Christopher · J · Kinniburgh

Without another word the man with the smoky smooth voice leads The Author through the double doors of the bookstore, holding the door for his ex-lover as they exit, into the frozen sunlight of winter. The Author follows behind the man, watching each step he takes in his tattered black boots. Walking down the sidewalk of the busy one-way street she notices the old friend's generous out-step. The out-step is the same as that found in the girls who train for years, studying to become dancers, ballerinas, and end up working as waitresses in street-corner coffee shops like the one the man leads The Author into.

The Author needs no introduction to this smoke filled cafe and her arm grazes the man's chest as she steps in front of him towards the counter. The Author looks directly into the absent minded gaze of misspent youth, quickly asks for a large caffèllatte then twists her body to face the man as she gestures towards the man behind her with a smile. His eyes quickly attempting to skim through the massive list of coffee the cafe serves and after three seconds he looks at the young girl behind the counter, no more than twenty-one and simultaneously sighs and shrugs. "I'll just have a cup of whatever coffee you would recommend," he says to the girl before turning his body sideways to face The Author. Just as his eyes fall back into The Author's gaze the man turns back towards the lists of drink choices, then turns back to the woman who once was The Girl and lets out an inexplicable sound curious combination of painful grunt and sarcastic laughter.

The ambient noises of sipping coffee, glasses being placed on wooden tables, book pages flipping and the scribbling of a single pen on a pad of paper become deafening to the man and his female counterpart in their own perpetual silence. They stand motionless, looking into one another's eyes, frozen in time yet aware of its passage through the unavoidable volume of their surroundings. As The Author and her man's gaze grows more intense the ambience of the room begins to slow down. The sounds do not quiet, instead they simply seem to slow down and time truly begins to slow down as The Author's emerald eyes stare into the mahogany matt and bloodshot frame of the pupils from the mysterious man who once was The Boy. The Authors peripherals blur the backdrop and she sees a youthful face without the wrinkles and scars of hardship which grace her mysterious friend's face, so as she stares into the eyes of the man with the smokey smooth voice she can see The Boy of years long gone exactly the way she saw him when she was a girl and they laid side by side, tired after they had planted the small pine in her mother's garden. The Man, with feet which should be soar from all the miles they have walked in those old black boots, looks into the eyes of The Girl who he had known before he knew what it meant to know someone and traced the outline of her pupil. The man of The Author's past looks past the pupils and begins to trace the black lines that extend past the border of the pupil and stretch across The Girl's iris like the yellow rays of the sun drawn by a child in the top left corner of a picture.

The picture has green grass drawn sporadically in the bottom third of the page. On the green grass there sits a yellow square house with a brown triangle roof. The yellow house has a big blue rectangle door with a blue door-handle circle and to the left of the door is a small brown square window. Next to the square house stand a green stick-person, tall as the house itself, holding the line tiny blue stick-child who in turn holds the hand of a brown stick person standing taller than the his green stick-relative. Over the green stick-person are three barely legible letters written in a dull pencil: M - O - M which have all been underlined. Above the brown stick-person sits a number of illegible letters written in brown crayon and then under them stands the word DAD, which was meant to be underlined but now seems like a cross has been put through the name. Finally, there is a blue arrow pointing down to the blue stick-child and above the vertical arrow there sits a single blue horizontal line, however on this line there is no name, there is a blank space.

The Author's green iris has only the faintest of red lines and remains as pristine and youthful as the perfect black curled eyelashes which stand in order around the eyes which have captivated the man and The Boy many times before.

The speed of their surroundings continues to slow to a halt and all four of them lose all sense of thought and for just one harmonious second that they understand what it means to find a cosmic nirvana, and they know this is good. All four of them, although they know that what they have now is perfect, break their gaze at the exact same moment, and for the briefest period of time The Boy, The Girl, The Author and her mysterious man place the eyes of the others in their peripherals. Time moves. Each of the four assume their own responsibility for the existential loss. With their eyes all shifting at once no-one saw another person's eyes break the spell.

The mans eyes dart back to the eyes of The Author from the frantic motions of a pen writing in a black moleskin journal as The Author's eyes recoil from the faded portrait of Jesus Christ which sits high in the corner of the cafe, out of the sights of all but the most observant of customers. The couple look at one another and smile politely. The girl behind the counter places two cups in front of the silent pair and the man reaches into his back pocket and pulls out a crumpled ten dollar bill and gives the girl his thanks.

The Author takes both cups and walks with them to a table far from the entranceway and the windows looking out onto the passage of cars at the intersection. So now the man who once was The Boy who fell in love with The Girl, follows The Author who was once The Girl who loved The Boy and the distractions of the patrons vanish as the two walk to the desolate side of the cafe.

A Nargile (NAHR-gee-leh) is a Turkish water pipe which can be seen in many parts of eastern Europe and the Middle East. Other names for the same device include narghile, shisha, hookah, and hubbly-bubbly. Narghile is an alternative spelling used frequently in more recent years. Shisha is an Arabic word, and the other two are English. These pipes are traditionally used to smoke flavored tobacco, however they are quite commonly used for other, less legal, drugs.

There is just as vast an amount of knowledge necessary to smoke a Nargile as their is when you want to smoke a pipe. There is the ever present danger of getting fooled by street venders into buying a Nargile made out of metals of lesser quality, which are likely to break, the possibility of buying bad coal, and mastering the art of the coals.

Lets say you are in vacation in Turkey or Egypt, and you are walking through the open market, where all sorts of interesting things are being sold. You will likely find three or four stores where you could buy a Nargile in every hundred stores available. You walk in, and you find yourself staring at a pipe as tall as yourself, and next to it, a pipe which could fit into your shoe. There are pipes with different colored glass, various designs, and different colored metal. 'Which one,' you ask, 'should I get?'

There are a few main things you want to look at when you buy a Nargile. First, you are going to have to decide how much you are willing to spend, if you are going to use the Nargile or use it as a display piece (or both), and how long you want it to last. With these decisions, we can decide which Nargile to buy.

If you don't mind spending a little extra money, a larger Nargile is recommended, as the chamber will be larger, creating a smoother smoking experience. The larger the Nargile, the longer it will take to clean, and I have always found, and this is simply personal experience, a four foot Nargile to be perfect, and still very easy to clean.

The third piece, has to do with your decision of what it should look like. If you dont want to use your Nargile, feel free to skip the next paragraph and buy whatever you think looks nice. However, if you are caught between a rock and a hard place, remember that you can always mix and match. If you see a glass that you really like, and a center piece which is perfect, ask the person you are dealing with to put them together

Once you decide that you don't want this baby to break, it is mandatory that you purchase a bronze Nargile. There will be three main types of metals used, one will be a polished metal which will possibly be sold as silver, which you should not buy as it will most likely break within a year. The second is a bronze looking metal of questionable origin again, possibly copper. This second metal can only be differentiated when buying face to face in one way, ask the dealer to take it out of the glass and throw it on the floor. I know this sounds slightly crazy, but I am dead serious. A bronze Nargile will not break, and is the reason we want it, and any other will likely break, and the dealer will say he won't do it. If he does, and it doesn't break, it means your probably have a bronze Nargile, however, I have no other method to make sure it is truly bronze. Finally, just make sure you aren't getting ripped off. Prices are very different from place to place, so I won't speculate on the price, but will say that you should find a few that work well for you from different shops. Pick the cheapest price, and buy. If the cheapest price is less than 75% of the top, it is probably not the quality that you expect, so try and get contacts who have bought at the shop who may be able to tell you if it is real, however this may be difficult if you are a tourist.

Now I guess, just go and light up, and have fun. But wait just a minute, how do you use this wonderful device you ask? Well that's exactly what I'm here for.

First, you must go out and purchase coals for your Nargile, which is very important. You cannot use regular coal, or coal for a fireplace! This is deadly, and will do nothing more than kill you. You can usually find this in a good tobacconist, or a large Arabic store. Honestly, the best way to find both flavored tobacco and coals is to find someone else who smokes, and ask them. There are also a number of websites where you can order coals and tobacco internationally.

Once you have tobacco and coals, you will have to put some water in the glass part of the Nargile. I recommend adding some lemon water to your water, and putting extremely cold water in the base, however that is my preference, and other people have their own. Some place a few ice cubes in their glass, and various other cooling devices. A few notes on what not to put in, I recommend you DO NOT use any form of alcohol, as it is very likely you will pass out while doing this. Because of the ease that alcohol evaporates, you may find yourself intoxicated very fast. I have also heard some horror stories about people having problems with their lungs doing this.

