I committed a breach of Shiite etiquette by kissing Jane Evans, a CNN camerawoman I hadn’t seen in six months. One of the Amal kids admonished me with a smile. “You two, you are get married, huh?”
“Yes, yes, of course,” I said.
“And have many children?”
Naturally they like to try their weapons. When the press got obstreperous because Amal wouldn’t let anyone into the school, the kids cut loose with a dozen rounds of AK-47 fire. Your stomach muscles contract, you go into a crouch, chemical zaniness spurts through the bloodstream no matter how many times you’ve heard close fire and no matter that you know the guns are pointed in the air. It’s funny, too, seeing a hundred sweaty, red-faced newsmen in silly golf clothes duck-walking backward at sixty miles an hour.
I can’t tell you much about how it all ended. The next time you think to ask somebody about something “because he was there,” think again. I was there. Some towel-head from Hizbullah marched up and down the street twice. There was a certain amount of what passes for horseplay in these latitudes. “I blow you camera away,” said one of the older Amal guys to a network crew. He aimed his pistol. He pulled the trigger. Click. It wasn’t loaded. “Ha ha ha ha ha.” There was a lot of standing around in the sun with no beer.
About 5:00 in the evening the Amal let a few crews and reporters into the school. “We take one of each kind of type,” said a spokesman. “All English-speaking print media!” shouted my friend Robert Fisk from the London Times, the bastard. The lucky few got to stand around in the school for another couple hours while Hizbullah dignitaries gave free souvenir Korans to the hostages.
A convoy was standing ready behind Amal lines. I hustled for position so I could witness the send-off. But there are about seven ways out of the Burj and I picked the wrong one. The convoy went down another street and I was left watching a gaggle of French photographers bribe their way onto a balcony that overlooked nothing but more French photographers.
I felt rather forlorn. Here we were, the center of international attention, steeped in high drama, with danger on every side, and enormous expense accounts. Could we face the truth that lies in the dark corners of the heart . . . and admit we were having a really good time? No use, I supposed, asking the hostages to volunteer and stay for a while.
Moving to New Hampshire
Not long ago I moved from New York City to a small town in New Hampshire. I didn’t know much about country life, but I was in love with New England scenery. I wanted to do my writing in an atmosphere of pastoral serenity. And I felt a need for a healthier life. Also, I’d never had a roof repaired so I thought New York was the most expensive place on earth to live. Since many other city people are moving into the countryside, I feel an obligation to pass along what I’ve learned. I also feel an obligation to pay for my new roof.
When moving to rural New England, the first consideration is choice of a town. There are three kinds of towns in New England: towns that know they’re cute, towns that don’t know they’re cute, and towns determined to become cute no matter what.
Towns that know they’re cute are characterized by high realestate prices, frequent arts-and-crafts fairs, and numerous Volvos with “Save the Whales” bumper stickers. It’s Vermont, really, that specializes in this kind of town. You don’t want to live in one of these. The “shoppe” signs are all misspelled, the arts-and-crafts fairs tie up traffic, and (it hurts to tell this to the people in the Volvos) Vermont doesn’t have any whales.
Towns that don’t know they’re cute are even worse. Most seem to have zoning regulations requiring lawn ornaments and house trailers in every yard. You’ll buy a beautiful home on Main Street and wake up the next morning to find someone else has bought the beautiful home directly across from you, torn it down, and built a gas station. And the teenage natives use the Meeting House’s 1690 weather vane for rifle practice. This is painful to those of us with finer aesthetic sensibilities who’d like to make it into a lamp.
The right kind of town is the one determined to become cute. My own town, Jaffrey, is one of these. We’re taking up a collection to repair the weather vane, and there’s an effort under way to have our Main Street gas station spell Shell with an extra “e.” Towns like Jaffrey have civic pride and local spirit, but they have their drawbacks too. Civic pride means committees. And there’s always the danger of getting drafted. Last year we had an infestation of gypsy moths. My committee spent three weeks cutting oak leaves out of yellow construction paper and gluing them to tree limbs so sightseers wouldn’t be disappointed during the autumn foliage season.