A collection of NYTimes articles

[conuly]

On a living IAL in Brazil

Language Born of Colonialism Thrives Again in Amazon
By LARRY ROHTER

SÃO GABRIEL DA CACHOEIRA, Brazil, Aug. 23 - When the Portuguese arrived in Brazil five centuries ago, they encountered a fundamental problem: the indigenous peoples they conquered spoke more than 700 languages. Rising to the challenge, the Jesuit priests accompanying them concocted a mixture of Indian, Portuguese and African words they called "língua geral," or the "general language," and imposed it on their colonial subjects.

Elsewhere in Brazil, língua geral as a living, spoken tongue died off long ago. But in this remote and neglected corner of the Amazon where Brazil, Colombia and Venezuela meet, the language has not only managed to survive, it has made a remarkable comeback in recent years.

"Linguists talk of moribund languages that are going to die, but this is one that is being revitalized by new blood," said José Ribamar Bessa Freire, author of "River of Babel: A Linguistic History of the Amazon" and a native of the region. "Though it was originally brought to the Amazon to make the colonial process viable, tribes that have lost their own mother tongue are now taking refuge in língua geral and making it an element of their identity," he said.

Two years ago, in fact, Nheengatú, as the 30,000 or so speakers of língua geral call their language, reached a milestone. By vote of the local council, São Gabriel da Cachoeira became the only municipality in Brazil to recognize a language other than Portuguese as official, conferring that status on língua geral and two local Indian tongues.

As a result, Nheengatú, which is pronounced neen-gah-TOO and means "good talk," is now a language that is permitted to be taught in local schools, spoken in courts and used in government documents. People who can speak língua geral have seen their value on the job market rise and are now being hired as interpreters, teachers and public health aides.

In its colonial heyday, língua geral was spoken not just throughout the Amazon but as far south as the Paraná River basin, more than 2,000 miles from here. The priests played by Jeremy Irons and Robert de Niro in the movie "The Mission," for example, would have communicated with their Indian parishioners in a version of the language.

But in the mid-18th century, the Portuguese government ordered the Jesuits out of Brazil, and the language began its long decline. It lingered in the Amazon after Brazil achieved independence in 1822, but was weakened by decades of migration of peasants from northeast Brazil to work on rubber and jute plantations and other commercial enterprises.

The survival of Nheengatú here has been aided by the profusion of tongues in the region, which complicates communication among tribes; it is a long-held custom of some tribes to require members to marry outside their own language group. By the count of linguists, 23 languages, belonging to six families, are spoken here in the Upper Rio Negro.

"This is the most plurilingual region in all of the Americas," said Gilvan Muller de Oliveira, director of the Institute for the Investigation and Development of Linguistic Policy, a private, nonprofit group that has an office here. "Not even Oaxaca in Mexico can offer such diversity."

But the persistence and evolution of Nheengatú is marked by contradictions. For one thing, none of the indigenous groups that account for more than 90 percent of the local population belong to the Tupi group that supplied língua geral with most of its original vocabulary and grammar.

"Nheengatú came to us as the language of the conqueror," explained Renato da Silva Matos, a leader of the Federation of Indigenous Organizations of the Rio Negro. "It made the original languages die out" because priests and government officials punished those who spoke any language other than Portuguese or Nheengatú.

But in modern times, the language acquired a very different significance. As the dominion of Portuguese advanced and those who originally imposed the language instead sought its extinction, Nheengatú became "a mechanism of ethnic, cultural and linguistic resistance," said Persida Miki, a professor of education at the Federal University of Amazonas.

Even young speakers of língua geral can recall efforts in their childhood to wipe out the language. Until the late 1980's, Indian parents who wanted an education for their children often sent them away to boarding schools run by the Salesian order of priests and nuns, who were particularly harsh with pupils who showed signs of clinging to their native tongue.

"Our parents were allowed to visit us once a month, and if we didn't speak to them in Portuguese, we'd be punished by being denied lunch or sent to sit in a corner," said Edilson Kadawawari Martins, 36, a Baniwa Indian leader who spent eight years as a boarder. "In the classroom it was the same thing: if you spoke Nheengatú, they would hit your palms with a brazilwood paddle or order you to get on your knees and face the class for 15 minutes."

Celina Menezes da Cruz, a 48-year-old Baré Indian, has similar memories. But for the past two years, she has been teaching Nheengatú to pupils from half a dozen tribes at the Dom Miguel Alagna elementary school here.

"I feel good doing this, especially when I think of what I had to go through when I was the age of my students," she said. "It is important not to let the language of our fathers die."

To help relieve a shortage of qualified língua geral teachers, a training course for 54 instructors began last month. Unicef is providing money to discuss other ways to carry out the law making the language official, and advocates hope to open an Indigenous University here soon, with courses in Nheengatú.

And though língua geral was created by Roman Catholic priests, modern evangelical Protestant denominations have been quick to embrace it as a means to propagate their faith. At a service at an Assembly of God church here on a steamy Sunday night this month, indigenous people from half a dozen tribes sang and prayed and preached in língua geral as their pastor, who spoke only Portuguese, looked on approvingly and called out "Hallelujah!"

But a few here have not been pleased to see the resurgence of língua geral. After a local radio station began broadcasting programs in the language, some officers in the local military garrison, responsible for policing hundreds of miles of permeable frontier, objected on the ground that Brazilian law forbade transmissions in "foreign" languages.

