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The germans are sitting in the sun. The Swedes drift by, heads tilted sunward, an eagerness in their faces that resembles pain. The two women from Holland stand against the wall of the harborfront church, eyes closed, feeling the warmth on their faces and necks. The man we keep seeing, the one in the white linen cap, stands in a patch of sun in the Turkish cemetery, among the pines and eucalyptus, peeling an orange. The Swedes move out of sight, heading toward the aquarium. The English appear, carrying their coats into the empty square, where shadows begin to extend from the Venetian arcade, in the strange silence, the late morning light.Three days in Rhodes. David decides it is warm enough to swim. We watch him enter, moving slowly forward, shoulders swinging, arms raised to chest level when the water reaches his midsection, the blond body, as he surfaces after the plunge, seeming to leap toward the Turkish hills, seven miles off. We sit on a low wall above the beach. The beach is empty except for boys with a spotted soccer ball. The pages of a paperback book turn in the wind. The man in the white cap comes by, asking us where he can find the museum of fish.David's swim leaves a space which we are meant to fill with serious talk. But Lindsay seems content to look out to sea. It is that kind of holiday. The long sightlines, the emptiness, the building wind.After the second of his long punishing swims he comes up the beach looking four inches shorter, walking deep in sand. When he raises his head we see how happy he is to be breathing heavily and sea-beaten and freezing, his wife and his friend waiting with a hotel towel.The next day it rains, and the day after, which reduces the mood to a purer state. I begin to see that these days are connected mysteriously to Kathryn. They are Kathryn's days.On the afternoon of the third day a storm approaches. It comes from the east and we stand on the breakwater near the old tower to watch the waves hit gleaming on the rocks. An immense graveness fills the air. The seaward stir of clouds and glassy dusk brings on a charged luminescence, a stormlight that does not fall upon objects so much as it emanates from them. The buildings begin to glow, the governor's palace, the belltower, the new market. As the sky goes black the white boats shine, the bronze deer shine, the gold stone of the law courts and bank emits a painted light. Water comes surging over the high wall. There is no light except in objects.Coming home, flying low over islands crouched in the haze, we began suddenly to talk."Why do I miss my countries?" David said. "My countries are either terrorist playpens or they're viciously anti-American or they're huge tracts of economic and social and political wreckage.”"Sometimes all of those," Lindsay said."Why can't I wait to get back into it? Why am I so eager? A hundred percent inflation, twenty percent unemployment. I love deficit countries. I love going in there, being intimately involved.”"Too intimately, some might say.”"You can't be too intimate with a Syrian, a Lebanese," he told me."When they allow you to monitor their economic policies in return for a loan. When you reschedule a debt and it amounts to an aid program.”"These things help, they genuinely help stabilize the region. We do things for our countries. Our countries are interesting. I can't get interested in Spain, for instance.”"I can't get interested in Italy.”"Spain
should be interesting. The violence is not sickening like the violence in India. But I can't get interested.”"Indian violence is random. Is that what you mean?”"I don't know what I mean.”"I can't get interested in the Horn of Africa," I said."The Horn of Africa is happening. Rhodesia is happening. But we can't get interested.”"What about Afghanistan? Is that one of your countries?”"It's a non-presence country. No office but we do business, a little. Iran is different. Collapsed presence, collapsed business. A black hole in other words. But I want everyone to know I retain a measure of affection.”This was the period after the President ordered a freeze of Iranian assets held in U.S. banks. Desert One was still to come, the commando raid that ended two hundred and fifty miles from Tehran. It was the winter Rowser learned that the Shi'ite underground movement, Dawa, was stockpiling weapons in the Gulf. It was the winter before the car bombings in Nablus and Ramallah, before the military took power in Turkey, tanks in the streets, soldiers painting over wall slogans. It was before Iraqi ground troops moved into Iran at four points along the border, before the oilfields burned and the sirens sounded through Baghdad, through Rashid Street and the passageways of the souks, before the blackouts, the masking of headlights, people hurrying out of teahouses, off the double-decker buses.All around us the human noise, the heat of a running crowd.