Granta: 'Over There' by Paul Theroux
From the latest issue of Granta entitled "How America Sees the World" Theroux describes an incident in Zambia forty years ago.
With Christmas approaching I went via a roundabout route to Zambia and on Christmas Eve was sitting in an almost empty and rather dirty bar outside Lusaka, talking to the only other drinkers, a man and woman.‘This is for you,’ I said, giving the man a bottle of beer. ‘And this is for your wife. Happy Christmas.’
‘Happy Christmas to you,’ the man said. ‘But she is not my wife. She is my sister. And she likes you very much.’
(via Arts & Letters Daily)
Posted by alokem at February 27, 2004 02:19 PM