End of Manners by Francesca Marciano

body had been more than an anatomy specimen to me. He wasn’t just a guinea pig I had experimented with.
    But Obelix didn’t turn around to meet my hand. He kept coughing as if his lungs were about to burst.

“ SO? DID THEY STICK YOUR HEAD IN A BAG ?”
    On Monday night Imo was waiting for me at the Emirates check-in wrapped in a full-length black coat cinched at the waist with a wide men’s leather belt. With a pair of worn old boots and an astrakhan cap, she looked all set for the Afghan adventure, at least costume-wise. I assumed that her inspiration lay somewhere between Clint Eastwood and Tolstoy, yet somehow it looked as if she’d always dressed like that.
    “Well…yes,” I stumbled. “They kidnapped you as well?”
    “Of course. It’s their pièce de résistance. Everybody knows that at one point you get hauled out of the van with lots of screaming and they stuff your head inside a burlap sack. Big surprise.”
    She started rummaging in the large bag she had over her shoulder.
    “These guys, the ones who run it, have all retired. I mean, come on. They have to do something to bring home the bacon, right? Oh,
please,
where did I put it…? I swear it drives me crazy, I can never find anything in here.”
    She was kneeling down emptying the contents of her bag onto the floor. The wallet had come out, a voluminous makeup pouch, a perfumed candle, a pair of perfectly folded cashmere socks, a very soft shawl—probably one of those outlawed shahtooshes—a biography of Catherine the Great, the latest Nano, a jar of La Mer cream.
    “Ah, here it is.” She snatched up her tiny phone and started putting everything back in again. “Remind me later I have to call the paper and get the number of this guy in Kabul where we have to pick up our stuff.”
    “Which stuff?”
    “You know, the flak jackets, the helmets and the satellite phone.” She flashed her eyes and sighed as she zipped up her bag.
    “Oh, good,” I said, reassured. I had been waiting for her to mention the fact that we were going to take that sort of equipment along.
    We’d had an entire lesson on various types of bulletproof vests, we’d looked at different kinds of material—it was called Kevlar, but I had learned there were various kinds of Kevlar with differing capacities to absorb the impact of bullets. By now I felt something of an expert and I couldn’t wait to show off.
    “Did he tell you what kind of vest we’re getting?”
    “Oh, I wouldn’t have a clue, but it doesn’t really matter, darling,” said Imo, standing up and taking me by the arm. “We’re not going to wear them anyway. We’ll have them in the back of the car just in case, to keep the insurance and my editor happy. He was adamant that we should keep them handy. But there’s no way we’re going around looking like soldiers.”
    “We’re not going to wear them, then?”
    “Of course not. That’s all we need, to show up in helmets and flak jackets. It’d be like having ‘Western target, please kidnap’ written on our foreheads. Come on, let’s go, they’ll be calling our flight soon. God, look at the size of that suitcase. How much stuff did you bring?”
    “No, it’s just that…I thought…But listen, Imo, about the flak jackets: you know, at the course, the Defenders were saying that one should be—”
    “Forget the course now, Maria. It’s useful but they also tell you a bunch of crap. Believe me, it’s better to go around looking like locals, you know, like normal people. The point is to blend in as much as possible.”
    Imo was evidently privy to information I did not have and that appeared to be at odds with the basic rules of personal safety I had just learned.
    “I see. Then we should wear what? Burqas like the Vaginas of Journalism?” I tried to sound sarcastic, wanting to conceal my disorientation.
    “No, I mean we shouldn’t stick out like a sore thumb, that’s all. Regular clothes. Without showing any tits or legs, of