The Geographer's Library

THE WHITE MEDIKO
White is the color of middles: of uncuckolded husbands, not young men in
love; of disappointed writers, not adolescent poets; of half-finished castles, not
half-finished houses.
—georg nagy, Sorrati’s Tragedy
18 March 1987
My Friend,
Enclosed you will find one of the two coins you sent me and Abulfaz to
recover. I will accept your thanks but sadly can proffer none in return:
my travels with that loathsome cipher to that abhorrent country have
quite depleted your stock of good graces in my books. This marks the
third time in as many years I have had to leave home on a vanity mission
inspired by Voskresenyov’s project: Armenia and Turkmenistan
were intolerable enough, but I had always been rather proud of not setting
foot on American soil. That I had not only to abjure this claim but
to have had to do so with a man in whose company I have never spent an
easy moment is almost too much to bear. I should be cross, were I not
myself and you not you. No matter, though. My erstwhile companion
insisted that this division of the treasure was your idea; I agreed to it for
that reason alone. I can only assume that you have requested it for the
same reason you arranged this whole bloody mess of a trip: The Ameri-
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