Aliya greeted me when I came here and showed me around the place, took me up, with David, to my retreat space. Her mother is here for one-week course, but lives nearby in Hawick, where she and her husband have a cafe, the Damascus Drum Cafe. They moved here from Oxford. I met her cook, Anthony, who was chef at Beshara previously. He will be performing at the Fringe Festival in Edinburgh when Mickey and I will be there. I hope we will see him in “Afghan days, Babylon nights.”