Now that your glass is filled, find a piece of tin foil, and poke a few holes in it. I usually stab it with a fork three times, in a small, one inch radius circle. Place four pinches of tobacco on top of your Nargile so that it is still lose, and not too packed down. Now cover the top of your Nargile with this tin foil, and place the coals on top.

Finally, light the coals, and stand back, as sometimes the coals can spit of bits of themselves as they light (if you bought the self-lighting kind.) Inhale, and repeat.

Enjoy

She looked up at the last person in line, on the last day of her book tour; the author was more than slightly relived. The Author was anxious to get out of the Midwest United States and back to her home in Surrey, England. The man was tall, at least six feet. He wore black jeans, a ratty tee shirt under an unbuttoned white dress shirt and a golden cross around his neck that exuded an aura of divinity The Author had not been privy to since her death of naivety. She tilted her head as far back as humanly possible in an attempt to make eye to eye contact with the as she had been taught to do from too young an age. She looked at his strong, defined chin and jaw, his full red lips, and up past his nose to his deep blue eyes and she thought back to all her memories with him.

“Oh my Go…” she caught herself in time, “gosh. I can’t believe its you; I haven’t seen you since,” she was too late. This time she couldn’t catch her tongue, and now the conversation complete, their conversation is over and the past has caught up with them before he even had a chance to give her the obligatory ‘It’s nice to see you. You seem to be doing well,’ or ‘well isn’t this surprise! I saw your name and wanted to see if it was really you.’ The chance for small talk which might lead to a cup of coffee with a man The Author has resented not seeing in years is gone and so she stands silently, looking up at the man she once knew as a young child might look up to his mother after he has done wrong.

“It has been a very long time, hasn’t it? Many things have changed since those days,” and as he speaks gazes down towards the golden cross which adorns his neck, “for me,” then his eyes move away from the cross, which lies pristine on his black cotton tee shirt, towards the stacks of books standing in formation on a small desk with a number of pens and a sign with The Authors name and picture, “and it seems many things have changed in you as well.”

The Author unclenches slightly and takes a breath before she responds. “Well, I suppose. I don’t know how it happened, I just suddenly found something worth writing about and I went for it. I guess I just finally realized that I had something to say one day and I decided to write it down. The next thing I knew I was writing every day and twenty-five thousand words into whatever this thing is.” She stops to catch her breath, “I guess it has been a while since I really talked to someone for more than five seconds,” she laughs. Her laugh lacks feeling or emotion, it isn’t a laugh of joy or a laugh doused in sarcasm. The laugh is the only way she can think through whatever is going on here. The laugh is The Author’s way of stalling and he man she once told she would spend the rest of her life with knows that better than anyone.

The Author begins to feel the divinity wearing away as she exhales ice. She looks up at the man of long ago, and for the first time since she laid her eyes on him forces any hint of emotion away from her body. “I can’t do this if you are going to blame me for years ago. I need to say that right now. I am not going to be burdened by any more of the guilt I have carried because of what happened however long ago. If you want to tell me how everything that I did was cruel, how I tortured you and played you like my little toy, that I deserve to go to hell for what I did to you, then don’t waste your breath. I spent enough time telling myself that and I was finally able to forgive myself. I don’t expect your forgiveness but I cannot fix it and I can only tell you I am sorry so many times before I realize it is a waste of precious breath.” The Author looks directly into her lover’s eyes, his face as placid as the morning dew sitting on a blade of grass.

“I forgive you. You don’t need to worry about that anymore. I didn’t come here to hurt you, and I had no thoughts of malice in seeing you. I would never have thought that my coming here would have set off any emotion within you. If you still feel guilt by the possibility that I am at all bruised by your actions in the past I want you to know that if anything I am a better man because of it. Your actions in the past were understandable, and I simply could not see that back then. We were young and foolish, and I was spiteful. I wanted to hurt you for what you had done, and in the same breath I knew that had I been in your position I wouldn’t have done a single thing differently. I was jealous of you. I feel I am the one to be sorry. I hope you can forgive me, as the branding I thrust upon you seems to have been hotter and more painful than the brand that lives inside me.”

The two lock eyes for a moment that lasts an eternity, The Authors breathing is a ticking clock and the man standing in front of her is beautiful, smart, intelligent, and perfect; for a second she fears time is running out in this eternity and soon he will disappear from her life. The man turns his head towards the grand double doors of the bookstore and then turns his gaze back into the green eyes of The Author and asks her in his cigarette-smoke smooth voice, “Do you have to leave right away, or would you like to get a cup of coffee and talk for a while? It would be nice to catch up on old things, don’t you think?”

