by Emil Rem | Dec 26, 2024 | Analects
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...
by Emil Rem | Dec 19, 2024 | Analects
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...
by Emil Rem | Dec 16, 2024 | Analects
“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...
by Emil Rem | Dec 5, 2024 | Analects
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...
by Emil Rem | Nov 19, 2024 | Analects
“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...