"The military, with their outdated notion of national security, have tended to see língua geral as a threat to national security," Mr. Muller de Oliveira said. "Língua geral may be a language in retreat, but the idea that it somehow menaces the dominance of Portuguese and thus the unity of the nation still persists and has respectability among some segments of the armed forces."

Poor in Africa make their own health insurance groups

Neglected Poor in Africa Make Their Own Safety Nets
By MARC LACEY

DAKAR, Senegal, Aug. 27 - Nogaye Sow is a humble street vendor in a rough patch of urban Africa, but hidden in her flowing robe is a weathered piece of cardboard that helps put her on equal footing with those who work in air-conditioned offices instead of at the curb.

It is a makeshift health insurance card, with photographs of her, her seven children, her granddaughter and two other relatives pasted inside. When they get sick, they receive free consultations at the clinic down the road, cut-rate medicine and peace of mind. The chances are lower now that a bout of illness will bring the family to total ruin.

In most of Africa, there is no such help for informal workers like Ms. Sow, who sells ndambe, a hearty bean paste that she mixes with tomatoes and onions and slathers on bread. Across the continent, fewer than 10 percent of working people have health insurance, pension coverage or other forms of social security, according to the International Labor Organization, the United Nations' oldest specialized agency.

But that is slowly changing, and not just because some African governments are expanding their ailing social security systems, vestiges of the colonial days and geared mostly to the vast number of people on the government payroll.

The bigger push is coming from everyday Africans who are tired of waiting for politicians to address their needs and have begun spinning their own safety nets.

Plans in which neighbors come together and create their own makeshift health coverage are the rage in Africa, particularly in the continent's west. Here, the plans now have a significant presence in 11 countries and membership has grown beyond 200,000 people.

Some of these mutual health organizations, as they are known, include fewer than 100 beneficiaries. The tiny group negotiates with a local clinic and forges a better price for care. Others have linked dozens of community groups to produce sophisticated plans that cover 10,000 or more people and offer an array of services.

"Every day there's a new group," said Olivier Louis Dit Guerin, who helps set up these microinsurance plans as part of a program run by the Labor Organization. "They're growing and growing to fill the big gap."

Not all African governments are sitting on the sidelines. Nigeria, Africa's most populous country, started a national health insurance plan in June that aims to extend coverage to some of the four of five workers who labor informally. But many Nigerians still fear it will end up enriching politicians instead of helping the poor.

And those African workers lucky enough to be part of a social security plan are not guaranteed comfort. The AIDS epidemic has left many national plans on shaky financial footing because there are more payouts for medical care and death benefits but not as many contributions.

Simply prying the benefits from bureaucrats can be a job in itself.

Charles Owala, 56, a retired Kenyan civil servant, has spent nearly two years trying to get his pension money.

"First when I came here at the beginning of 2004, the officers told me to wait because my membership card number was nowhere to be seen," he said, camped outside the National Social Security Fund offices in Nairobi. "It took a lot of time for it to be traced. Now I'm being told there are some other contributions that my employer has failed to remit. What can I do? Wait again."

Those without an employer to contribute to a formal plan - those who, to make ends meet, sell food from the curb, iron clothing, dig ditches, harvest crops or perform any number of the other small-scale tasks that keep Africa going - have long been left out completely.

They are particularly vulnerable to illness because of poverty and exposure, but often put off doctor visits as long as possible. They try traditional medicine because of its lower cost. And they often end up flat on their backs as the price of staying alive soars out of reach.

The fact that many manage to get by is largely because those who have little share with those who have even less.

The community insurance initiatives build on this poor-helping-poor philosophy. They differ from private insurance companies in that they are run by the beneficiaries and not intended to make a single franc. Their target population is people like Ms. Sow, a 40-year-old grandmother who struggles day to day.

For her, a good day of selling ndambe might earn enough to feed her family breakfast. She also runs her own phone booth where her neighbors can place calls, which can bring in enough to cover dinner. And she works at a play group for children; that pay barely covers school fees and other incidentals. Her absentee husband helps, sending money from time to time from Italy, where he lives illegally. None of this gives her health benefits.

But her community plan takes anyone from the neighborhood who can pay the modest fees. Ms. Sow struggles to pay the 200 francs a month - less than half a dollar - that she must come up for herself and for each of the other 10 beneficiaries on her card. With little cash coming into such plans, keeping the books balanced is always a challenge. In some cases, shady bookkeeping has also whittled down the funds.

But the funds tend to regulate themselves. One requires members to visit fellow members who are hospitalized, in both a measure of solidarity and a double check that the person in the hospital bed is the one on the insurance card.

Collecting premiums is not easy, those who run the plans say. But with no rules to follow, the plans can be innovative. In some rural communities in Mali, the health insurance fees are due once a year around cotton harvest time, when most farm families have spending money.

Still, in the three years since it was created, Ms. Sow's plan has had to drop several hundred people who did not pay. Before the plan, when her children became sick with malaria - as common as a cold in the mosquito-filled single room she shares with her parents and other relatives - she had to wait to take them for treatment until she could raise the money, a delay that allowed the parasites to sap the children's strength and endanger their lives.

Now, her insurance card means she can head straight for the doctor. She can also more easily afford the drugs she needs.

Like so many other newly insured Africans, she rarely finds herself forced to decide between health care and food. But there is much that these microinsurance programs do not cover. Ms. Sow's plan offers no reimbursement for ultrasound examinations or X-rays.

One novelty of community insurance plans, though, is that the beneficiaries can come together and make changes. So soon Ms. Sow's premium will increase 50 francs, which is about 10 cents, but she will be able to choose from more than the two health clinics now available and will be covered for more specialized procedures.

