Body Surfing

times larger than that of Caesar’s realm.
    As it happened, so did the boy.

1
Land of the Living
    “If one does not understand how the body that he wears came to be, he will perish with it.”
    —The Gnostic Gospels

1
    T he woman at the bar of the Hotel Acropole leaned on her elbows and scanned the dim room. At not quite six feet in battered, American-style cowboy boots, Ileana Magdalen (that’s what the name on her passport said anyway) was taller than just about everyone else in the dingy establishment. There were no other women in the bar, although countless numbers passed the open French windows in their head scarves and flowing robes, more than a few concealed from head to toe by brightly colored burqas . Ileana looked down at her sweat-stained tank top. Her nipples protruded through the wet ribbed cotton, and she had to fight the urge to cross her arms over her chest. Fuck it, she thought. It’s too goddamn hot for a bra. And besides, if she had to put one more ounce of clothing on, she was going to kill the wrong man.
    Ceiling fans swatted the hot air. Outside, slender Africans and lighter-skinned Arabs milled along the sweltering streets of Omdurman, a working-class neighborhood in Sudan’s sprawling capital city, Khartoum. The predominant language was Arabic, but Ileana caught snatches of Chinese, Hindi, Russian, staccato dialects she didn’t recognize. But the most persistent noise was the whine of traffic: horns, brakes, screeching tires, revving engines. Backfires that sounded a little too much like gunshots for comfort. Oil had made Africa’s largest country a thriving nation by regional standards. Unfortunately, asignificant chunk of its newfound wealth had been spent massacring its non-Islamic citizens. Ileana had seen the devastation firsthand. She’d just completed a two-week tour of the western province of Darfur with Francois Dumas, a French epidemiologist with the World Health Organization, after which she and Dumas had driven six hundred miles in an ancient Land Rover whose sprung shocks amplified every ridge, bump, and pothole—minehole, Dumas joked, and Ileana didn’t bother to point out that the oblong craters looked like they were caused by mortar fire rather than land mines, whose blast radius tends to be perfectly circular.
    The journey across the Sahel had left them parched, and they came down to the bar to wash the dust out of their throats. Ileana arrived a few minutes after Dumas, found the Frenchman looking skeptically around the seedy room. But after a brief exchange in broken English (along with the “gift” of a few American dollars) Ileana convinced the Acropole’s barman to produce a bottle enigmatically labeled Cocker Spaniard. “Kentuckessee whiskey,” the barman said. “Number one brand.” Despite the fact that Ileana paid for it, he handed the bottle to Dumas.
    “I’m impressed.” Dumas squinted at the label, which looked as if it had been written by hand. “I think.”
    Ileana popped the cork and poured them each a drink.
    “Save the compliments till you’ve tasted it.” She held up her glass. “Death is in my sight today.” She tossed her drink back and closed her eyes, shuddered pleasantly as the gasoline-colored liquor stung its way down her esophagus. She ran her tongue over her tingling lips to savor every last drop of the burn.
    When she opened her eyes, Dumas was staring at her with more than scientific curiosity.
    “‘Death is in my sight’?”
    “Something a friend taught me.” Ileana’s tone discouraged further questioning.
    Dumas nodded, held his drink up.
    “To friends,” he said, casting another glance at his companion. “Old and new.”
    The epidemiologist downed his drink. When he could speak again, he cursed: in French, English, and a language Ileana didn’t recognize. Spaniard? she thought with an inner laugh. Kentuckessean?
    The scientist excused himself to go the washroom. “I hope it is safer than the alcohol,” he panted, mopping his brow with his handkerchief.
    Ileana glanced around as her companion tottered off. The rundown room certainly seemed an unlikely place for a pair of international aid workers to end up. The sawdust on the floor was stained with spilled drinks, the air clogged with sweet-smelling shisha smoke wafting from an enormous hookah on a corner table. After the devastation of Darfur, Ileana would have preferred to sip a chilled lychee martini on a palm-shaded verandah with the majestic Nile in