He rocked back and forth on the bench with listless uncertainty, his blue eyes open and glazed over, sweat beading on his reddening brow. The long leather straps across my back, now mercifully slackened, ended in his idle hands. I turned back without a second thought, put my head down and took from him the rein that I needed. I understood everything, and it was then, that I endeavored to become myself.

I snapped to when the wagon lurched to a stop in front of the livery stable. Both brothers came out to tend the laboring animal. After five long minutes of gesturing, I managed to have Drusel take me to an operating telephone. Half an hour later, Samas' voice crackled weakly through the line in a warm, full-bodied hello.

"I'm ready," I shouted into the receiver. "Let's do this."

1 When Clovis uses the term “the singers of goat songs” he is likely referring to the origins of tragedy, specifically the ancient Greek meaning which is tragōidiā contracted from trag(o)-aoidiā = "goat song" from tragos = "goat" and aeidein = "to sing" .

“We are Zeus' Dioscuri sons,” here he is likely referring to a little known fact about the Greek gods, twin brothers Castor and Pollux (the Dioscuri), in that they spent alternate days as gods on Olympus and as deceased mortals in Hades.

22

Obtaining the exit visa necessary for the daily flight to Tunis would have seemed difficult had I not done it after a harrowing overnight bus ride through the mountainous highlands ringing the Yemeni capital of Sanaa. I arrived well before sunrise and hailed a taxi to the airport at dawn.

Of the 3500 dollars I had, only 600 remained after buying a ticket and the favors of the immigration official at the airport. But the money seemed unimportant compared to the task ahead. I stepped onto the plane, half expecting each passenger to have a screaming child and two flapping chickens as was the case on the bus. Settling into the threadbare seat, I looked out the window toward the future, my outstretched hand eager to grasp.

The bark of the tires against the Tunisian runway broke the shield of determined concentration I had donned when I left in the wagon. I had not thought about Clovis since then.

I assumed that Drusel would take the wagon back to him, but what would I say when I saw him again, what could I say?

I walked out of the airport straight into the back of another dingy taxicab. I unfolded the note in my pocket and read aloud the name of the hotel Samas had given me over the phone. "Hotel Majeet."

The young smiling cabbie turned in his seat to face me. "I know the place." He pushed out his lower lip in disapproval. "I take you to much much better place. Very nice, many foreigners like you."

I looked at the note and read the name aloud again.