Poems and Plays - David Werner

The Pallid Sphere

2017-12-17T23:51:52+00:00

Click Here to read the play in Pdf format.

EXPLANITORY NOTE on when and why I wrote the play: The Pallid Sphere

From hindsight, I think I wrote the poetical drama, The Pallid Sphere, as a tangible externalization of an inner quandary I was grappling with as a youth, namely: where to go with my life?

Toward the end of my last year at New England University, in New South Wales, Australia, I was at a major crossroads. As I was completing my bachelor-of-science degree, I pondered more and more over the big question: what to do next? Should I plow ahead with my university studies toward a higher degree and perhaps a more respected, better paying job? Or should I strike out on something new, and truer to my heart? Should I pursue a conventional career? Or my dreams?

My professors – who had great expectations for me – urged me to go on with an “honours” degree in zoology. They foresaw me doing groundbreaking research on soil fauna (in line with their consignment to improve the pasture-land for sheep). They offered me a full scholarship and a promising future as an “agricultural eco-biologist.”

But I had misgivings. My eagerness, since adolescence, to study biology was born from my love of the wilderness and its creatures, not my love of the mutton industry – nor of any other money-grubbing, wilderness-consuming enterprise.

I recalled how my father, long before, had faced a similar decision. Since childhood he’d had a gift – indeed, a passion – for drawing and painting. But in his youth he’d been persuaded by his father (an attorney) to study law rather than art – in order to make more money and live more comfortably. So my father had sidelined his dream to become an artist and saddled himself to the legal profession – for life. As I remembered him over many years, he seldom looked happy, except in those stolen moments with brush and palate in hand. When he sketched a sunset, he too glowed.

The two previous years at New England University I had won the award as the most outstanding science student of the year. But now my grades no longer interested me that much. When I should have been sweating for my finals, often I found myself daydreaming, or wandering in the open woodlands.

A painting hung in my small student bedroom. I’d been enthralled by this painting since the first time I saw it in the home of a fellow laborer in blister-rust control, in the mountains of California, when I was 17. I’d raved over it every time I visited his home, until at last he simply gave it too me, saying, “It speaks so much more to you than it does to me.” The painting was in some ways quite ordinary. I have friends who would call it kitsch – or cute. I guess it depends on what you need or chose to see. The painting – in soft pastels – is of a boy reclining quietly on a grassy hillside, gazing out at the view. There is a look of happy self-containment on his face, yet also a touch of longing, even sadness – a whole gestalt of feeling and of joy and of yearning.

Once entrusted to me, the painting accompanied me wherever I went – from California to Ohio, back to California, and now down-under to Australia. It enlightened and energized me. Like the North Star or the Southern Cross, it was a compass that kept my spirit on track. Often during my first years at the university, absorbed into my studies as I was, my eyes came to rest on that gentle painting.

During the last year of my work toward my bachelor of science degree, I became more immersed in obligatory studies and neglectful of things I adored, and the painting on the wall slowly began to loose its spell. Little by little it became just a picture of a befuddled kid on a hill. It was the same painting. The change was in me. I was losing something. Perhaps my childhood. One evening, after taking a furtive glance at the painting, I sat on my bed and scribbled out a poem. It was poem about the loss of childhood. Does the child need to die to become a man? And if the child in him dies, what is the man?

It was a need to explore this question in greater depth that led to my writing The Pallid Sphere. This was a question that had practical importance to me at that turning point in my life.

The play is written in verse (iambic pentameter), up to the point where the protagonist gives up his dream to take the road less traveled, and returns to his conventional life. From then on the play proceeds in flat, lumbering prose – with a few exceptions. After graduation I did decide to take “the road less taken.” Rather than continue postgraduate studies in biology, I switched fields completely, studying literature and drama at the University of Cincinnati.

Although my undergraduate studies had been strictly in science, the head of the English department at the University of Cincinnati made an exception and allowed me to enter the graduate program in literature. His decision was largely based on reading a copy of The Pallid Sphere. Though he recognized my play as a juvenile effort, he thought it showed promise. And he was in tune with the soul-searching. He urged me to enter the play into a competition for budding playwrights in the eastern United States. To my amazement it won second prize! The University of Cincinnati drama department wanted to put The Pallid Sphere on stage (for which it was never really intended: too many words and too little action). However its production was postponed because I was about to leave on a trip to the Orient – which was to last two years. By the time I returned from the East, I had other things I wanted to do, and The Pallid Sphere was a bygone.

