Pitter-patter

I arrived at Heathrow in the afternoon, and my senses awoke, vaguely, to the feel that this is not Kansas anymore. 'Do you live in Algeria?' asked the customs officer. In the grand tradition of verbal exchange with authorities, I offered a simple 'No.'

Having transferred to the hotel near Gatwick, I soon discovered why I got such a good deal. In my mid-afternoon slumber, construction to improve facilities was in positive action. But as the drilling continued and the fire alarm rang, like a mound on a bed of comfortable soil, I was hardly to stir.

My flight is in the morning. The window (vinyl, right-hand inward casement, with restrictor) is open. It is an unexpected, rare treat in what seems to be a modern land of exposed exterior mechanical systems. The pitter-patter of rain layers with the occasional swoosh of a car, and the hum of an airport that perhaps sleeps little. I had a delightful, nourishing curry in the hotel restaurant for dinner. It served as a reminder that the extraordinary can come from the hands of the ordinary.

One of the pleasures of travelling to the east (Europe) is waking up at midnight and having a lot of quiet time. Usually I do some timed-release reading preparation for a trip, and there was no exception in this case. I wandered in the woods of Camus in the fall, watched The Battle of Algiers, and stumbled upon the Algerian nationalist Abdelkhader in the biography of Anglo-Syrian Jane Digby. Literature on this place, however, a vast desert in the English-speaking world. The first Lonely Planet on Algeria was published in 2007, and the copy which is accompanying me is in relatively pristine condition - a complete set of pages, a good spine, and perhaps a greyness on the edges due only to dust and not to handling. And in this quiet time of pitter-patter, I journey into my Bradt and LP and Petit Fute, into a vast landscape with pockets of the incredible. How one guidebook, and indeed a single country, can fathom what it does is a bit beyond my comprehension. Who *hasn't* been to Algeria would be the question. There may be, in fact, more in Mandarin on current affairs here, and if I am lucky I may find a noodle shop, and need to brush up on how to request 'not spicy.' I will acknowledge my arrival to a kind of heaven if I can have a bowl of foul for breakfast and shrimp rice rolls for lunch.

And if this is the humble promise and potential of the unknown, so be it.