Crossing Allenby Bridge
Michael Looft
Copyright © 2018 Michael Looft
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Proteus Publishing.
ISBN: 0999881604
ISBN-13: 978-0999881606
Jacket design by Jason Cryer
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
For everyone out there whose path has crossed mine.
CONTENTS
Part I | SAN FRANCISCO
CHAPTER 1 | MARK
CHAPTER 2 | ELENA
CHAPTER 3 | IN DREAMS
CHAPTER 4 | AND NIGHTMARES
CHAPTER 5 | MARK LEAPS
CHAPTER 6 | TOWER ON FIRE
CHAPTER 7 | HIGH ART
Part II | OUTER MONGOLIA
CHAPTER 1 | I SEE MARK AGAIN
CHAPTER 2 | MONGOLIAN STYLE INDIAN MEXICAN FOOD
CHAPTER 3 | CHINGGIS KHAAN AND TURTLE ROCK
CHAPTER 4 | MONGOLIAN MICROFINANCE
Part III | THE PHILIPPINES
CHAPTER 1 | HOME
CHAPTER 2 | MANILA
CHAPTER 3 | PAVEMENT DWELLERS
CHAPTER 4 | SHANGRI-LA
CHAPTER 5 | THE CITY OF GENTLE PEOPLE
Part IV | JAVA
CHAPTER 1 | ONE NIGHT IN HONG KONG
CHAPTER 2 | FATHER JACK
CHAPTER 3 | AKADEMI MARITIM
CHAPTER 4 | THE ORCHID
CHAPTER 5 | CRUMBLING TOWER
CHAPTER 6 | UNDER THE RUBBLE
CHAPTER 7 | ZACH
CHAPTER 8 | RATU THE DUKUN
CHAPTER 9 | THE WATERCOURSE WAY
CHAPTER 10 | LEAVING JAVA
Part V | THE MIDDLE EAST
CHAPTER 1 | BALTIMORE TO AMMAN
CHAPTER 2 | PETRA
CHAPTER 3 | CROSSING ALLENBY BRIDGE
CHAPTER 4 | JERUSALEM
CHAPTER 5 | REUNION
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Part I | San francisco
You are a wheel at which I stand,
whose dark spokes sometimes catch me up,
revolve me nearer to the center.
Then all the work I put my hand to
widens from turn to turn.
Rainer Maria Rilke
CHapter 1 | Mark
The first time I saw Mark I never would have guessed he’d inspire me to upend my life and travel to the far reaches of the Earth. On that foggy afternoon in late June ten years ago, a typical summer in San Francisco, he was just another guy sitting around the table at the bank. I’m not even sure why he was in that meeting, as he was a temporary programmer brought on to build us a database or a website or something like that–I really don’t remember. I do remember that we were on a conference call trying to close a deal, so his job was to just keep his mouth shut and listen. He did that part well. So well, in fact, that as he sat perched at the end of the table, I recall studying Mark’s carefree expression with casual interest. He was no one I thought of as extraordinary. Yet, the more I watched, the more irritated I grew at him for being so sound in his own skin. He had no business looking so comfortable. Nevertheless, I decided I wanted to find out more about this calm individual who’d drifted into my world.
A few days later I found Mark seated alone at a table in the outdoor café next to our building on Pine Street, his nose in an old library book. Dark curly hair hung down over his pensive face as he sat unmoved while I studied him for a moment, deciding whether to interrupt. I knew he worked on the second floor, where all the operations people sat and where few of us from the fifth floor had a reason to stop. So, I guessed this would be one of the rare opportunities I’d have him alone if I wanted to figure out what made him tick. Without a strong urge to talk to him, especially given my position at the bank, a subtle spark still drew me to his light. His suit jacket sat draped over the arm of the chair next to him. I took off my own jacket and lay it on the other arm, grabbing the seat opposite him. Even though I made a show of sitting down I had to harrumph to gain his attention.
“Oh, hello Mr. Stone. How are you?” he said, lowering the book and fixing me with purposeful eyes.
“Please, call me Harry. You’re Mark, right? The programmer?”
“Yes,” he whispered, closing the book and laying it down in front of us. It would have been easier had he revealed the spine with its title, but alas he forced me to intrude.
“What are you reading there?” I must have said it with a touch more interest than he expected, because he gave me a sheepish grin and spun it around for me to read–though I had to crane my neck sideways.
“The Razor’s Edge…” I muttered, and paused to make a joke. “Business secrets of Gillette?”
“Not quite.” He threw his head back with a hearty laugh.
“What’s it about?” I’d heard the title several years back, but maybe it was a movie.
“I’m not too far into it, actually. I think it’s about a guy that rejects the world and goes off to find himself. I found it at Green Apple Books the other day. I guess it just jumped out at me.”
“I suppose that’s the way it is with some books. Well, you’ll have to let me know whether it’s worth a read–whether he does in fact find himself. I’m guessing that’s the case as no one wants to read a book where the main character goes off and gets lost and never comes back. Right? Though I can’t say I read much these days.” I leaned back and crossed my legs, letting out a breath and wondering what to say next. “I’m impressed; figured you computer guys only read stuff on binary code or something.”
