Hanuman About the House

At the heart of the city of elephants, Hastinapura, the Lord Hanuman did make his home, but it was not the Celestial Palace we know so well from other tales of the Monkey King. Pawanputra Hanuman was in those days without such means, and was so obliged to seek affordable accommodation, a quest which saw him victorious when he agreed to share with Anjana and Sita, both of whom were considered great beauties in their way.

One day as Anjana gathered messages which had come from the king, she learned that the date of Lord Hanuman's birth was most imminent, having accidentally read notice of an appointment with the apothecary.

'What should we do, Sita?' she asked of her friend and household companion. 'Should we give him one?'

Sita's face grew red with surprise and embarrassment. 'Gosh!,' she exclaimed. 'That's very modern of you!'

'No, silly,' said Anjana. 'My meaning was, should we give to him a birthday present?'

'That is a very good and fine idea,' said Sita, 'although I know it would be unwise to give him a pearl necklace.'

'Crikey!' said Anjana. 'I would also say that it would be impossible because we are both ladies and it is my belief that such transactions are ordinarily conducted in the other direction!'

They stood for a moment or two because there seemed to be laughter all around, and so they were unable to continue their discussion.

'No,' said Sita. 'You misunderstand me. If you will recall, I once tried to present the Lord Hanuman with just such a gift, but he politely refused it, for it did not feature the name of Rama and was in this way unacceptable to him.'

'So he did not like it then?'

'No, and he was not happy about the necklace either!'

Again there seemed to be laughter all around, and just as it receded, Lord Hanuman himself did come into the parlour.

'Hello, you two,' he said. 'What are we discussing today? I thought I heard you mention something about giving me one!' As he made this statement, he did catch Anjana's eye whilst smiling and raising his eyebrow in a meaningful way.

'Men!' said Sita indignantly.

Anjana sighed and shook her head. 'I really wish you would cease with this line of enquiry, my Lord, for as well you know I am cursed by a certain sage so that when I fall in love, my face will come to resemble that of a monkey, an eventuality I wish to avoid.'

'What's wrong with looking like a monkey?' said the Lord Hanuman, a little injured.

'Besides, I am saving myself for Kesari,' Anjana added, 'and I am technically your mother, I rather think you will find.'

'This is all very confusing,' observed Sita. 'I hardly know whether I'm coming or going.'

'Blimey,' said Lord Hanuman. 'Would you like to sit down? Maybe I could fetch you a chair.'


Much later, following a lengthy series of slightly repetitive comic misunderstandings, Anjana and Sita presented a gift to Lord Hanuman. They first draped a muslin cloth over the gift so as to conceal its nature and enhance the sense of surprise. Unfortunately this gave the gift a priapic appearance which put everyone in mind of the male generative member.

'I wonder what it can be,' said the Lord Hanuman dubiously.

'I shall give you a clue,' said Sita. 'You will enjoy it in your mouth.'

'Crikey,' spluttered Lord Hanuman. 'I rather think you girls may have entirely the wrong idea about me!'

Then they revealed that the gift was in fact a banana.

'Because you're a monkey, and monkeys like bananas,' Sita explained happily, which cleared up all further laboured comic misunderstandings.

Djinn'll Fix It

It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that there was a child beggar named Azzam who did toil that his family should eat, and so in this way his life was without pleasure. His father had become overfond of wine and so did spend much of the day sporting with himself in a manner which would have greatly displeased Allah had he known, peace be upon him. Azzam's mother was no better, for rather than buying meat and fruit at the market, which in any case she could not have done for all their dinars went towards the purchase of her husband's wine, she idled away the day with entertainments of a low sort whilst puffing away on her pipe with such devotion that their home was referred to as the Alsafhat Alrayiysiat hayth Tusbih yd Wahidat ghyr Maryiya which means the home where a man cannot see his own hand in front of his face.

