First Look

This page offers eight stories I've chosen as an introduction to my writing. The Encore page could be called "last look," offering one more go at a selected miscellany of stories.


  • In One Small Room, a World of Emptiness
  • BESLAN, Russia,
    Sept. 28, 2004 : Every morning, Vova Tumayev sets the breakfast table for three - husband, wife and adored 10-year-old daughter. Nobody eats. Mr. Tumayev sits alone for a little while, then clears...

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  • A Stooped Icon of Angkor, Forever Sweeping
  • SIEM REAP, Cambodia,
    March 22, 2003: LONELY Planet!” came the shout as a knot of tourists emerged through a narrow temple passage. “You’re the man on the Lonely Planet! You’re famous! Did you see...

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  • Playing Through the Pain: a Pianist's Struggles
  • PENRITH, Australia,
    Jan. 14, 1997 : Shoes off, head bowed nearly to the keyboard, David Helfgott winds his way back and forth through the phrases of a Chopin prelude, singing, sighing, making buzzing...

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  • The Day the Men With Guns Came to the Village
  • GALMETIYAWA, Sri Lanka,
    March 18, 1988 : Eleven-year-old Seelawathi Menike and her little brother were shooing birds away from their family’s vegetable plot when the big men in dark uniforms emerged from the...

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  • Shunned, Women With H.I.V. Join Forces in Vietnam
  • HAIPHONG, Vietnam,
    May 28, 2006 : The neighbors know what is going on when they hear peals of laughter coming from the house of ...

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  • Queen of the Quirky, Imelda Marcos Holds Court
  • MANILA, the Philippines, Feb. 27, 1996. : A pale blue bird began to chirp loudly high above the table where Imelda Marcos was eating...

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  • Seeking Names for Bali’s Anonymous Dead
  • KUTA, Indonesia,
    Oct. 14, 2002 : “Identity unknown,” reads a hand-written sign posted on a wall of Bali’s largest hospital...

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  • In Skirt and Leggings, the Bad-Boy of Soviet Fashion Prances on
  • MOSCOW, Russia,
    March 13, 2004 : He enters bearing a platter of sweet buns, a man in strange attire, grinning, burbling, thrilled ...

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