I woke up this morning and I wasn’t hungover; I was something else. I was dusty, ragged from too much breathing, from too much Kathmandu.

I woke up this morning with a dust hangover. The problem with a dust hangover is that having a few quick glasses of dust in the morning doesn’t help you feel any better.

Lacking other options, I walked to Café Soma in Jhamiskhel and ordered a lemon soda and an espresso macchiato. Café Soma is in the part of Jhamsikhel where the expatria fades into the Army elite. The restaurant is across from a bicycle repair shop and next to a t-shirt store. The décor is miniature; themes of wrought iron and self-conscious wood prevail. Along one wall is a bookshelf filled unremarkably with books. They appear to be for sale, many are swaddled in plastic.

The books for sale occupied the same metaphor as the milk foam on my macchiato, which is white optimism. I ordered eggs Florentine. The silverware was served in a thin cylindrical flower vase made from brushed metal – a gesture that was trying to simultaneously infer a casual intelligence and a comfort with violence. I, for one, would never enter a knife fight with a rose.

The eggs and the spinach seemed to get along fine, although the brown bread was slightly obstinate. Nobody likes being on the bottom.

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