One day Azzam was fishing from the bank of the great Khabur river, hopeful of catching something that his family should not go hungry that evening. As he sat he saw a procession of camels on the bank opposite, decorated in fine materials of blue and gold, and each one carrying a minstrel or a singer or an acrobat or some other entertainer. These personages were a troupe who were on their way to provide delight for the Caliph, and Azzam knew this for it had been the talk of all his friends. The troupe did sport gaily as they passed, one plucking upon an oud as his fellow gave voice to song, and it seemed as though they did not have a care in the world.

'It is all right for some,' said Azzam as he frowned and considered his lot in life. 'O that I might sport gaily on top of a camel such as those I see before me.'

His wrath caused his mouth to become dry and so did he pull the stopper from his pitcher of water, but before he could drink, a great smoke seemed to fill the air, and at first he looked around as though expecting to see his mother come to visit him and puffing away as was her habit. He then looked at his pitcher and saw that it lay on the ground at a little distance, and that which he had unstopped was an unfamiliar vessel, one from which a great creature had sprung to fill the sky, a terrible Afrit with hair uncovered and worn at length like that of a temple girl, but the colour of the sun. The Afrit's garment shone like polished copper but in blues and golds and made a crinkling sound as the Afrit moved. Around his neck and arms he was decorated with ropes and chains of gold, and jewellery studded the fingers of his great hands. Held before his eyes were circular windows the colour of dawn, and he inhaled upon a great medwakh packed tightly with aromatic dokha as he beheld the young man which had brought about his summoning.

'Now then,' the Afrit said, and he did say it thrice before speaking further, but with a curiously stilted delivery arranging his words into groups of three or four. 'I do believe what we have here is a young man who would very much like to ride upon one of those camels. Is that correct?' The Afrit then made a noise, a pitch which ululated like the call of a certain type of bird, which he followed with a question, enquiring, 'how is it which is about that then?'

'I do not understand your second question, sir,' Azzam replied, 'but it is true that I am envious of those fine men on their camels.'

As he spoke, he found himself miraculously seated on top of the largest camel, and he could feel it roll beneath him as it walked forward across the sand, moving like a great ship on the ocean. It seemed to him that the hours of the day were disjointed, and he experienced himself, once again back on the ground taking instruction from one of the herdsmen who instructed him with all of the regulations of camel health and safety; and then again he was riding, and experiencing great happiness.

At length he found himself back at the river bank. The procession of camels was no longer to be seen, yet the Djinn remained.

'Now then, young Azzam,' the Afrit began. 'Goodness gracious me - was that really you up there on that camel?'

Azzam found the question strange, for his camel ride had not seemed to him very much like a dream, and yet there was the possibility that it could be so. As he puzzled over this conundrum, he realised too late that the Afrit was now before him, holding a great medallion of gold with a ribbon of finely woven silk. The Djinn held the cord, clearly meaning to bestow it upon Azzam as though it were an award, and although made of but spirit and smoke, the Afrit did smell of men's bathing rooms and other unsavoury places. Azzam knew this only because the terrible creature had come so close.

Upon the medallion was carved the inscription:

العفريت الثابتة لك

It was then that Azzam noticed how the Afrit's eyes had grown wider behind the rose lenses, and that his breathing had become uneven.

'Oh my goodness gracious me,' exclaimed the Afrit excitedly.

Beer Run

The doorbell rings. My wife hasn't been home from work very long and we're watching Wheel of Fortune. Our front door is in the corner of the front room, adjacent to a window and a sofa. Cats sat on the back of the sofa have destroyed the lower slats of the blind over the past few years. Originally there was a just a peculiarly neat square missing from the lower right-hand corner of the blind, which Gus chewed out for herself so she could gaze from the window and see what was going on in the neighbourhood. We called it the Gus Portal after its architect. Subsequent cats have lacked the delicate touch for which Gus was renowned, and have just hacked away at the lower slats regardless of aesthetic concerns; so it's now quite easy to see out of the window without getting up from the other sofa, the one upon which we sit to watch Wheel of Fortune.