The Author looks above the double doors, which only five minutes ago she saw as the final obstacle between her and her home, to the clock. Two forty-five. She thought for a moment before she answered her ex-lover.

“Of Course.”

As I lie in the bed, with warm blankets wrapped around me I slowly open my eyes to a room where mirrors and pictures of friends fill the walls. There are pictures of friends of mine, and friends of hers. In a special frame, made of glass, there was a small picture of a girl with long blonde hair, and a perfect smile, a picture of her best friend, my best friend, my life, my sister. In her room, Candles and incense cover the bureau across from one wall. On the other a clock filled with dreamy horse fish sits on the wall, protruding from the flat pictures covering the two dimensional wall. The mirrors show me that I'm the first one up, as I see her head over the top of mine, and I slowly crawl out of the bed, trying not to rustle the stiff blankets and sheets where she lays still, breathing in and out, still off in a land of dreams, all alone. Looking at the clock I realize it's quite late and go off out of the room, into the rest of the mansion.

This mansion sits upon a mountain in Athens, Greece, and from its view you can see across all of Athens, and out into the sea. The beauty of a sunset on the balconies of its rooms or an early sunrise from the national park can only be surpassed by the house's unique beauty and importance to me. I have been known to live in this house for days at a time, as my best friend from school, and his sister, the girl I was in bed with, both live here, and I live only a few blocks down the mountain. The mansion is the biggest house I have ever been in, and is constantly moving, with house staff living there all the time, guard dogs barking at strangers, and constant checks by local security guards and police.

As I walk out of her room, I proceed through a long hallway, where entertaining quotes from older siblings line the walls: I'm fat and you're ugly, but I can always lose weight; Alcohol is my anti-drug; DJ's are good, BJ's are better. At the end of the hall I come to a pro drum kit, which is setup at the top of the main staircase, where I usually play before I go to bed. The staircase is covered by a long red carpet, and its rails are gold plated. As I hit the bottom of the stairs my feet instantly freeze and I run to the kitchen to get away from the cold marble floor of the main hall. The kitchen sits just off this hall, and is the only place where functionality comes before beauty. The kitchen is very plain, and I am welcomed to the day by a number of house staff who have apparently been up for hours preparing a diner which Mrs. Filliotis, the mother, is planning. I say 'Hello' and start the day by making an omelet for myself, and then another for Dorothy. I am constantly asked if I need help, as the Filipino house staff is not used to anyone in the household doing anything themselves, and have a hard time understanding I like to make food in the morning, especially if its an excuse to wake them up.

I dash back through the hall with the plates of food in hand, and proceed back to Dorothy's room and slowly wake her up to give her the omelet. She slowly turns over to face me, and asks me what I'm doing up so early in the morning. I tell her that I made an omelet for her, and it's on the bureau. I move some candles and makeup from the cluttered bureau and set it down, kiss her softly and tell her that I will be downstairs. I leave the room with the door slightly ajar; hoping one of the dogs will knock it open and wake her up. I quickly walk to Kosta's room. Opening the door I hear the sounds of techno music blazing from Kosta's speakers. I walk in, and, as I suspected he lay there fast asleep with a girl from school with him. Two of his three computers are on, downloading mp3's at a mile a minute. Books lay clustered on his bookshelves among an array of phones, motors, candles, matches, and papers. His walls are mostly empty, leaving a dull grey color as the background for his very colorful life. There are tones of papers strewn about his desk, along with spare keyboards, mice, and other miscellaneous parts for computers. I look through his closets, which are carefully labeled so the Filipino knows where to put his clothes. I look for a t-shirt, and finally find one with the words 'Britney sucks, Christina swallows,' a present given to him for Christmas for the girl he is in bed with.

I walk back down the stairs to the bottom floor, after picking up a cup of coffee the Filipino father made. I enter a room with a sign 'Beware of Dog' posted on it, and say good morning to one of the housedogs named Pongo, and sit myself down in front of a DJ Studio. I sit looking at the gigantic list of CD's and LP's, until I decide what I feel like mixing. Settling down with a 'Dream On' LP mix by a famous French DJ, and 'Stupidisco' the new hit song in Europe. I work on the mix for around a half hour in the warm small room, where posters of complex number systems, which confuse the eye, keep me company until Dorothy comes down, and then we decide to go out to the city for the day.

