be trouble.” I am sipping tea cross-legged on a stack of carpets. In Istanbul you drink tea everywhere… -Read more at Litro
