Nomadic Tribe Soup

Everyday I wake up to a massacre. My morning sleepyheaded-ness coincides with killing en masse. Grains of coarsely ground coffee in hot water yield to gravity in the french press while I eye my prey. It's like an artsy music video. Each day, sometimes before going to bed too, I kill soft bodies. With a valid excuse as foolproof as an EU passport, I meticulously wipe away the larvae on the ceiling. At any given moment of inspection there are at least ten, eleven of them. By the upper corners, near the blinds, over the sofa we had no place for, nor could throw away that blocks the entrance of the kitchen… This killing is legitimate, I repeat like mantra. The wiggly worms are delicate. Frankly I put my life on the line by getting on the wobbly chair and swiping a wet paper towel gently over one so as not to smear the contents of the tiny immature body on the whitewashed ceiling. When they are captured intact, I take pride in my insectarian efforts. I am an empathetic human. They ca...

Before an American physician and pathologist coined thalassemia , there was already blood in the Mediterranean. There was bloodshed around the Mediterranean for thousands of years before anyone ever thought of hemoglobin and the severe anemia that particularly affected the people of Italy, Greece and Turkey. Coined from Greek words 'sea' and 'blood', thalassemia seems like a lethal tribute to the clear blue waters of the Aegean and the Mediterranean. I saw a photo of a child fished from the sea recently. The tiny parcel was in the arms of a man kneeling in a boat, as if he were an offering to the gods. Not to the Gods of the EU but most naturally to some pagan gods who would welcome the lifeless little fellow still wearing a red beanie. Should the kiddo have a name, it remains as slack a question as his swollen, dangling body. We conveniently go by numbers when asylum seekers and refugees flood the seas, shores and gates of pristine first world exclusivity. So we a...