On many occasions in my life I have chosen the road less taken. Often it has not been easy. But unlike Roger in The Pallid Sphere, I did not run off to be a hermit. Rather, I took a stand with other misfits and dreamers, in the never-ending effort to build a kinder, more inclusive, more emancipating world for all.

The Clock and the Clockmaker

2017-09-16T18:28:35+00:00

The Clock and the Clockmaker
A play in one act by David B Werner
Written at the Shivananda Ashram near Rishikesh, India, 1959

Click here for a PDF version of this play.

A PRICKLY FRIENDSHIP

2017-09-16T16:19:28+00:00

David B Werner, New Hampshire, September 6, 2010

Was it your singularity, my prickly friend, or mine

that drew us warily together this blue fall morning?

Deep on the trail to White Ledge, in the shadow of Chocorua,

within a dense beech-oak-maple-hemlock shieling

where the last drop ends and the long last climb begins,

there we took each other by surprise.

There you appeared, jauntily waddling down the path

in my direction. At first glance (no offence intended)

I took you for a small, fat, black, and very shaggy dog.

How strange, I thought, for such an unkempt unaccompanied mutt

to whiffle through this almost virgin woods. On spotting me,

you stopped and defensively puffed out your quills

like a mega sycamore ball or stepped-on stonefish. Never before

have I had such a good look at a porcupine, uncrushed and free.

For a long moment, some 20 feet apart, each of us curiously but

cautiously stood our ground. Gently, coaxingly, I tried to tell you:

You can relax, I won’t hurt you, I want to be your friend.

You peered at me with your tiny amber eyes, almost as if you

saw into me. Slowly you unpuffed your ivory-tipped quills,

then turned, and nonchalantly ambled into the woods,

your flat, prickly, beaver-like tail trailing behind you.

“Please come back,” I whispered, seductively as I could.

And to my astonishment, you gradually circled and came back

onto the trail, a bit closer than where you’d left it.

With barely a glance at me (you will recall)

you crossed the path and headed for a strange large pile

of lichen-studded stones, like the ones old farmers used to

build walls with to keep their livestock in and strangers out.

But no remnants of such walls were here in view. I wondered whether

that mini-pyramid of weathered rocks might once have marked

the ancient burial site of Chief Chocorua’s long lost tribe: a good-natured people,

first befriended, then exploited and finally exterminated by my forefathers.

(For am I not the 8^th great grandson of the Pilgrim Fathers?)

With footing nimble as a bear, you deftly clambered up

that telltale mound of rocks until you perched, sentinel-like,

on the topmost stone. From that vantage point you gazed

down at me: proudly, placidly, with a querulous look

that neither welcomed nor repelled. I wanted to be closer.

Wondering how near you’d let me come, I sat down and inched

myself toward you. As I drew nearer, you again grew wary

and turned your back on me, your dark, dart-quivering tail

ready to lash out. But when I sat stone-still once more, again

you turned to face me. By now we were only four feet or so

apart, looking into each other’s eyes.

Squirrel-like, you hunched, your front paws tucked against

your chest, your long-clawed feet angled awkwardly inward

like a shy child’s. Studying each other, we sat that way

for the best part of an hour. Your only movement was now and then

to brush with a paw the thirsty mosquitoes from your eyes.

I did the same. But now it was you who began to speak:

faint mutterings punctuated with high-pitched grunts or clicks,

or perhaps the soft chattering of your small razor-sharp teeth.

Best I could, I answered you in kind. Longing for connection,

as slowly as the hand of a clock I reached out my hand until my fingertips

were no more than a yard from your whiskers, just out of reach

should you change your mind and try to lash me with your tail.

When at last I lowered my vacant hand you silently

turned sideways, inviting me to admire your wizened profile.

With dignity you arched your back and fanned out you quills

in a display as grand as a lovelorn peacock … or the headdress of

an Indian chief. Even your tail, hanging down the rock behind you,

resembled a quill-adorned Indian braid. In my mind’s eye, I saw

in you the noble reincarnation of Chief Chocorua, who –

when the remainder of his tribe fled to the still unspoiled boreal

of Canada – had chosen to stay behind with his 10-year-old son

to guard the sacred burial grounds of his ancestors.

That choice of course cost him his life. Pursued by soldiers up the mountain,

he leapt to his death from the peak that still bears his name.

