Greetings,

My number is XXX and I do not use Skype but I think you can contact me with that and we can talk. I am almost always home except for an errand or two.

The problem is not with XXX. As you said, “XXX is the best” and I have found XXX to be a real breath of fresh air in a profession where that is all too rare. I am the skunk at the garden party and am very sorry it turned out that way. The unedited version of the transcript of the conversation was not really a problem for me. Where the difficulty lies is that in the place I live free speech is simply not an option, in particular the type of speech I engage in — and what you read is exactly the way that I talk, no attempt to prettify it, because truth to tell, the situation is absolutely rotten as is most of the politics and the political elites in the XXX world. Ditto for XXX and his minions though it must be said that XXX brings a lot more sophistication with his game… How else could he be shredding the constitution with assassinations at whim and obliterating XXX without what I always thought was the sacred secular right of a trial by a jury of one’s peers. Enough of that.

My reason for pulling back is quite simple: high tension in the region, XXX being on a war footing, XXX, the authorities here — in addition to their deep-seated paranoia — are fully aware that the XXX for XXX is regime change in one form or another and in that they are absolutely correct, XXX being bent on baiting the XXX into blitzing XXX. I don’t think he will succeed in that, but it is very possible that the XXX on Thursday could be a riposte to the ill-chosen words of XXX making plain that an attack on XXX would be considered an attack on XXX.

I am already at odds with things the way they stand here. As one example, I have been without a passport and any form of identification since the incident involving XXX and my telling the XXX he was in government custody which he was and still is, XXX protestations notwithstanding. The list is longer and the consequences for me have been far more profound but not subject for this missive. My dilemma is this: appearing in any foreign publication, no matter how benign or sanitized, would be sufficient pretext for my being incarcerated and possibly more than that — as I have history of not going quietly into the night, so to speak — the odds are heavily stacked against me but even at this advanced age I simply do not respond well to unjust force, regardless of who the perpetrators may be. Frankly, officialdom does not mean a damn thing to me, in particular when it comes in the form of tyranny.

If you want to send me an edited version of the conversations I had with XXX, I would be happy to read the same. But the issue is that anything printed related to me, however innocuous, would be sufficient pretext for XXX to come poking around or even ask me to show up in their offices which I would reflexively refuse to do and then the real would commence. By all means send it and by all means do call me because somehow I am intrigued by the premise of the Bidoun phenomenon and if it does not work this time around, perhaps there will be other occasions. At the moment however, I am of the opinion that something very much like war is going to take place between XXX and XXX. The obvious truth is that XXX has for long months been engaged in acts of war against XXX but the corporate media is sanitizing all that, knowing full well that XXX is an act of war. Being stuck between two very different types of tyranny tends to make one keep his/her head down and that is what I am into at the moment. Still I would like to hear what you say and read what you edit but it is more than likely that I would still have to decline because I have a life to live, however truncated, and am not inclined to risk what small freedoms I enjoy for a magazine piece that could turn my small world upside down at warp speed. But I do sincerely appreciate your concern. And again the fault is mine alone and not XXX’s. Thank you for taking the time to read this and you are free to call anytime.

—XXX