But even those changes will not make the pain in her mouth go away. She visited the dentist recently and he told her that her teeth were rotting away and that she needed 10 of them extracted. The fee, together with dentures, is far more than she can afford, and none of that will be covered by her neighborhood insurance plan.

"Maybe we ought to include dentists as well," she said, rubbing her sore jaw.

The parents of dead soldiers are, surprise, divided on the war.

In War Debate, Parents of Fallen Are United Only in Grief
By ABBY GOODNOUGH

David Clemons seethes when he sees Cindy Sheehan on television, standing among small white crosses in an antiwar encampment named for her dead son.

To Mr. Clemons, her protest is a crushing insult to his own son, who was also killed while fighting in Iraq.

"The lady is not honoring her son's sacrifice, because we don't have a draft, and he went and signed his name on the dotted line," said Mr. Clemons, of Winchester, Tenn., whose son, Nathan, 20, was killed by a roadside bomb on June 14. "She'd better not be presenting herself as the voice of all the fallen."

Andre Lieurance, a retired naval officer whose son, Victoir, 34, was killed by a bomb just last week, said he found Ms. Sheehan so stirring that he might join her vigil at Camp Casey.

"I just want some answers about why we're over there," said Mr. Lieurance, of Knoxville, Tenn. "I don't even see the purpose anymore. It's frustrating, and I'm angry."

Though Ms. Sheehan has so far failed to persuade President Bush to meet with her in Texas, she is being closely watched by a small group of Americans who can relate to her pain, regardless of whether they agree with her. Even Mr. Bush was forced to react to her campaign when he said last week that she "doesn't represent the view of a lot of the families" of soldiers that he had met and that withdrawing from Iraq, as Ms. Sheehan has demanded, would weaken the United States.

The competing messages have raised debate among parents of the war dead, who appear as divided as the rest of the nation in their opinions of Ms. Sheehan and her quest. In interviews last week with several dozen parents of troops killed in Iraq, some said she had moved them to speak out, whether for the war or against it, while others said that her vivid protest had dashed what little peace they had found since their children died.

Most said they were trying to get on quietly with their lives, expressing their grief more subtly than Ms. Sheehan yet battling the same demons they recognize in her.

"I wouldn't have the energy to protest like her," said Patricia Marsh of Omaha, whose daughter, Tricia Jameson, 34, a medic in the Army National Guard, died on July 14 when a bomb exploded near her ambulance. "Grieving wipes you out, it takes your life away. But even if I had the energy and I was against the war, I would think I was dishonoring what my daughter gave her life for. She believed she was doing a good thing."

Even if they empathized with Ms. Sheehan, many parents said they thought the troops should remain in Iraq for now and pointed out that her son, like their children, had chosen to serve in the military. Michael Mazzarella, whose son, Anthony, 22, died on July 5, said he still admired Anthony's decision to enlist as a way to escape small-town life.

"He lived life for the moment and really didn't think about the consequences of what tomorrow might bring," Mr. Mazzarella, of Blue Springs, Mo., said. "Looking back, I don't believe that was a bad thing."

Michael Kilpela of Fowlerville, Mich., said he would like to ask Mr. Bush when he planned to withdraw the troops. But Mr. Kipela stifles the urge out of loyalty to his son, Andrew, 22, who died in June. "For me to have any negative feelings about the war would be a dishonor to my son," he said.

But other parents said they felt it was within their rights to speak up and that Ms. Sheehan's protest had emboldened them; a few expressed an anger toward the president as intense as hers, often voicing it only at the end of a conversation.

"I got cards from all kinds of politicians," said Bonnie Bolinger of Troy, N.Y., whose son, Eric Wayne Morris, 31, died in a roadside bombing in April. "I even got one from Hillary Clinton, but Mr. Bush doesn't have the time to recognize those men who died for their country."

Lawrence Tremblay of New Windsor, N.Y., said, "The quiet Americans, and there are a lot of us, need to start standing up and tell our government, 'Do this thing right.' " His youngest son, Joseph, 23, was killed by a roadside bomb in April.

Mr. Tremblay said that he began seeing a therapist after his son's death, and that the therapist had asked, "Who are you mad at?"

"A lot of people get mad at the military," he said. "A lot of people get mad at God. A lot of people get mad at everybody. I looked at her and said, 'I am not really mad at anybody.' Then a minute went by and I said, 'You know something, I am mad at somebody: George Bush. Because he lied. That's why I am mad.' "

Just as incensed, though, are parents like Gary Qualls, whose son, Louis, 20, died in Falluja last November. Mr. Qualls set up camp near Ms. Sheehan as a counterprotest.

"It didn't take me long to figure out right and wrong and what it was I believe in," said Mr. Qualls, who lives less than an hour away from Crawford in Temple, Tex. He said he was most upset that war critics were invoking his son's death, along with the 1,867 others confirmed as of Friday, as a reason for the war to end.

But even Mr. Qualls said he also felt a degree of compassion for Ms. Sheehan, who returned to Crawford on Thursday after visiting her ailing mother in California to find that her gathering had grown in her absence, with a second encampment opening a few miles away. Compared with several hundred crosses set down at "Camp Casey," Mr. Qualls had a little more than a dozen at his encampment late last week.

"I know she's hurt inside," Mr. Qualls said of Ms. Sheehan. "I know she has feelings. I have a loss myself. But truly, I think she is suffering some kind of identity crisis."