Old and weathered porcupine, on looking at you I found myself

asking your forgiveness. Forgiveness not only for the genocide of Chocorua

and his tribe but for the plundering by my greedy tribe, of the forests,

of the oceans, of the earth, of the atmosphere, and of the germ of life itself;

forgiveness for the white-man’s crusade to shame and tame nature

(including our own instinctively caring and convivial nature);

above all, forgiveness for our rupture of the mysterious circle of life:

that singular bloom of diversity in which you and I

and all who live and die are ever part, ever brothers sisters lovers

– even as some of us dine on one another –

for we are all of the same blood, the same root.

Forgive me then, my prickly friend, for what we call

Civilization. For I, too, am its doing and undoing, a vector

of the Earth’s demise. Accept my love and imagination

as the spirit moves you. But keep your little javelins ready.

Stay wary.

The Courtyard

2017-09-16T12:56:34+00:00

(Karachi, 1960)

          Written in the servants’ quarters of a guesthouse
          in Karachi, Pakistan, in 1960 when the author was
      26 years old.

INSIDE THE COURTYARD

In the morning as soon as it is half light
The flies come.

Those who sleep on hemp beds before their huts
Or on the ground on mats
Wrap their towels around their heads
And go back to sleep.

When the sun falls across them they arise.

--0--

In the dusty servants' courtyard
The father squats
And the child squats.

The father puts a white powder on his finger
And puts his finger in the child's mouth.

A hen scuttles by, clucking noisily,
Chased by a red-blue rooster.

With a cupped hand
The father takes water from a shiny bronze lota,

And puts the water in the child's mouth.
The child spits the water out.

The father puts water again in the child's mouth
And the child spits the water out. Three times.

Then the father rises and takes the child's hand
And they go back into the mud-baked hut.

---0---

The one rooster is dingy white
With a red comb and a red dewlap.
The other rooster is rusty brown and blue
With a red comb and a red dewlap.

They face each other in the dirt courtyard
Behind the mud huts with the green doors.

They lower their heads.

They throw out their ruffs.

The hens and larger chicks wander close.

The roosters scratch at the ground
And pick up little stones with their pale beaks,

Then one turns and struts away.

The other stretches and hooks its neck
And crows.

---0---
In the walls of the dirt dwellings
The windows which open onto the common
Courtyard are barred with iron bars.
The windows which open onto the street
Are barred with iron bars also.

The sparrows fly between them.

---0---
The green doors open
And two little boys come out,
The larger leading.

They are wearing dust-colored knit cotton shirts
Which reach the top of their
Round brown backsides.

They walk as far as the high dirt wall
And turn around.
They go down on their haunches and leave
What they have to.

Then holding their shirts very high
(because the shirts were much longer
when they were much smaller)
They walk back across the dirt courtyard
And go through the green doors

To where Mother or their larger sister
Will wash their backsides.

---0---
He is a thin man
Dressed in a khaki dhoti.

He comes each morning

A few minutes after the bent old man
Who sells lentils and graham.

The milk cans clank
At the back of his rusty bicycle.

Children and women come out of the huts
Each with a lota in one hand and
Four to six annas in the other.

Each gives the annas to the man in the khaki dhoti.

Each waits as he dips his long handled dipper
Into one of the metal cans and measures out the milk
Into their lotas.

Sometimes a fly that has flown into the can
Comes up in the dipper.

The man in the khaki dhoti reaches
A rutted forefinger into the milk
And lets the bedraggled fly climb up on it.
Then he shakes his finger and the fly
Drips off into the dust
Where one of the children or a mother
Steps on it with a bare foot.

If the fly in the milk has already drowned
The man in the khaki dhoti fishes it out
With his thumb and forefinger
And flicks it away.

The milk looks very thin and blue but nobody
Accuses the man of putting water in it.

We take our pots of milk and go back into our huts.

---0---

One little girl wears trousers
Because she has no dress.

She carries a naked infant pressed against
Her bony hip

And she steps as if she were dancing.

“Ah Salaam, Sa’ib,” she says as I go by.

---0---

A boy comes darting
Around the corner of the row of dirt huts.
He runs directly towards me
But doesn’t see me
For I am sitting quietly in the shadows
And then, too,
His eyes are half closed with his laughing.

Another boy appears around the corner and
Throws a stone.

The first boy
Still laughing
Dodges
And ducks behind a lone Imbly tree.

The stone rolls through the dust and

Stops near my feet.

It is very hot and dry here

And even so the leaves of the Imbly tree

Are fresh and green.

