He reached the island from the north, walking barefoot and unarmed out of Somalia’s interior, somehow surviving the trek through hostile terrain, among fortified warlords and rival clans, a grisgris bound against his heart, a talisman sewn into a snakeskin pouch and lashed to him with a leather thong by a shaman deep in the Ogaden. On a moonless night he slipped across the frontier at Dif, a dark-eyed Somali woman in tow: Malika, a beauty the color of a brandy Alexander, bathed in the cool hauteur of a princess of the blood.
A native Californian, Don Meredith has journeyed on five continents and told his tales in numerous journals, among them Salon.com, Image, The Texas Review, and several anthologies including Lonely Planet's just published TALES FROM NOWHERE. Meredith is the winner of the George Garrett Fiction Prize, and twice received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts.