In gray stormy light, their painted eyes stare out at the Mediterranean—at Homer’s wine-dark sea, at a corridor into modernity. But in memory my walk’s true coda in the Middle East came earlier.

I found down at the side of the house the remains of what must have once been a kitchen garden. Everything was choked with weeds and scutch grass, but the outlines of bed and drill were still there.

Intersex people are not extremely rare, although endosexism (up to and including forced genital surgery in infancy) has contributed to conditions that lead us to believe they are.

A taxonomy of small computers—laptops, palmtops, and kneetops—was just emerging.