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We're headed home this week. I haven't written about what we've done here at all, which I realize has disappointed some fans (Mom); but every time I sit down to write, the background is overwhelming. This world is just too big and too different to tell any stories without paragraphs of parentheses. But you have to start somewhere.

There's been a dead cat in the street on the way to our office building for about a month and a half now. I saw it get hit back in June. It never rains in Amman, and nobody cleans the streets, so things just... stay. It's like the moon, but with rotting garbage instead of astronaut footprints.

Every morning on the way to work, we enjoy a slideshow of decomposition; from the overpowering, nauseating bloat at the beginning to this second smell that I can only describe as "ghetto"--the way filthy houses and trailers smelled in Memphis--to the final desiccated, skeletal husk that will have to be carried off by the wind, I guess.

So there you have it.