Odds 'n Ends

First, a follow-up on the previous post:

There were indeed three bomb blasts in The Lovely City last week, including one in a residential area. The target there is unclear, as the suicide truck bomb was detonated in the driveway of a business, but several judges and government officials live very nearby. The largest blast was a truck bomb at the Federal Investigation Agency; it pretty much took off the face of the building, which will have to be demolished. Then Saturday night I returned to the car from a trip to the tailor's and Driver Sahib told me a bomb blast had just been reported from Capital City. Everyone is really sad. On a practical level, we are getting daily security updates from Major Sahib, who is taking good care of us. He has enumerated various security precautions to be taken at Our School, and he checks in regularly by phone as well.

In more benign news, spring is very much upon us. The air is warm and moist already, a so-far-gentle prelude to the steamroom of summer. Flowers have begun to bloom, the soccer pitch at school is lush and dazzlingly green, the shops trumpet their summer stock of fabrics, and women have begun to appear out-of-doors in lightweight cotton and swiss lawn. We're all grateful that this winter's record low temperatures are behind us, but already the anxiety mounts for the sauna that awaits. Every day I hear at least one colleague moan in dismay at the coming months' heat, now only a few weeks away. (Spring, like fall in TLC, is really just an anteroom to the Main Event. In fact, even winter is more like a light decorative motif on the year. Time, in The Lovely City, is framed almost entirely in terms of seven months of hot, hot, hot.) I'm told that summer will be here in earnest by April, and that by May . . . words fail my colleagues at that point. I mentioned once that when I arrived in Pakistan on an August midnight, my glasses fogged up. "Oh, things are much better by August," came the response.