Ordinarily it's Damean from across the way, come to hang out with the kid, but we haven't seen him for a while and there's a chance he might have signed up with the army or the army cadets or whatever. Occasionally it's some friend of Shooty the Drug Dealer asking if we want our lawn mown in the hope of raising funds with which he'll presumably make purchase of more num-nummy-numptious drugs of some description. It's always the same guy and he seems harmless, and he never seems to mind that we're completely capable of mowing our own lawn even though we be white folks.

'Who can that be?' Bess wonders.

The window affords me a view of a large-ish pair of tits in a grubby t-shirt, old lady tits I suppose. I wonder if it's Dee Dee and hope it isn't. She keeps herself to herself so when she calls it's something serious, usually sick or dying animals, struggling kittens she needs someone to look after while she goes to the store for food, kittens in such a state that they need a person to watch over them. It never ends well.

I open the door and experience relief that it isn't Dee Dee, then confusion because it's the hillbilly woman from down the road. I don't know her name.

We have a large fluffy cat who briefly went missing when we first moved here. We walked up and down the road looking for him, and eventually found him safe and well, but both of us had encountered a similarly large fluffy cat living down the road bearing a strong and misleading resemblance to our guy. Since the beginning of the year, the same large fluffy cat has started hanging out at our house, having discovered that I feed the strays in the morning. I've started calling him Gary for the sake of something to call him because he reminds me of Gary - my neighbour back in London - in so much as he's a big lad and he's always there. One morning I noticed he turned up wearing a lime green collar with a bell. Later that afternoon I found the collar discarded in our garden. I guess he hadn't been too keen on the thing.

I took the collar down the road to the house where I thought I had seen Gary, where I assumed he lived, then decided it looked a bit scary - shit car, weeds in the yard, bags of rubbish out front. I went to the next house along. It was tidier, and Gary's home might just as easily be this one, and it didn't look like a knock on the door would summon angry rednecks with firearms and tattoos. Unfortunately my knock on the door didn't summon anyone, so I took a deep breath and went back to the first house.

The woman was old and slightly stumpy with white hair. She looked confused as though suspecting foul play; so I tried to explain about Gary and the collar as quickly as I could before she called the cops.

'You mean Fat Cat,' she grinned and hee-hawed as realisation dawned, and I gave her the collar. I was a little shocked by the name, hoping Fat Cat was simply a misjudged term of endearment. On the other hand Fat Cat - or rather Gary - seems healthy, happy, and friendly, so I suppose he must have a good home, even if he always seems to find room for a little more at our place.

I've seen the woman once since then, as I was mowing the front lawn. She strolled past and yelled out something incomprehensible but obviously cheerful, probably something along the lines of you're mowing the lawn!

Now here she is again on my doorstep like an old friend.

'Can you give me a ride to the Valero garage so I can buy me some beer?' She says it twice because I didn't quite catch it the first time, or I did but couldn't quite bring myself to believe that this had been the question. Someone I don't know has knocked on my door seeking assistance, not medical assistance, or can I use your phone?, or I need someone to take me to the hospital, but I need to buy beer from the garage.

The Valero garage is on Rittiman Road, about ten minutes walk away. She may be old and slow but I'm pretty sure she can make it in fifteen.

'I can't drive.'

'You can't drive?' She is incredulous.

'I ride a bike everywhere. You must have seen me.'

'Well you got a car.'

It's true. The Prosecution has made a good case. We have a car parked in the drive way.

'That's my wife's car.'

'You can't drive?'

'No. I never learned.'

'Your wife here?'

'No.'

'Maybe she can give me a ride.'

'She's not home.' It's a lie but I feel I have the right. This is one of the strangest conversations I've had in a while.

'I live down the road,' she grins.

'I know. The cat—'

'You're from England.'

'That's right.'

'I'm German,' again she grins, proud, although to be fair German ancestry - which I assume is what she means - isn't much of a boast around here. In San Antonio you're either Mexican or German or something else - everything that doesn't belong in the first two categories having been mixed up somewhere in that last one. That said, her accent is odd; although some of my wife's German-American grandparents barely spoke any English, so it probably only seems odd to me.

