1001 Nights Cast

I’ll tell you what started it. I was looking for a handbag, something that would accommodate the A4 printout of a late stage novel draft. When I hit trouble with a novel I’ve taken to carrying the thing about with me because I find the physical burden somehow soothing, preferable to sitting at my desk with the weight of the trouble shifting painfully round in my mind. I don’t do that any more. I’ve given it up.

But when you are in withdrawal from the masochist’s lifestyle, the sensation of a two kilogram weight suspended in a plastic bag from your bare wrist can be a distraction.

The weight itself was not the problem, just the packaging. What I needed was the right bag, something combining a serious carrying capacity with a bit of attitude. Handbags were the it-item of the season and I was in the city, where the number of bags per square metre declaring themselves available for ownership was legion, but I was developing a system of rapid elimination that enabled me to scan dozens of the things in barely a minute.

The handles must be fixed to take the weight from the centre, not at the edges where they would soon pull it out of shape. There must be built-in accommodation for pens, phone, spectacles, purse, cheque books, keys, lipsticks, credit cards and analgesic tablets. All this before the attitude factor got a look-in. Each bag had its own particular deficiencies and I must have scanned a thousand of them when, as I was cruising on level two of the MLC Centre between Hunt Leather and the Tumi shop, I saw it—staring out at me through the window of a clothing retailer who had it stashed on a shelf like some mere afterthought.

It was blue. A Prussian blue of such intensity it caused me to veer right off course and into the shop, where I laid both hands on it immediately. The straps were correctly set; there were two front pockets (buckled), two inside pockets (zipped), a stitched-in credit card rack and pencil holder and a solid brass fleur-de-lys key tag. I began ripping out the tissue paper bowels with which they’d stuffed it and so attracted the attention of an assistant.

‘Isn’t it beautiful?’ she said.

To which I responded by undressing my manuscript and plonking it inside. The fit was perfect. The tag said Chloë $2,760.00. What if I were to actually purchase this? The thought was hypothetical but already my credit card was in my hand, being reached for by a smiling woman behind the counter who had watched all this with a clinching look in her eye.

I left with the Prussian blue weight on my arm, knowing that there was no way now that I could return to my desk. No wonder the novel was in trouble. It could not take any more time in that study. It wanted to see the world.

Now I was looking for travel agents, and with some urgency. I went in every one I passed, collecting up the glossy brochures and stashing them in the handbag alongside the manuscript. But the city streets were wearing me out. At the next travel agent I sat down and waited for attention.

‘How can I help you?’ asked a guy wearing a white shirt and an earring.

Planting the bag across my knees I extracted the wad of brochures and dumped it in front of him.

‘Those,’ I said, ‘are the places I don’t want to go.’

He laughed. ‘Cool. So what are we looking for?’ His phone rang and I waited for a renewal of the dialogue while he read to the caller from a table of flight times on his screen. ‘Sorry about that. Where were we? Looking for something off the beaten track, that right?’

‘No.’ I was quite firm about this. ‘I’m looking for somewhere not in the brochures. Somewhere that will help me with a project I’m doing.’ I tapped the bag. ‘Story I’m trying to write. There’s something in it I can’t figure out. Maybe I should go to Prussia?’

‘Prussia.’ He looked embarrassed. ‘Prussia. Sorry.’ He began typing rapidly then turned the screen towards me. ‘Doesn’t exist any more. See here—Wikipedia says the Nazis abolished it. What’s it called, your story?’

‘Neighbours. One neighbour says to the other: ‘If you so much as chuck a rock over the fence, I’ll burn your house down.’ It happens. The house is a smouldering ruin and now I’m stuck. Can you find me somewhere else that’s omitted from the brochures? It must be a place where things happen. Things that don’t happen in my neighbourhood.’

He laughed awkwardly. ‘Depends where you live, doesn’t it? It’s all happening in my neighbourhood. Trouble is we got brochures for just about everywhere except the places in the DFAT listings.’

‘DFAT?’

‘Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. They have listings of the trouble spots. Like Iraq. Afghanistan. Lebanon. Israel, maybe. Places on the news. You know, where the bombings are.’

I got out my credit card. ‘That’s where I want to be,’ I said.

He had gone a strange colour.

‘My bag’s packed,’ I pushed the card across the table. ‘Get me the next available flight.’