The cop in the blue windbreaker crouches down before me and says, “You’re awfully calm.”

I shrug. Calm waters may run deep, but there is a torrent raging just below the surface. It’s all I can do to hold myself together and keep from breaking out into a sweat and freaking out completely.

The guy with the video camera moves slightly to the right so that he can get a better shot of my face.

“You’ve got a nice place here,” Windbreaker says.

“Thanks.”

“You decorate it yourself?”

“Yes.”

“Where do you buy stuff like this?” He holds up a coffee grinder I bought a few years ago at an antique fair in Beirut.

“Here and there,” I answer. “I like to travel. I pick up things wherever I go. I got that in Lebanon. Those baskets are from Thailand and Malaysia. That lamp is from Bali.”

Windbreaker asks what all the blue and white glass circles hanging in the entry are.

“They are talismans from the Middle East called nazar,” I explain. “They’re supposed to protect you from the Ayin Hasad.”

“The what?”

“Ayin Hasad, the maliciously envious stare of strangers. It’s a Middle Eastern thing. In English, it’s called the ‘Evil Eye’. My mother brought them when she last visited and insisted I put them up. I’m not a superstitious person, but my mother can be persistent. I did it to humor her.”

“Do they work?”

“Not today.”

The first posting/chapter in this series can be found here.

Rokuban: Too Close to the Sun and other works are available in e-book form and paperback at Amazon.