Word: labyrinth
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Wedged under a heavy corner of Adams House in the piped labyrinth of the basement there are two unmarked wooden doors. Behind them, three or four rooms wind inwards like the chambers of a shell. They are cluttered with odd implements--worn-wood museum pieces with too many handles and big, gripless screws. There are empty racks and cupboards full of metals. There is a smell of deepening rubber. And nested in the inner room, there is the press...
...Saddam's soldiers help the Americans load the ingots of gold (stored in the heart of a vast underground labyrinth of cuisinarts and television sets, the spoils of war, in Louis Vuitton bags) into their truck. What is the price of this uncalled for assistance? Merely that the Americans avert their eyes to scenes of torture and murder of civilian men, women, and children...
Thus life hobbles on in a still bleeding, often broken country in which every moral certainty was exiled long ago, and a visitor finds himself lost in a lightless labyrinth of sorts, in which every path leads to a cul-de-sac. On paper at least, this is a time of hope for ill-starred Cambodia. Last year Pol Pot finally died in his jungle hideout, and just before the new year, two of the last three Khmer Rouge leaders, Khieu Samphan and Nuon Chea, turned themselves in for a while to the government of Hun Sen. The last Khmer...
...seemed to be edging into politics. His father had begun as a journalist; it is not a bad introduction to the American political labyrinth. J.F.K. Jr. cared too much about the state of the nation, especially about the increasing disparities of wealth and opportunity in American life, to live out his life as a spectator. He was a cautious man, methodically feeling his way, but I think he sensed an evident opportunity and acknowledged a dynastic responsibility. He was destined, I came to feel, for political leadership...
...precision of space I know. Now, missing the feel of moving through darkness with confidence, I turn the lights on when I get a midnight urge to wander. Am I afraid of bruising the white walls? Or am I afraid they will bruise me? Before, I could navigate a labyrinth of rooms and corridors in pitch-blackness. I had breathed it in so thoroughly that I had even memorized which wooden floorboards murmured at my step. Silence was easy. That house was comfortable, settled, older...