Hundreds of protesters on both sides descended on Crawford yesterday for what became the most openly hostile exchange between the two sides since Ms. Sheehan arrived in early August. The pro-war rally was as much an anti-Sheehan rally with demonstrators carrying signs that said "Bin Laden says keep up the good work Cindy" and "You are aiding terrorism."

Dwight Tipton of Fort Walton Beach, Fla., said that Ms. Sheehan's form of grieving was not constructive and that she should do something closer to home. He worked to get the names of newly fallen soldiers like his son, John, 32, added to a local war memorial. Ronald Wood Sr., of Cañon City, Colo., found solace releasing a rehabilitated golden eagle in memory of his son and namesake, thinking, he said, of an Indian belief that "when you release an eagle feather into the wind it brings your prayers to God."

Marny Fasnacht of Janesville, Minn., pores over letters in which her son, Michael, 25, killed in June, wrote proudly of the war and his role in it - consoling evidence, she said, that his death served a purpose.

"I read that she questioned whether her son died for a noble cause, and I totally disagree with her on that," Mrs. Fasnacht said of Ms. Sheehan. "Her son died for the most noble cause: human rights."

Mr. Tipton, who served in Vietnam, said he felt no need to burden Mr. Bush with his grief.

"The man's got more important things to do than take care of me," said Mr. Tipton, whose son died in May 2004. Last fall, he said, when Mr. Bush's motorcade swung through his Florida town during a campaign trip, "I stood on the side of the road when he passed and I just waved at him."

Mr. Tipton learned stoicism long ago, he said, when he came home from laying land mines and blowing up bridges in Vietnam and averted a nervous breakdown by telling himself, "It's already done and nobody can fix it, so why worry about it?"

"You have to accept it and go on with your life, and that's what she's failing to realize," he said of Ms. Sheehan. "I've accepted that my boy's gone and there's nothing I can do about it. Causing traffic jams in front of the president's ranch is not going to get that young lad back. Heck, if it were going to get him back, I'd be out there with her."

Raymond Hull of Uniontown, Pa., said he saw Ms. Sheehan's efforts as more than a futile effort to bring back her son. "I think slowly, over time, people come to see exactly what's going on thanks to people like Cindy Sheehan," said Mr. Hull, whose son, Eric, 23, died in August 2003. "She might bring people to an awareness as to what is going on and the fact that the Bush administration only talks to anyone on their own terms."

Mrs. Marsh, who believes that Ms. Sheehan's protest will not significantly deepen antiwar sentiment, said she would continue supporting the war because her daughter, who died just three weeks into her tour of duty, had. While she talked, an Army major arrived at her house with two boxes of her daughter's possessions: socks, shoes, blankets, sheets, towels and eyeglasses that the mother had helped pack.

"You have to support the war," Mrs. Marsh said, "because you're an American."

On the idea of cellphones in the subway

More Convenience in Subway, or Just More Screech?
By SEWELL CHAN and RACHEL METZ

Lily Li, a real estate broker, takes the bus instead of the subway so that she can use her cellphone to keep track of her 7-year-old son. Alonzo Munden, a retail worker, stands in line at a pay phone on the subway platform so he can tell his wife when he will arrive home. Yoram Silagy, a lawyer, sees the subway as a sanctuary from the irritating din of idle cellphone chatter.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority's decision to invite companies to install an underground wireless phone and data network, linking the airwaves of 277 stations to the world of the streets above, could profoundly alter the time-tested rhythms of the New York City subway system. Passengers like Ms. Li, Mr. Munden and Mr. Silagy, all Manhattan residents, could find their routines enhanced or disrupted - or both.

New Yorkers might do well to look at the experience of Washington, where underground subway stations have had cellphone service since 1993 under an exclusive arrangement with what is now Verizon Wireless.

The capital is far ahead of New York when it comes to wireless service underground. In the Washington subway, it is not uncommon to see lawyers and lobbyists talking on their cellphones and sending e-mail messages with their handheld digital devices, often at the same time.

The behavior of Washington's subway riders can seem baffling to visitors. "They're not conscientious," said Juanita Waters, a government worker from Philadelphia, who was on a business trip in Washington last week. "They don't realize they're not in their home or office environment. Students curse, use profanity. Business people are just oblivious to their surroundings. They're both just as bad."

Maria Coiro, who works in a call center for Pepco, an electrical utility, and lives in Arlington, Va., said cellphones made certain riders seem only more rude. "When the doors close so quickly and it's crowded, people push so hard to get in, and they shove you," she said. "Sometimes they're on their phones, too, and they just don't care."

For some, etiquette does set limits on cellphone use. Checking one's voice mail while waiting on the platform is perfectly acceptable, but loud conversation inside the car is frowned upon. "It's a little annoying," said Alec Stone, who lives in Silver Spring, Md., and works in public relations. "I try to block it out and concentrate on my reading."

In New York City, the lack of underground cellphone service has produced some unusual rituals.

Christie Van Kehrberg, of Astoria, Queens, works at a financial company in Manhattan. Most evenings, on her ride home, she sees riders suddenly reach for their cellphones as the N or W train emerges from the tunnel under the East River and onto the elevated tracks in western Queens.

"Six people in every car are announcing the fact that they're almost home," she said. "It's completely trivial conversation, but the fact that they can call means they will."

Even after the network is built - a process that could take years - maintaining a conversation while in the tunnel will still be impossible. The authority plans to set up service only in underground stations, citing the prohibitive cost of wiring the labyrinthine tangle of tunnels.

