one can of cola

This city has been built like a dyke to hold back the flood of African darkness; but the soft-footed blacks have already started leaking into the European quarters: a sort of racial osmosis is going on. To be happy one would have to be a Moslem, an Egyptian woman ¬ absorbent, soft, lax, overblown; given to veneers; their waxen skins turn citron-yellow or melon-green in the naptha-flares.
Lawrence Durrell, Justine

It is dry and hot outside, high noon in Mitan, and Mansoor pours out a can of cola that we share with the nurse. His first patient for the afternoon is Faisa, a short 12 year old girl in school uniform who walks in with a friend for support. The doctor abandons the cola and starts clucking over her. “Come here, Faisa, what’s the matter? Don’t be afraid, I’m like your second father.” She’s got a pain in her year, and in between peering into it he turns to me. “I delivered her in February 1995,” he says, as if this was the most natural information he could think of. “She’s got a ear infection, nothing serious.”

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