Miraculously she leaves, walking slowly back down the garden path. She isn't running any marathons, but I'm sure she can make it to the garage under her own steam if she really needs a beer that bad, and I've a weird, slightly unsettling feeling that this wasn't about beer. This was howdy, I'm your neighbour by someone with no real idea of how to go about such things.

Next day as I pass on my bike, I notice a second car in her driveway, and there's a young woman chaperoning a kid around the front lawn. They seem like regular people which comes as a relief. Maybe that's her daughter and a grandchild. She has people who care for her, and who can drive her to the Valero garage for beer.

Two weeks later, we do it all over again, except this time she needs a pack of cigarettes from the Valero garage.

Crazy Snot

We drove up Olney to North Vandiver, then along as far as Urban Crest. At Urban Crest we took a left to Crandall, then a sort of shimmy along to Greenwich at the end, and then again at Harmon, back down to North Vandiver and home. These are streets, lanes, roads, drives and places in Alamo Heights but no-one here seems to use suffixes which don't always even appear on the street signs. I'm in the habit of saying I live on Timberlane rather than Timberlane Drive because it would seem weird to me, as though I were trying to make a point; which is something different to my continued English pronunciation of the words banana and aluminium. Were I to go native with those two it would feel like the kind of impersonation which could lead to descriptions of things as real swell,  purty, or mighty fine. Yet I'll say gas rather than petrol station because it's easier. I don't know what the rules are.

We drove up Olney to North Vandiver, all around and then back down again for the sake of measuring the distance, which came to five and a half miles. Today I'm taking the same route on foot in the name of exercise because my bike is still at the repair shop. If I can be arsed, I tell myself, I might do a couple of circuits of the block demarcated by Urban Crest, Greenwich, and Harmon, and I've worked out that if I do that five times it will add up to the twenty miles I might have cycled on my bike; except of course I know full well that I'm not going to walk twenty bloody miles, so I'm just walking until I get bored.

Hailstones the size of golf balls and even larger fell on San Antonio last night. It was terrifying, not to mention deafening, and I've never experienced that sort of weather before. Thankfully, neither had my wife, so I'm hoping it won't happen again in my lifetime - it isn't one of those Texas things I'm just going to have to get used to, like incorrect pronunciation of banana or ambiguity as to whether such and such an address amounts to a road, a street, or a drive. This morning as I take my walk I'm also taking stock of the damage, because peculiarly ours seems to be the only house which didn't have one of those meteorite sized chunks of ice come through the roof. My wife's car is similarly undamaged. Walking up Morningside I pass a few vehicles with smashed wind shields, and plenty with hood or roof pitted by impact dents.

The first damage of which I take stock is my own knee as I miss a step and fall whilst walking across the parking lot at the dentists' office. This is Dr. Yarborough's surgery, so it's probably some sort of curse they've put on me because I got pissed off by the expensive and unnecessary treatment they attempted to con me into signing up for. I awkwardly get to my feet, direct dark thoughts towards the building, and then continue on roads strewn with the leaves of palms and yucca, plant detritus from gardens smashed up by last night's hail.

Eventually I reach the point at which North Vandiver crosses the Austin Highway, and I'm beginning to feel hungry. I suppose that's a couple of miles so far.

Fuck it, I decide, and enter the L&L Hawaiian Grill situated on the corner. Bess and I have been fascinated by the place for some time, wondering what the hell it is they actually serve. We have no idea what Hawaiian cuisine might look like and have assumed that the place is probably just a burger joint wherein a chef in a grass skirt sticks a slice of pineapple in your bun; but we don't know this for sure because neither of us have ever quite summoned up the courage to investigate. I order loco moco because it isn't a burger, and it's the weirdest looking thing on the menu, at least to my eyes. Loco moco turns out to be a bed of white rice, two beefburgers of the kind I used to buy frozen from Sainsburys back in England and which seem conspicuously absent from American menus, all topped with a couple of fried eggs. There's also some sort of gravy on this, and a side of what appears to be a cross between macaroni cheese and coleslaw but without the cheese. As I eat, I study the menu and find a lot of burgers, amongst them a salmon burger which looks decent, and dishes which somehow hint at sushi. Being new to this, it all strikes me as food invented by crazy people, or as a burger joint owned by a maniac who suddenly decides he's running a sushi restaurant, with a knowledge of sushi based exclusively on a scene from a 1960s Batman comic. The food is mad, but strangely it actually sort of works. It tastes pretty good, although there's too much rice, and crucially it tastes home cooked, which means even with a loony at the wheel, L&L Hawaiian Grill already has a head start over Popeye's and all of those places.