Still, a wireless network could allow some new ways for staying in touch. A rider might dial her home number while the train is moving, hit the call button while it comes to a stop and quickly tell her husband to, say, put the casserole in the oven - all before the train pulls away again. Another rider might call his roommate and hang up after one ring - a code signaling that he is almost home. And of course, friends trying to arrange an underground rendezvous will be able to find each other more easily.

Ms. Li, the real estate broker, said she would ride the subway more often. "Sometimes, I'm expecting an important phone call, and even though the bus is slower than the subway, I have to take the bus to get that call," she said.

Others also relish the idea of the subway station as a wireless hub. Morgan Barnard, a video editor who lives in Park Slope, Brooklyn, said he would happily pay for wireless Internet so that he could use his Sony PlayStation Portable, a video-game device that has a Web browser feature, underground.

"I'd probably be checking e-mail, maybe instant-messaging, maybe some gaming," said Mr. Barnard, who competes with other players online and is a member of Dodgeball, a wireless social-networking service. "People talking in the actual cars would be annoying, but people having access to cellphones on the platforms would be cool."

Others see only a nuisance in the authority's proposal. Mr. Silagy, the lawyer, said the subways were a unique, if noisy, public space. "It's one of the few places where you're not bothered by cellphones," he said. "On the street or on the buses, you hear people yapping away. You can't even read the newspaper."

Jennifier Stewart, who works for the League of American Theaters and Producers, said she did not believe the authority's claim that cellphones improved safety.

"It could impede a rescue," Ms. Stewart said. "If something were to happen down on the trains and a lot of people are on their phones, it could add to the confusion. People could potentially miss important announcements they're supposed to be listening to. They could potentially miss instructions from emergency personnel."

Eli M. Noam, a professor of finance and economics at Columbia Business School and the director of the Columbia Institute for Tele-Information, a research center, said cellphones could be only so annoying, because riding the subway is "an unpleasant enough experience" already.

"Half the people already seem to have something plugged into their ears," he said, citing the ubiquity of digital music players. "It's a way of tuning out of the environment. Cellphones are also a way of tuning out, and of being connected and making time count - which in New York is always an issue."

A cafe with no political talk allowed....

Where Tea Doesn't Mix With Political Sympathies
By ABEER ALLAM

At El Khaiam cafe on Steinway Street in the middle of what is known as Little Egypt in Astoria, Queens, Arab immigrants sit around imitation marble tables and chat animatedly as they play backgammon or cards. They sip ink-black Egyptian tea or tart lemonade and smoke fruit-flavored tobacco from stained-glass water pipes.

The décor evokes a tourist knock-off of Egypt replete with murals of the pyramids, the Nile and a smiling King Tut, and the bustling cafe recreates the friendly ambience of similar establishments in the Arab world.

If the cafe owner, Gamal Dewidar, had been there, the conversations would not have been about international politics. But Mr. Dewidar is not there on this day and some customers hijack the television remote to watch Al Jazeera Arab satellite TV news. All conversation ceases. The news anchor relates stories about sectarian violence in Iraq and strife in the Palestinian territories as the water pipes bubble and the swirling smoke condenses into a sweet fog. When the broadcast ends, patrons break off into small groups and heatedly discuss in Arabic events in the Middle East and criticize governments back home.

"He said it was a crusade," said Farid El Baghdadi a 47-year-old Egyptian immigrant, referring to President Bush's war on terror. "And he turned it into a religious war."

Others nodded in approval.

"He says he is bringing democracy to Iraq, but he supports the Egyptian and Saudi regimes that suppress demonstrators," added Farzat Souliman, a 34-year-old Kurdish immigrant from Syria. There were also conspiracy theories about American plans to occupy Saudi oil fields and to detain young Arab-Americans at the military prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

It is the kind of conversation that most patrons would not dare have if Mr. Dewidar, the owner of El Khaiam, had been at the cafe.

For him, tea and politics do not mix. Mr. Dewidar does not allow customers to watch Al Jazeera or CNN, and permits only Egyptian movies or Arab music videos on the huge television set up on a dark brown table in a corner of the cafe. Mr. Dewidar strictly enforces his rule against political discussions. If he suspects customers are whispering about politics, he turns up the volume on the TV to drown them out. If they retreat into the back patio to continue their discussions, Mr. Dewidar sends his brother outside to turn up the volume on the stereo out there.

If customers still do not get the message, Mr. Dewidar will scold them. Sometimes, he will kick them out.

"They talk nonsense," said Mr. Dewidar, a 45-year-old Egyptian with a salt-and-pepper goatee and short-cropped hair who moved to New York from Cairo 26 years ago. "They say the same thing we hear on Al Jazeera or CNN. America is good. America is bad. People come here to relax, not to hear the political views of jobless, miserable men with no wives, no girlfriends, and no money."

If such brusque customer treatment seems unorthodox, Mr. Dewidar doesn't care. He sees it as the best way to protect his cafe. He started censoring patrons after what he described as a "mysterious" surge in visits by health and fire inspectors from the city. He worried that with anti-Arab sentiment aroused after the Sept. 11 attacks, his patrons' conversations might attract too much attention from city authorities.

"This country is not the same," he said. "Before, we were all equal. Now we are not equal."

The Fire Department and the city health department denied deliberately singling out any establishments because of their clientele. Sid Dinsay, a spokesman for the city health department, said that a few months ago "the department responded to a complaint of tobacco smoke entering a residence from various establishments in the area" where El Khaiam is located.

Maria Lamberti, a spokeswoman for the Fire Department, said that Mr. Dewidar had received a summons in 2003, but according to department records, the problem had been corrected. She said the records did not specify the nature of the summons.

