news from ed

 Ed called. "I'm stunned," he said. After undergoing daily radiation and chemo for months, plus wearing a headful of magnetic electrodes, he had just gotten the results of an MRI of his brain  "I was so sure what the outcome was going to be," he said. Most glioblastomas, malignant brain tumors, recur after surgery and grow aggressively, killing you within 14 months. Ed knew this. But the MRI yesterday showed no growth. "I could barely believe it!  Most every thought I've had is—holy shit! I'm OK! I'm actually thinking of being alive again."

   Our friend Peter reported the same. "I just got off the phone with Ed.  A thirty-minute conversation in which he said he just found out he was cancer free and then preceded to recount to me—full sentences!—the story he was "writing" called something like "the day we lost the war in Afghanistan"....  the whole frigging thing, complete names and spellings of guys like Gulaga Sheraz... and of course it involved a CIA guy named Gersten and a recommendation that I read 88 days to Kandahar...I'm stunned too."

   Ed has pretty much been living in Haiti and Afghanistan lately, given the news. He spent months in both countries as a reporter and TV producer. He has a story about fishing for trout in the Taliban stronghold of the Panshir Gorge—by throwing a hand grenade into the river. Another one about befriending the Grand Wali of Swat in Kabul. The Wali, a hereditary monarch, had once been so powerful that when his cook stepped on a cactus and was unable to produce his dinner, the Wali had all cacti removed from his kingdom.  Ed found Afghanistan one of the most beautiful of all the countries he had been to. "My second homes—at least for a time," he mourned. "Haiti, gone. Afghanistan, gone." 

   But Ed himself, not gone. His doctors were gratified. "I think I'm their golden child."