This is just another day in Kosta's mansion.

This summer, on a cold, windy evening in Athens, Greece, I jumped into a pond. I found myself slide along the bottom of the small pond, stomach being torn by gravel and rocks. I finally came to a stop 5 feet from where I entered. All this happened in the small garden of a house I used to love, a quaint, small, house in Kifissia, greece, a block away from Kefalari Park. It was a Kifissia House. It was my Kifissia House.

A friend of mine who had moved back to Canada from Greece a year before owned this house. For the past year it had been silent, except for the drunken sounds of his father, who still lived there alone. But now Liam, along with 7 others were back for two weeks in early August. This house was our homes, and we knew we would never see each other together again.

The house sits in the heart of the city, and once your there, you just need to walk, or take a train, to get to anywhere in all of Athens. This is the house that was lost when he moved away one and a half years ago, and this is the house that was reborn when four Canadian guys, an Aussie surfer, and two Brits who lived in 3 continents and four countries got together one last time. This is the place where the memories happen that never leave, and this is the place where anything goes, and nobody cares, because the people who should care would rather not.

As I walked there, for the first time this past summer, I got nervous, I felt like I was going back to something and I didn't deserve it, 'Had I been good enough this year to get such a great thing, to be with the guy who I will never forget again?' I walked in through the street, where his father's car sat by the door, I was nervous, and my hand shook as I pressed the buzzer to open the security door. A woman (who I found out later to be the reason for his father's divorce and his subsequent move from Greece to Canada) answered and let me in. Through the doors was a great yard, where there lay a small pond where hundreds of goldfish and a turtle lived, in one corner was a small hut let out loud music, and with Placebo in the background, I ran to the main entrance and hugged Liam, who stood at the door.

The house looked the same as it always had. The kitchen was clean, and uncluttered, as was the main bar and living room. Bass and electric guitars were plugged in and his father was playing 'Black' by Pearl Jam, and singing. Liam was playing on the electric, and I took up a drum roil. We all sat there for a while, just playing around, sitting on two old brown sofas, with a antique coffee table from England in the center. The 5-foot bass amps and electric amp filled one whole wall, while the guitars themselves, and the drum kit sat on the opposite wall, looking out at the yard. Finally, when some more old friends from school came to greet Liam, I broke off upstairs, where I found Liam and his brother Luke's rooms completely preserved. I had a tear in my eye when I saw how much Mr. Smith must have missed his children when they were so far away for so long. He had kept everything the way it was when they were home. The Playstation in Luke's room sat there, and the X-Box in Liam's, the incense was in the same position, and the CD cases and stereos sat as they did a year and a half before, when I had thought this house had died.

The rooms were beautiful in their upkeep, but still busy, cluttered and dirty. I even found a folded up picture of an old crush of Liam's, in the bottom of one of his drawers, and when questioned him about it, even he had not realized it was there. The upstairs living rooms was cluttered and dirty as usually, with bowls, forks, knives and plates lining the table so you could not put a thing on it. Outside, on the upstairs balcony, there were two new deck chairs, and I could see down to the yard where there were seven or eight people all gathered in the hut. Quickly running down there, I saw that the room there, too, was the same as the before, with pictures Luke had drawn of faceless girls, and posters of hard-rock bands. We all lay on one small bed listening to music in that small room for a few hours. Staring up into the roof of the hut, I noticed strains in the wood, and words carved into the walls. Words I recognized, and words that forced Liam and Luke to leave Greece prematurely a year and a half before. Words that Luke had cut into his arms, legs, and chest with the schools knives. This, along with a few other `questionable actions' forced the school to expel Luke, and both Luke and Liam were sent to boarding schools in eastern Canada. Those scars had healed long ago, but in this room, they still lay upon the wooden hut, showing the pain of a kid who no one would help.

The rest of the night, we just lay on the grass, looking up at the sky in the dark, while Justin and one of the girls were together in one of the bedrooms. Justin had been the one who started Luke cutting. Justin had been depressed, and looked to the masochistic act as a way out. Luke had been depressed, and deprived of a kind childhood, and saw Justin cutting, and had followed.

We just sat there, knowing that this would come again, next year. We all promised we would be there again, and we would do this again, and we would all have fun again, but one of us didn't keep that promise. A month after he got back from that trip, only two weeks into school, Luke slit his wrists, and he will never be there to have fun with us again.