Despite his prohibition on news and political talk, Mr. Dewidar has attempted to create a little slice of Egypt in his cafe, importing tea, sugar, tobacco and water pipes. While other cafes in Little Egypt cater to a younger crowd of men and women, El Khaiam attracts older men seeking the camaraderie of the cafes they remember from their homelands.

To clarify his loyalties to his customers, Mr. Dewidar designed an unlikely montage. Mounted on a gaudy pink background and hanging prominently on a wall are smiling photographs of President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt; Gamal Mubarak, his son and likely successor; and President Bush.

Mr. Dewidar said he designed the display.

"These are my presidents," he said. "It is as if your mother married twice. One is your biological father and the other is your stepfather. You have to love them both."

As guests in his cafe, most patrons refused to talk about Mr. Dewidar's policies. When asked, some patrons looked over their shoulders and joked that Mr. Dewidar might be recording their conversations.

But one of the men who had watched the news on Al Jazeera, Mr. Souliman, did express his distaste for Mr. Dewidar's montage because it reminded him of Middle Eastern dictators back home.

"I was very disappointed in him," Mr. Souliman said. "I could not believe Egyptians think this way. Here he is in America and he thinks this way?"

Though he governs his cafe with an iron fist and has a mercurial temper, Mr. Dewidar still enjoys chatting and swapping amusing stories with customers. He even talks politics sometimes, but only as long as patrons agree with his opinions. He also helps newly arrived immigrants find jobs and a place to stay, and will lend them money. He attributes the frustration many recent Arab immigrants feel to unrealistic expectations.

"They think of America as a fancy dream," he said. "But not every American is a millionaire, has a house, a car and 10 girlfriends like they see on television. America will be good to their children, but not to them."

He has lost some regular customers, but Mr. Dewidar blames competition from about a half-dozen other Egyptian cafes in the area rather than his rules. And anyway, he said, he actually wouldn't mind driving away all his Arab customers if he could replace them with the hipper younger residents who have moved to the neighborhood.

"Managing an Egyptian cafe is an art," he said.

On turning Fresh Kills into a park

Recycling a Reputation
By JEFF VANDAM

THE sun always sets gently on the western hills of Staten Island, a peaceful grouping of dunes and sleepy bogs that seem almost untouched by man or bulldozer.

"There's no place else in New York where all you see is sky," said Adrian Benepe, the city's parks commissioner. "You have these sweeping vistas. When you're up there, you're just waiting for something out of 'The Sound of Music.' "

For years, of course, the hills were alive with something far less appealing - the sound of heavy machinery and the stench of filth. That is because the hills, the now-dormant trash mounds of the Fresh Kills Landfill, are made almost entirely of garbage.

Last week, the city began a multidecade, $650 million effort to transform Fresh Kills into a lush 2,200-acre green space. More than twice as large as Central Park, Fresh Kills Park will have streams, ponds, restaurants, esplanades, pathways and more. Yet given the stigma associated with one of the world's most infamous landfills, the transformation will be no easy task.

As Staten Islanders are aware, the landfill closed in 2001, and today not a speck of refuse is in sight. The mounds have been covered, the smell is gone, and a heavy psychological weight has been lifted: The dump, soon to be the site of a memorial, was the place where much of the debris of the attacks of Sept. 11 was sorted.

On Monday, Mayor Bloomberg and a clutch of city agency directors announced that Owl Hollow Fields, the first phase of the new park, had received city and federal funds and would serve as a launching point for the larger project. A $6 million soccer complex will be built along Arthur Kill Road, near the southern tip of the landfill's boundaries.

Yet one question lingers. Although money is in place and enthusiasm runs high, will the city be able to sell the idea of frolicking atop a former garbage dump?

Rewriting the associations surrounding a once-loathsome place is a formidable task. But the historical record shows that it is possible to change the image of a place, largely because of two realities: As time goes on, people forget what once lay on the ground beneath them, and newcomers, represented on Staten Island by street after identical street of new white houses, never knew what was there in the first place.

One of the most sweeping of such image changes took place in Queens, at Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, where starting tomorrow crowds will flock to the U.S. Open at the National Tennis Center. Fans of F. Scott Fitzgerald's 1925 novel, "The Great Gatsby," know that the parkland was once the Corona Dumps, a depository for burnt trash and manure. As Fitzgerald wrote: "This is a valley of ashes - a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens."

Legend has it that one particular ash heap, a certain Mount Corona, grew to nearly 100 feet - not an easy image to forget. But it was not enough to discourage Robert Moses, who had his eye on the dump as the site for both the 1939-40 World's Fair and the 1964-65 fair. The ash was cleared out and the park installed, incorporating green spaces, pathways and two lakes.

The park, Unisphere and all, wasn't actually finished until the second World's Fair, Mr. Benepe noted, a timeline mirroring that envisioned for Fresh Kills Park, which is not set to be completed for more than a quarter of a century. Yet people came anyway, as did the United Nations, which had its headquarters in the park from 1946 to 1950.

Flushing Meadows is not the only local parkland built in a previously unattractive area. On the Hudson River, between 137th and 145th Streets, the 28-acre Riverbank State Park attracts at least one million visitors annually to its promenade, its pools and the Totally Kid Carousel, all built on a platform above a waste treatment center.

When the park opened in 1993, the adjacent neighborhood of Hamilton Heights had not begun the rebirth it experiences today, making the new recreation center a particular boon to the community. "Having the ball courts, the cultural programming, the field, the track, a community garden?" said Wendy Gibson, a spokeswoman for the state parks office. "Who wouldn't want it? It definitely enhanced quality of life in the area."

