In Algiers

I'm repeatedly pulling back the dusty sheer curtain over the balcony door as I try to get some air in this stuffy hotel room, three flights up, hoping the pigeons stay on the balcony and not try to visit me in the room. 

Seagulls call to each other over the rusting satellite dishes, perched on the cracked painted 1930s concrete so many call home. Feral kittens play and occasionally yowl on the street below. The smell of diesel mixes with the whiff of cigarette smoke. 

Remember cigarettes? They still live here, right off the Mediterranean. 

Where the Mediterranean diet means something different. A local hotel breakfast buffet offers croissants, pain au chocolat, sliced white bread, brown muffins, vanilla muffins, French bread, pastries, and cookies. I’ve never seen so many carbs...

Except of course when I traveled to the Middle East and North Africa. Hard-boiled egg, a container of yogurt, cheese in a foil triangle, and eight types of bread. 

 I haven’t missed it. 

I feel a pang of nostalgia for simpler times when eating bread didn’t equal regret. 

Good thing I took so many packets of peanuts from work.