--0--

A narrow ditch
Passes in front of the green doors
And runs along at the base of the dirt wall
That forms the front of the huts.
It carries the waste water
Which comes from inside through little holes
In the bottom of the wall.

The sewer is clogged.

Each morning a boy or barefooted man
Takes up the rusty bucket
That lies all day near the high outer wall
And bails out the flooded sewer.

He throws the strong-smelling water

Onto a rock pile in the corner of the courtyard.

For a half hour or so until the sun dries the rocks
The air smells very strong.
On cloudy days it takes longer to dry,
And when it rains hard
The gray-green water rises and floods the whole courtyard.

When the rain stops and the water recedes
The wet yard is covered with a green slime.

When the hot sun comes again
It turns the slime brown, and soon
The soil is just soil again
And soon dust.

In the mornings the man or boy
Bales out the sewer as before
And throws the strong-smelling water
Onto the rocks in the corner of the courtyard.
I have not been brought up to such smells
And I ask if something can't be done
To unclog the sewer.

No", I am told,
"It is not our job.”

"Whose is it, then?" I ask.

The man shrugs, and goes on baling.
His bare feet glisten with the strong-smelling water.

The sun will soon dry his strong feet.

---0---

The children
Throw their bottle caps
With concentration,
Seeing which one will land closest to
The high dirt wall.
They run forward,
Gather the caps
And run back to throw them again.

In the white bright sky overhead
The kites on motionless wings
Circle and circle.

---0---

The brown dog with the bent tail
Barks every time I walk past, perhaps
Because I limp a little.
I throw a stone at it
And now it pays no attention
As I walk past.

---0---

No one here
Ever heard of a dust rag.

The soil is too dry
And the wind blows too much.

---0---

The water
From the only faucet
Has stopped running again
One of the children watching from the dust
Gets up and goes into one of the huts.

She is a dark skinned child with large
Deep set eyes
And hair cut short because
It is so much easier to find the lice
When the hair is cut short.

She returns with a small lota of water.
At first I shake my head
But she persists, so
I squat down and rub my hands together
While she pours the water slowly over them.

Below, there forms a dark reddish patch
In the dust.

---0---

The little boy is there again
On his hands and knees in the dust
In the corner of the courtyard.
His head is bent low.
The late afternoon sun beats down upon him
Making his golden back glisten
But he stays and stays, scarcely moving.

A sharp call comes from one of the huts.
The boy does not move.

The call comes again.
The boy rises slowly and goes into the hut.

“What do you s’pose he was lookin’ at?”
Asks a young comrade tramp.

He’d noticed him too, a number of times.

My comrade tramp gets up and walks over

To where the boy was kneeling.
“What is it?” I call.

My comrade shrugs his wide shoulders.
“Nothing there.” he says. “Only an ant hole.”

---0---

The ant hole is in the corner of the courtyard
Near the high wall.

From mid-morning to late afternoon
The small ants stream in and out.

They follow tiny smooth paths in the dust.
There are paths that lead to the rock pile
Where the sewer water is thrown each morning to
dry.

There are paths along the bottom of the high dirt
wall.
When the ants emerge from the hole
They carry small particles of dirt and sand.
They carry them far away from the hole before
they drop them.
The returning ants carry small dead gnats,
Small shriveled green caterpillars,
Small chapatti crumbs,
And small flies.

It takes several ants to carry a small shriveled green caterpillar.

The ants are all pretty much alike,
Yet there are differences.
Some are larger than others.
Some have bigger jaws and thicker heads and don't carry anything.

All the ants have two rings
Of tiny whitish hairs around their back ends.
They all have busy elbowed feelers.

When the ants encounter one another along the paths
They rub antennae,
Then they scurry on.

---0---

The white sky vibrates under the high sun
And the white dust is almost too hot to be able
To stand in one spot with bare feet.
The boy is bent and motionless in the sunlight.
His dark gold body, naked but for his loins,
Is wet with perspiration.

A gust of hot air shuttles the leaves of the Imbly tree

And stirs for an instant the dust in the courtyard.

---0---

He shifts a foot.
The brown and gray grasshopper springs into the air
And buzzes ahead of him.

The boy pursues.
The grasshopper comes down and the boy on top
of it.

The boy stands up with the grasshopper in his
fingers.
His dark eyes shine.

He touches one of the short brown feelers
And watches it move.

He pulls back one of the crisp gray wing-covers
And unfolds the pale yellow fan beneath it.

He holds the insect by one of its stout jumping legs
And lets it jerk forwards and backwards above his
thin raised fingers.