Adding to the slate of wastelands-turned-playlands are the many golf courses around the country - among them the new McCullough's Emerald Golf Links in Egg Harbor Township, N.J. - that sit atop former garbage dumps. The task for city officials is to replicate those models.

The first order of business in such a makeover, of course, is to eliminate all traces of trash. According to Dennis Diggins, director of the landfill, two of the main sections of Fresh Kills have already been completely "capped" - sealed in plastic and covered in soil - resulting in a grassy dome over what was once extremely nasty. "Basically, it looks just like any hill you'd see in Pennsylvania or anywhere else," Mr. Diggins said.

As a result of the capping, the smell of garbage is gone, as gas does not rise from the covered mounds, and leachate, a liquid landfill byproduct, is piped to a treatment plant. Though Owl Hollow Fields itself will be built a short distance from the former trash mounds, even they will be ready for conversion in a few years.

NOW that recovery of Fresh Kills is in motion, efforts to remake the landfill's image are intensifying. Amanda Burden, director of the city's Department of City Planning, whose agency is taking the lead in converting Fresh Kills, has held numerous well-attended meetings on Staten Island, eliciting comment from residents about features they want in the new park. Some of these features, like ample access to the water, were incorporated into initial plans.

"Overwhelmingly, the sentiment of Staten Islanders is that they want a healthy park," Ms. Burden said. "They wanted a natural habitat, being able to participate in activities such as running, biking, hiking."

Renderings of the new park reflect those desires, depicting cheerful visitors eating at park restaurants and strolling along wetland boardwalks. These images have pleased islanders who look forward to a life after the garbage jokes they have lived with for so long.

"Once it's done, they can never go back to turning it into a landfill again," said Marie Bodnar, district manager for Community Board 3. "As long as it's under the jurisdiction of the Department of Sanitation, there's always that cloud over everyone's head that they may decide to reopen it."

At Nino's Pizzeria on Arthur Kill Road, where Sanitation Department workers in green T-shirts and pants play video games under the gaze of framed photos of George W. Bush and members of the Corleone family, one feels a sense of optimism about Owl Hollow Fields. It will open up right next door.

"Nobody on Staten Island liked the landfill - I think I could speak for everyone," said Michael Graziano, who owns Nino's with his wife, Eleanor. "We're happy that it closed, and we're even happier that they're developing it."

And there could be a side benefit or two. "I'm hoping that business improves because of it, naturally," Mr. Graziano said.

On the Citadel, in Iraq

Under the Old Neighborhood: In Iraq, an Archaeologist's Paradise
By JAMES GLANZ

ERBIL, Iraq - If a neighborhood is defined as a place where human beings move in and never leave, then the world's oldest could be here at the Citadel, an ancient and teeming city within a city girded by stone walls.

Resting on a layer cake of civilizations that have come and gone for an estimated 7,000 to 10,000 years, the Citadel looms over the apartment blocks of this otherwise rather gray metropolis in Iraqi Kurdistan.

The settlement rivals Jericho and a handful of other famous towns for the title of the oldest continuously inhabited site in the world. The difference is that few people have heard of the Citadel outside Iraq. And political turmoil has prevented a full study of its archaeological treasures.

While there may be confirmed traces of more ancient settlements in Iraq, said McGuire Gibson, a Mesopotamian archaeologist at the University of Chicago, the people have all vanished from those places.

"The thing about Erbil is that it is, in fact, a living town," Dr. Gibson said. "It goes back at least to 5,000 B.C.," he said. "It might go back further."

Among the peoples that have lived in this neighborhood are the Hassuna, Akkadians, Sumerians, Assyrians, Medes, Persians, Greeks, Parthians and Abbasids.

In 1964, when Kanaan Rashad Mufti and his prominent family were part of the neighborhood, a floor in his father's house, near the mosque, collapsed during some renovations.

Underneath was a whole series of rooms from some previous civilization, possibly the Abbasids, said Mr. Mufti, who is now director of antiquities in western Kurdistan. There is nothing that Iraqi archaeologists would like more than to begin systematic digs through those layers, said Donny George, director of the Baghdad Museum.

"I have so much in mind," Dr. George said, expressing scientific eagerness "to make such kinds of excavations to see what we might find."

For now, what sets the Citadel visibly apart are the contrasting rituals of an ancient neighborhood that is caught between war and peace. Although the Kurdish north of Iraq has remained comparatively calm, Erbil has had its share of insurgent violence lately, and before that Saddam Hussein's campaigns to uproot and exterminate the Kurds left their mark everywhere here.

The Citadel is no exception. Living in brick hovels amid the ruins of palatial houses are about 1,000 families displaced from Kurdish villages that Mr. Hussein destroyed in an infamous pogrom called Anfal. In a routine that resembles a fire drill, the families scramble to siphon water from sinuous pipes running through the Citadel that function for about 30 minutes, once a day.

But in one of the intact great houses, a Frenchman with impeccably moussed hair has just opened a cultural institute that is displaying paintings of wildly misshapen human and bestial figures in a genre he calls postabstract. The institute, the Center Arthur Rimbaud, plans to sponsor a contest that will send a Kurd to France to study piano.

Right next door is a financially desperate textile museum founded by Lolan Mustefa, a Kurdish native of Erbil who studied anthropology in St. Cloud, Minn., and is trying to preserve the brilliantly colored carpets woven by the old nomadic tribes of the Kurdish mountains. A trickle of tourists has even begun, along with the sense that all this could be the first hint of a Kurdish SoHo or Greenwich Village.