Given our working hypothetical model of an establishment selling mainly pineapple burgers, Bess and I have often wondered how the hell L&L Hawaiian Grill manages to stay in business; and now I have my answer in that it's packed with marines and other servicemen presumably attached to Fort Sam just down the road. I guess some of them will have been stationed in Hawaii, and so they come here from time to time. Bess later tells me that moco is Spanish for bogies - or boogers as she inaccurately terms them - but loco moco nevertheless tastes pretty good for something with a recipe which may as well be what do I have left in the fridge which hasn't gone off? It's hard to get past the thought that I am eating a dish named crazy snot, but not impossible.

I walk on along North Vandiver, passing the Quaker's Meeting Hall and a series of utilities trucks repairing overhead power cables brought down by last night's anomalous weather. I turn up Urban Crest, and stroll into the quieter depths of Alamo Heights. I've answered my own question of what food is served at the L&L Hawaiian Grill, and now I get to answer who the hell buys those things? This is a thought which occurs each time we pass a place on the side of the highway selling giant brightly painted figures beaten into shape from sheets of tin. It's always roughly the same line up of cows, dinosaurs, banditos, cartoon characters and so on. They're garden ornaments, and whilst the sight of them always raises a smile, I can't imagine wanting one for our own yard, and I have no idea who buys them. A hot dog in a sombrero grins at me over the fence on the other side of Urban Crest. He's about nine foot tall, as is his friend, the chicken, and so I have my answer.

At the corner of Northridge I pause to inspect a lawn embellished with a Trump campaign sign. It seems worth looking at because this is thankfully the first Trump campaign material I've seen in real life on this side of the internet. I've seen plenty of Bernie and Hillary material, and a fair quota in support of our own homegrown Republicans - Straus and others - but this is my first physical evidence of real people apparently believing Donald Trump might be worth a vote. I notice how there's similarly a Trump campaign sticker on the rear bumper of the truck parked in the driveway, next to one of the state flag with the word secede superimposed in forceful block capitals.

What sort of person might live here? I hear my inner Loyd Grossman ask. I suppose it depends upon which aspect of Trump's campaign most appeals to this individual, although given that Donald Trump seems to hate more or less everyone, it's hard to take a guess. This person might have a problem with all those Mexicans supposedly flooding across the border, and may therefore respond to Trump's vow to represent his or her views in that regard. Of course, someone who dislikes Mexicans choosing to live in San Antonio would have to be a fucking idiot, which doesn't necessarily preclude the possibility of this being the detail which has secured his or her vote. The secede sticker refers to the popularity of the idea that Texas might secede from the union of the United States, thus meaning we no longer have to have anything to do with jazz musicians or hippies who wear open-toed sandals - visits to Austin excepted - which is a nice idea but probably won't happen. I therefore have to assume that our mysterious family not only wish for a big fucking wall built across the bottom part of the state, but for Texas to become its own country, and one which logically wouldn't actually be under the jurisdiction of President Trump; unless they want Trump to move down here before we close the doors and change the locks. Maybe they haven't really thought it all through. Maybe they're just idiots.

If I have any idiotic qualities, they have been lessened by my walk, statistically speaking. I return home via HEB, our local supermarket, clocking up a sum total of just under seven miles, which seems like enough. I've eaten crazy snot, penetrated the mystery of L&L Hawaiian Grill, discovered who the hell buys those things, and observed Trump support. I am moderately wiser than when I set out this morning.