Saturday was laundry day in Larnaka. By nine in the morning, the sun shone benignly upon me as I carried a hold-all filled with my week’s dirty clothes. Anna, a five-foot-nothing scrawny blond from Poland, in her thirties, oversaw the laundry room at the Petrou...

Weeks before Christmas, the Aslett women would gather at Flo’s—my foster mother, the grand matriarch of the clan—to make pasties, fruit cakes and mince pies. Coins from the past—copper farthings , ha’pennies, silver shillings, sixpences, and half-crowns—were stirred...

"Felix, can you walk me through Stone Town today? It's been 30 years since my last visit." Felix was my go-to guide in Zanzibar. We crossed the square in front of my hotel Serena to enter a warren of runaway, intertwining, meandering streets. I had expected to find...

Coming home last week from a six o’clock breakfast meeting, I noticed our neighbours’ lighted window. The curtains were undrawn, two boys—7 and 8—were scampering hither and thither, their mother running in opposite directions. We also had two boys. Now adults. I can...

“Pops, why are we waiting here?” Chris asked. Our family of four had been stuck in a minibus, built to accommodate 20, for an hour in the parking lot of Hilo Airport. The boys had been woken up at 6 a.m. for all of us to be collected at 7 a.m. for a tour of the...

I wanted to write since I was yay high, but didn’t get round to it until I was 60. Having completed the second chapter of my first book Chasing Aphrodite, I hit a mental block. The chapter completed was about a Filipina caretaker sitting beside me on a 150 km bus...

“Old Collins won’t like that.” It was Gary, my colleague at the accounting firm of Collins Barrow, Calgary, Canada. He was staring at the 5,000 piece, all-red jigsaw puzzle spread across the coffee table in my office. “You’ll be accused of wasting precious chargeable...

Yahya Sinwar was born in Khan Yunis refugee camp in 1962 to a family who fled from Ashkelon during the 1948 Palestine War. At the age of 27, Sinwar was given four life sentences by Israel for the killing of “collaborators”. He spent 22 years in prison before being...

“Not another museum!” my boys chimed in together. “It’s not a museum. It’s a modern-day cathedral, still being constructed. A masterpiece in the making,” I pleaded. It was a beautiful warm, sunny day in Barcelona. “Can’t we go to a beach or park instead?” Our...

Years ago, I attended a meeting held by The Forum Group. Their pitch was directed at those dissatisfied with their lives. For $600, you were promised a course that would turn your life around. The facilitator, uncannily dressed like a Mormon, in a smart black suit and...