On the question of my whereabouts.

My apologies for my extended absence: the last weeks have been trying, to say the least. Near the end of August, my usually ironclad stomach gave out, and I was down for a week what was maybe a really nasty parasite, seriously advanced sun-stroke, or food poisoning. I had just recovered when I received news that my grandmother had died. Within less than twelve hours, I was on a plane for the States, bound for her funeral. I spent about a week in the Midwest, doing odds and ends grant maintenance, before returning to Beirut. Upon my return, I spent nearly three weeks wrangling to get my Algerian entry visa. Typically, Americans apply for their visas from the Algerian embassy in the US. Although I had already been granted special permission from the Algerian Ministry of Foreign Affairs that would allow me to apply from Beirut, the memo didn’t get into the right hands, and my application was rejected. After some tense days, and testy email exchanges with consular officials, Diplomat A contacted Diplomat B who contacted Diplomat C, and all was well. This episode afforded me the opportunity to be insistent in French; which, you may be surprised to find out, is fairly easy. Since getting my visa, I’ve been arranging for travel, first back to the States, where I will be attending my sister’s wedding, and then to Algiers. If all goes as planned (insha’allah) I will arrive there on October 25, around 1:20PM.

Oh yeah, and I’ve been studying Arabic through all of this. And planning my courses for this fall. With everything else that’s been going on, I keep on forgetting that I’m going there to teach.

In any case: my plan, now, is that the blog updates will become much more regular once I’m actually in Algeria. Of course, that depends on what sort of internet access I have, and whatnot. I’ve got one more esoteric post that I’m working on, concerning Jean-Paul Sartre, his writings on colonialism, and post-war French intellectual culture; hopefully I’ll be able to get that up before I go back to Amreeka on Tuesday. Incidentally, did you know that Sartre is one of two people to have voluntarily refused a Nobel Prize? Look it up. 1964. Literature. His rationale: he didn’t want to be made over as a monument to the cultural superiority of the West. Suck it, Sweden.