The leg breaks from the body and the grasshopper
Buzzes high up and away and over the wall.

The boy looks for a moment
At the gray-brown leg between his fingers,
Then tosses it away.

---0---

Someone has spilled sugar near the Imbly tree.

The ants are busy.

---0---

At night
There are no ants coming in and out
Of their hole in the corner of the courtyard.

I saw the boy crouching to look for them
With the light of a match.

It was hard to sleep because
The bedbugs kept tickling.

So I got a match and had a look too.

At night there are no ants.

---0---

There is no moon
And the stars are very bright
and very numerous.

Soon it will be dawn;

The baby still cries.

---0---

With his fingers
He feels along the rough earth wall
‘Till he reaches the narrow table.

He feels for the box of matches.
He strikes a match to light a thin cigarette.

As the match flares
There is the faint rustling sound of many tiny legs
As numerous dark fleet insects with long feelers
Scuttle back into the crevices and shadows.

If he looked
He might see their dark swiftly disappearing
shapes
But he sees only the quietly sleeping forms
Of his wife and huddled children
On their mats.

He lights his cigarette and shakes out the flame.

There is now only the glow of the red tip
And the sound of the sleepers' soft breathing.

He finishes his cigarette and silently takes
His place on the mat he shares with his wife.

He touches her warm shoulder with his hand.
He shuts his eyes. He sleeps.

Noiselessly the dark flat insects
Slip forth again from their crevices.
They will spend the night now, undisturbed,
Roaming the dark walls and floor,
But they will be gone before

The flies come.

---0---

Revealing a new day's sun
Not yet risen far enough to touch
The highest mud-roof or seldom tree
A fruit dove flies
High over the slow-breathing sleepers,
Its orange-pink breast aglow.

OUTSIDE THE COURTYARD

On the east side of the city are many new apartments,
Modern and in pastels: some pink, some cream, some light blue or green.
Each apartment building is surrounded by
A green lawn.
Each green lawn is surrounded by an arbor:
Bananas, limes, pawpaws, tamarinds, and the like.
Each arbor is surrounded by a high wall.

Between two of these apartments there is
A vacant lot.
In the lot are: broken stones, pieces of an
old cement wall, a soleless shoe,
a shallow pit with rusted cans in it,
a broken blue bottle.

In the lot also are a few flowers:

white and yellow daisies and one or two

small bluebells,

And there, too, is grass

Growing in thin whisps.

---0---

In the morning

Before anyone is moving in the apartments

A boy in dust-colored shorts

Comes to the lot with two white cows

And a brown and white Brahman bull.

The cows and the bull eat the grass.

The boy perches on a pile of rubble by the roadside.

When the people from the apartments arise and go to work

The boy watches their big autos and little autos and bicycles hurrying by.

No one waves to him

And he waves to no one.

---0---

On glossy cream and black wings

Not yet fully hardened

An early morning butterfly

Dips slowly around the lime tree

From across the wall

Another of its kind appears

And the two

Revolving about each other

Ascend higher and higher into the bright sky

And vanish.

Under a tamarind sapling sleeps

A white cat.

A kite, circling somewhere in the white sky,

Cries.

"Tea is ready!" calls Taji from the railing.

---0---

The sea is always there.

The people put up shacks and stands

And sell betel nut along the beach, but

The sea is still there.

---0---

On the shore

There are many tiny holes in the sand.

My friend, Doulat, says they are made by crabs

But if this is so

The crabs are very small.

---0---

The family takes care of a large date grove near the edge of the city.

Irrigation ditches wind between the dark trunks of the palm trees and

Many small birds come to the grove to roost and to drink.

Beyond the boundaries of the grove the land is bright and hot and barren.

The mother smiles,

Showing her small blackened teeth.

She is unveiled and wears a gold pin in her nostril.

Before her stands a little girl, maybe seven years
old.

The mother speaks to a little boy at her side.

"Only five rupees" says the little boy in rude
English.

He has bright lively eyes and a clean shirt.

The little girl smiles shyly and looks up at me.

Only five rupees" says the boy again.

"No." I say, and walk away.

"Four rupees!" cries the little boy after me.

---0---

I feel the light touch of a small hand on my arm.

She is a very small girl, four or five, perhaps,

With black, matted hair.

She is dressed in torn rags but

Her eyes are large and bright and playful.

She tags along at my side

And holds out her small hand.

"Bucksheez!" she says over and over.

"Bucksheez! Bucksheez!"

