A Congolese Man in Paris
“Watch where you’re going, Little Man,” Sylvere said, speaking in Kikongo and placing his hand on the head of the small boy. Sylvere stood next to the open drawer of his desk inside the...
Europe / France / Life & Culture
by Geoffrey House · Published February 9, 2021 · Last modified April 2, 2021
“Watch where you’re going, Little Man,” Sylvere said, speaking in Kikongo and placing his hand on the head of the small boy. Sylvere stood next to the open drawer of his desk inside the...
Sylvere placed his saxophone next to its case on the small stage, walked to the bar, and sat on a stool near one end, staring into the black, heavy night. Outside it was hot...
Europe / Italy / Life & Culture
by Geoffrey House · Published October 8, 2020 · Last modified April 2, 2021
Esby looked away, just for a moment, from the streams of cars, the image of her face appearing before his eyes. The digital watch strapped to his left wrist showed 7:15, its round face...
The moment I took the final step up the wide staircase and reached the third floor of the MS Sergei Yesenin, I stopped and looked at my left wrist, before recalling I had lost...
At 9:00am, Lan, Howard, and I finished breakfast and left the dining room on the 2nd floor of Hotel Vissai. Lan and I were going to the Golden Smile Clinic on Ký Hoà Street...
Rain falls. Gustavo can hear it. The drops pound the glass of the bar’s lone window, closed to the black night beyond. But what happens here no longer matters to him. He is leaving....
At 9:00am, Lan and I finished breakfast and left the dining room on the 2nd floor of Hotel Vissai to go to the Golden Smile Clinic. It was on Ký Hoà Street in District...
Life & Culture / Philippines: American Scientist in Davao City
by Geoffrey House · Published August 11, 2019
It was a Saturday evening in Davao, at the southern tip of the Philippines, one week after a massive rally for Rodrigo Duterte, the nation’s new president, in a local park. It was the...
That night on the boat I finished reading the yellowed pages of Notes from the Underground. I looked over the railing of the ship’s upper deck into the Moscow River, feeling the warm June...
Johanna had been waiting for this moment a long time. A day before, the 40-year-old woman from Holland had talked about her love of Russian literature. Earlier that day, she had mentioned she studied...