A Norwegian in Arabia (6)

The learned voyageur Peter Parkerson did never say no to any kind of suggestions making the daily life in quiet Amman more exiting - or rather challenging, sometimes until a non-recommendable point. That's why he ended up in Damaskus (see pic), joining a colleague who was abut to make an interview with a PLFP activist, whom Parkerson believes it was George Habbash, if he doesn't remember it all wrong, and as said: up in unpleasant Syria. Anyway, the always thirsty (and unfortunately very often broke) Peter Parkerson went to a Western embassy up there in Damaskus for practical purposes and by coincident met a countryman employed in a French oil company. What then happened was more than strange. The countryman was on the bottle as well, and short time after the first rendezvous the party and usual small-talk among heavy drinkers started, in a five star hotel as in Amman. The fellow countryman talked about his father back home, which happened to be a man Peter Parkerson had met some years before, while working as a reporter in a small newspaper up north. The father had gone mad in a small city, with an absurd (but not dangerous) behavior that led to a front page in the newspaper, written and signed by Parkerson himself, and a stay in a mental hospital for the father of Parkerson' s drinking buddy in Damaskus. Parkerson felt somewhat uncomfortable about this connection, mostly because he feared the countryman's reaction, if the connection was revealed. Parkerson would in so case have to pay for his own drinks, which he could not, by obvious reasons. Follow-ups on other strange happenings in Damaskus will come.