“Nah, not for me. I actually didn’t study computer science.”
“Really, how did you get into it then?”
“I’ve been going to night school over at SF State. I kind of fell into programming when I was doing some accounting work. The job was so boring I decided to automate what I was doing. One day the guy I was working for was looking over my shoulder and told me I should do programming–that I could make a lot more money doing that than what he was paying me to do. So, I just started doing it.”
“You like it much?”
“I guess so. It’s fun in a way–like doing crossword puzzles. I’m not sure how much meaning is in it, though. When you get down to it, it’s all just binary.” He over accentuated the last word for effect, chuckling to himself.
His comment touched a slight nerve, but after turning it over in my mind, I decided not to dig any further. “Well, we all have our calling in life, I guess. Maybe you just haven’t found yours yet. At least you can make some good money doing what you’re doing until you finish school.”
“I actually just graduated a few weeks ago.”
“Oh! Well then, congratulations!”
Our conversation was cut short when Don, the president, noticed me while walking by and stopped to chat about something important, forcing me to excuse myself. That was my life in a nutshell–brief exchanges related to my work that always seemed more important than anything else. Normally, it didn’t bother me because I lived a narrow life with as few complexities or surprises as possible. I woke up at the same time every day and one could set a clock by my regular movements. My job was no longer “work”, but rather routine chats with subordinates resulting in someone else doing the work. So, there was something about Mark, about the way we spoke and how his words struck my ear that made me want to continue without interruption. We’d only talked for a few minutes, but as I said goodbye and picked up my jacket and walked away I felt a slight pang, as
though we could have sat there for hours. I suppose it had been years since I found someone else’s words interesting.
CHAPTER 2 | ELENA
I saw Mark every now and then and always stopped him for a brief chat, but never longer than I wanted to. The rest of the summer was a whirlwind of activity at the bank. As head of lending, I oversaw the underwriting of the largest deal the bank had ever made. Determining the fair market value of retail businesses, particularly chain stores, had become one of my specialties over the course of my career. Unlike some businesses, the anticipated cash flows of retail stores required a bit of foresight into the future of that business based on consumer preferences. The Pet Rock was a brilliant idea in the mid-1970s, turning its creator into an instant millionaire. Alas, it fizzled out after a mere six months.
As a boutique commercial bank, we couldn’t afford to make mistakes by casting our lot on a silly box of rocks. I had a knack for spotting long-term successes and failures, both in people and businesses, and because of that I’d made a lot of money for us even during the lean times. This last deal to allow a major big box electronics store to expand to a few key locations in the Bay Area gave us notoriety in the financial community. After twenty years of backhanded insults by the big boys who never lost a chance to refer to us as quaint or by some other diminutive term, just like that we became known. The deal insured a steady stream of income for several years–as long as the financial world stayed intact, which we saw as a given in those halcyon days back in 2007.
With the deal done and my divorce a few years behind me, along with my one-bedroom apartment on Telegraph Hill that gave my legs a good strong workout and access to some of the finest restaurants in the city, I guess you could say that I was living the good life. At least, that’s how I thought of it back then. The one downside I noticed was that I sometimes had to step over a homeless man or two lying in the middle of the sidewalk–a ubiquitous site in San Francisco, where the city seemed to do nothing to help these people. That fall and into the winter, fate decided to pitch three curveballs my way.
The first one swerved in during a seminar organized by Kitty, the head of human resources. Kitty was a frail, thin, fake-blonde, politically correct woman in her early thirties with whom I never saw eye-to-eye. Maybe it’s because she somehow just didn’t fit into the culture we had created at the bank. Don had hired her a few years prior, when he felt we needed to “professionalize” after decades of doing things on our own. I didn’t see the need for a dedicated human resources person as the executive vice presidents were managing fine without someone poking their nose into our business and disrupting well-functioning little fiefdoms. However, Don was worried about the trend of lawsuits tied to dissatisfied personnel and job applicants. So, he framed the hiring as an insurance policy to protect our bottom line. It wasn’t her status as a woman that bothered us, because we were technically not an all boys’ club. In fact, we had Judith overseeing operations to prove we were not. A few of the staff had nicknamed her “Nurse Ratched” though, a label so spot-on that it stuck for good and I even once overheard her calling herself that one night after a few drinks.
Kitty was cut from a different cloth than the rest of us, and I guess that’s why Don hired her, to keep us all in check. After the second onsite ethics training seminar framed as a team-building exercise, some of us complained that these little digressions were becoming a nuisance. I was sick of looking at Kitty’s face standing in front of the whiteboard wearing a passive-aggressive smile, introducing some theater major dropout trying his best to make us laugh our way through two hours of basic concepts most human beings already knew. Since some of my guys were in the room, I did my best to withhold snide remarks, saving them for Don later. He always had a way of shrugging these things off as things we had to just suck up and do, which summed up his attitude on Kitty. So, we were all just going through the motions like prisoners on the chow line, waiting to receive whatever mystery meat was plopped on our trays.
Everything boiled over after Elena drifted into the office one day in early September to teach us “mindful integration”. The other trainings targeted senior officers and anyone else involved in legal transactions. This meeting was optional and anyone at the bank could attend. I planned to skip it, not bothering to sign up even after Kitty had popped her grinning face into my office ten minutes before to remind me about it. It was a gorgeous afternoon, and I headed down the stairs to squeeze in a walk, debating whether to take the rest of the day off.
I wonder what my life would look like today had I not caught Elena’s flaming red hair and radiant smile bounce by me in the lobby and me turning to observe her elegant figure. I hadn’t seen Kitty standing at the elevator, and she gave me a sour smile as if to say, “This is the kind of thing I’m talking about!” It wasn’t guilt that brought me back in to attend Elena’s seminar. No, it was pure lust. Like an old dog sniffing his way through a season, I made my way to the elevator, trying not to focus on the curves underneath Elena’s dress. No, I kept my eyes on the gold-plated walls for the most part, feeling her spirit fill the space. Kitty turned to me as we rode up on the world’s slowest elevator.
“Harry, this is Elena. She’s our special guest today.” As she spun towards me, I noticed that despite the same radiance I’d noticed a few moments earlier and piercing green eyes set against smooth, amber skin, the rest of her features were rather plainer than I’d expected. Earthy and powerful popped into my head, which both comforted and unnerved me. It was as if she were looking right through me and thus impervious to any charm I could conjure up to win her over. She was still beautiful, and I felt drawn to her, but not in the usual way–not sexually. Karmically, whatever that means. “Elena, this is Harry, our Chief Credit Officer. He’s in charge of all our credit activity. Basically, he makes sure all the loans we make are on the up and up. Right, Harry?”
“That’s right. Mr. Straight and Narrow.” I reached out my hand and met Elena’s firm handshake. It felt like squeezing a beating heart. “It’s very nice to meet you. I nearly forgot about the seminar today,” I said, winking at Kitty behind her, who shook her head in causal annoyance.
“I’m very happy that you are coming, Harry. I hope you get something out of today’s session,” she said with a responsive smile in her eyes.
“Me too, but I do have a question. What exactly is integrated mindfulness?”
“Mindful integration.” She corrected me with a slight pause in breath. “Just think of it as a way to come home to ourselves again. To be present for our Spirit and whatever it wants for us.”
I didn’t have a quick comeback for her. In fact, I didn’t have any other response than to mutter a perplexing hmm. Moments later, we reached the fourth floor and the elevator opened with a ding. Saved by the bell. I followed the two of them out and we strode to the conference room. A mere ten people showed up. No one else from the fifth floor, but I did see Mark seated in one of the chairs arranged in a small circle. I took the chair next to him and gave him a nod and a wink. He nodded back to me, but didn’t say a word, his eyes following Elena. I had trouble keeping my eyes off her as well. Her face had a soft glow to it, and the whole room seemed to fill with her presence. I couldn’t quite peg her age, though. I once heard that the guys at the carnival who guessed ages often looked at the back of a person’s hand to narrow it down. Judging by hers, she was somewhere in her late forties, but the rest of her seemed a bit younger. Maybe it was just the spirit with which she carried herself–like the world was a curious and fun place to be. The precise opposite of my world. The other attendees fidgeted in their seats, trying to keep their composure while Kitty stepped into the circle and briefly introduced Elena with some psycho-spiritual lingo. Elena then glided into the circle, rotating as if in the eye of a great storm.
“You’re probably wondering what I’m doing here.” Some of us grinned, recognizing the exact question on our minds. “But the question I want to put to you is, what are you doing here?” My stoma
ch sank as I realized mine was tied to the sway of her hips. I glanced around and felt a few of the others sitting in uncomfortable silence. Of course, there were the two lefty women who only worked at the bank to pay bills–the type who went to yoga retreats and walked with intention. They both sat up erect in their cheap blouses, barely passing the business attire test. They were beaming at her in anticipation as if they knew what was coming next. Refusing to play favorites, she smiled at each of us and continued to twirl in slow circumspection. “You may not know the reason you came here. Maybe you had a break in your schedule and were curious. Or perhaps you’ve meditated once or twice and thought this might be fun. Maybe you’ll learn a new technique. Who knows? Maybe you tried to get out of it, but the Universe threw a monkey wrench into those plans.” She gave me a subtle wink, and then turned her back to me, and I let my eyes run down the muscles of her calves. “Whatever the reason, I’m glad you’re here. I hope you get something out of this hour we have together.”
“Let’s jump right in, why don’t we? I’d like you all to close your eyes and make sure your feet are flat on the floor. Try to relax into your chair and sit as upright as is comfortable for you.” I shut my eyes, feeling anything but comfortable. Her voice was soothing enough, like a well-trained hypnotist. Although my discomfort persisted as she spoke, I began to think less and less about the shape of her legs or how I wanted to bury my nose in the long curls covering the back of her neck. “Focus your attention on your breath. Breathing in… and out…. As you inhale, imagine gold energy coming in and filling your body. As you exhale, imagine dark energy flowing out. Energy from your last conversation, your spouse, from anything that is not yours. Breathe in your gold, and breathe out everything else that’s keeping you from being present–being here… right now…. Now picture a golden rose….”
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