I take an anna out of my basket

And press it into the small hand.

The little girl laughs with delight

And skips back down the broken sidewalk

To a place where her mother is hiding

In the shadow of an alley.

The mother will take the small coin with trembling fingers.

She will add it to a few others in a small square of cloth under her bosom.

She will count the coins and think what they can buy that evening for herself and the little girl to eat.

To the mother it is a matter of life or death.

But to the little girl it is life itself.

It is all only a game.

The little girl's eyes are still bright and large and playful.

---0---

He is standing silently

By the wall at one of the busiest street crossings.

His clothes are torn and dirty.

His eyes peer quietly ahead of him.

They do not follow the noisy, hurrying people,

Some well clad, some poorly clad, who stream

Back and forth through the streets.

There are dark furrows on his dust-weathered brow,

And he holds one of his young gnarled hands in the other.

I take a rupee out of my pocket and

Hold it out to him.

At first he seems not to notice.

Then he smiles and slowly shakes his head.

I put the rupee back into my pocket
And move away into the crowd.

---0---

The Empress Bazaar is teaming

With shoppers,

With shabbily clad men, and children crying out in nasal tones and pushing flat wooden carts piled with pawpaws and dates and hard green pears,

With thin men bearing small balloons or little plastic bells, who stand where people want to pass and shout, "Do anni! Do anni!"

I wend my way through the crowd

Toward a stand where a woman has duck eggs

In a small wire basket which hangs under the frayed canopy.

(Duck eggs cost three annas each and chicken eggs cost three annas each, but duck eggs are larger.)

On the way to the stand with the duck eggs

I see a man I take at first to be a woman.

His hair is long and matted.

One of his legs is deformed, and he walks with a hobble and a hop.

From his left hand are hanging

Three plump curlews.

Their feet are all bound together and he holds

Them upside down by their long greenish legs.

The three curlews are not flapping or struggling.

They twist their long necks as far as they can and blink their soft brown eyes.

The man with the deformed leg takes the three curlews

From one poultry stand to the next

And argues with the vendors.

If he had just one curlew to sell, I tell myself,

I would pay him four rupees

And let the bird go free.

But the man has three curlews: 12 rupees.

I continue on my way to the stand with

The duck eggs in the wire basket.

---0---

Silver in the dusty sunlight gleams
The black broad wet back
Of the limping water buffalo

Led by a laughing, shouting, half-starved near-naked boy
Through the dung-steaming, dust-streaming streets of Old Karachi.

*****

Explanatory note added by the author

(February. 2016)

The Dusty Courtyard was written in my youth near the end of a long, arduous trek by bicycle alone across Europe and the Middle East to India. This “journey to the East” – on which I experienced everything from devastating dehydration to broken bones to near-lethal dysentery – was for me, in every sense, cathartic. It stripped me of clutter and took me back to basics. By the time I took a rest-stop in Karachi to partially regain my strength, I was in a state of mind purged of Western frenetics and complexity.

Because my money was limited and my journey long, I couldn’t afford a bedroom at the guest-house in Karachi. But the kindly guest-house manager, for a pittance, permitted me to stay in the scruffy servant’s quarters flanking the dusty courtyard, out back. The Courtyard is a record of some of the things I saw and felt while I was there. …

A few years after my trip to the Orient (around 1963), back in California, I dedicated this bundle of prose poems from Karachi to a teenage girl, Laurie Friedman, and presented them to her as a kind of memento. Laurie was then a pupil of mine at a student/parent/teacher learning-cooperative called Pacific High School (which I’d helped start). Tragically, Laurie’s mother and father were killed in a car accident when she was on a week-long class field trip with me to the Mojave desert. Following her parents’ death, Laurie and I became very close. Since then, although sometimes years have gone go by without seeing each other, the warmth of our friendship has remained.

With the passing decades, however, I had completely forgotten about having written The Courtyard. … Then -- in the summer of 2015, after Laurie and I had met at the memorial of a mutual friend -- Laurie sent me by post her copy of The Courtyard, which she had safely kept tucked away for half a century. (I had long since misplaced any versions I once had.)

On rereading these forgotten scribblings from my youth, they bought back such vivid memories of that unique layover in Karachi that I decided to digitalize the collection, to share it with friends. To me, at least, this compilation of impulsive sketches of life in that dusty courtyard – which I have purposefully left unedited – has a freshness and unsullied directness that today seems like a dream. Which I dearly miss. From a world so far from home, it makes me homesick.