"If they give them the means, it could become a place like Sacré Coeur in Paris," said Suayip Adlig, a Kurdish filmmaker who was long exiled in France, referring to another historical and romantic district on a hill as he toured an old mosque next to an 18th-century bath.

The people who actually live here, not surprisingly, take a more practical stance. Kadim Mustafa - a 39-year-old mother of three, whose brick and concrete shanty includes fragments of the grand home that was here before - stood on a fancy balcony overlooking Erbil and dismissed pretensions like Mr. Adlig's.

"We have a nice place with a view, but not the facilities of life," Mrs. Mustafa said. "As soon as we start having lunch, the electricity will go off."

The direct evidence for what lies beneath Mrs. Mustafa's house is scanty: Assyrian pottery that tumbled out of the side of the Citadel in a renovation of its walls, a dig that Mr. Mufti said he participated in around 1980, an electromagnetic probe that provided intriguing hints about the layered structure.

What seems clear, said John Malcolm Russell of the Massachusetts College of Art, is that with its location in a rain-fed plain near the confluence of two rivers and the foothills of the Zagros Mountains, Erbil "could have been the site of one of the earliest villages in the world." The first hunter-gatherer settlement could have started as early as 9300 B.C., followed by early pottery makers, the proto-Hassuna, by 7000 B.C.

And unlike the arid regions to the south, the rain remained relatively steady in Erbil over the millennia, so there was no compelling reason to abandon a settlement. By 1400 B.C., as cultures came and went, Erbil became one of the most important cities of the Assyrian Empire, said Dr. Russell, who is an authority on the period.

The Assyrian Empire collapsed after a siege in 612 B.C. The Persians took over and were defeated in turn by Alexander the Great at Gaugemala, west of Erbil, in 331 B.C. About a millennium later, the Ottomans swept through after sacking the Abbasids, a Sunni Muslim dynasty centered in Baghdad. And in 1918, as the Ottoman Empire was crumbling, the British Army entered the city without resistance, and finally the modern nation of Iraq was born, with all the consequences that the world is now facing.

Crouching on top of all those layers of history around 10 a.m. on a recent day, Muhamad Amin, 31 and a member of the Kurdish Khoshnaw tribe, had more immediate things on his mind. The water was gurgling briefly through one of the pipes snaking along a path between the close-packed houses, and he was rushing to connect a translucent yellow hose to the pipe.

As other families scampered around him hooking up their own hoses and turning on clattering little pumps, Mr. Amin intently wrapped black electrical tape around his own connection to keep it from leaking. "Those people who are near to the pipe are much better off than the ones who are far away," said Mr. Amin, who came here in 1993, when his village was destroyed by Mr. Hussein's troops.

The half-hour of water did double duty as a social event, and children swarmed everywhere until the water stopped running at 10:35. Indeed, existence at the Citadel is not uniformly bleak. Many inhabitants here have at least laboring jobs in the city: there is a thriving watermelon stand with a wisecracking owner, an outdoor poultry shop where men cut the heads off chickens on the spot, and cars protected with striped cloth covers parked along the sole paved road.

There is not much connection between the refugees and the Center Arthur Rimbaud, but the Frenchman with the moussed hair and black attire, Matthieu Saint-Dizier, said he did a little experiment to be sure he would be welcome after the center opened a few weeks ago. He opened an exhibition of modern paintings in an ancient bath next to the mosque. The paintings showed transvestites and men with multiple genitals.

"I want to make a test," he said. "The imam of the mosque come to this exhibition and he don't make any problems. He said to me, 'I don't understand very well, but' " - and Mr. Saint-Dizier exhaled in a peculiarly French sound, approximately phhhhht.

Mr. Mustefa, the Kurdish owner of the carpet museum, rolled his eyes and said that Mr. Saint-Dizier had no idea how much the exhibition had appalled the locals, who nevertheless wanted to be polite to a Westerner. As far as genuine interest in art goes, said Mr. Mustefa, Kurdistan has been so consumed with political turmoil that he has had a hard time drumming up local interest even in his own offerings.

Still, visitors do trickle in. Mr. Mustefa said that after spending virtually his entire savings on the museum contents he was now having serious trouble paying for operating costs and upkeep. But he does have an interesting building, with ornate old pillars and an unroofed central court, right next to the cultural center. When the municipality granted him the building for his museum, "it was a dream for me," Mr. Mustefa said.

"And I knew the Kurds wouldn't appreciate this," he said with a long-suffering look. "Especially the intellectuals. They think this is a backward art."

So it goes at the Citadel. Mr. Mufti, the antiquities director, is also a member of the board that is supervising preliminary studies, financed by Unesco, for renovating the Citadel. The initial project, according to the Unesco Web site, "aims at identifying a building in the Citadel and at providing it with necessary supplies and equipment to serve as focal point for the rehabilitation of the Citadel at large."

Mr. Mufti is trying, so far without success, to secure financing for a new archaeological dig. But as uncertain as all of those plans are, Mr. Mufti said, there is one thing they all assume.

The neighborhood will remain.

Tracing a mutiny by slaves

Tracing a Mutiny by Slaves Off South Africa in 1766
By SHARON LaFRANIERE

STRUIS BAY, South Africa, Aug. 20 - After years of painstaking research and sophisticated surveys, Jaco Boshoff may be on the verge of a nearly unheard-of discovery: the wreck of a Dutch slave ship that broke apart 239 years ago on this forbidding, windswept coast after a violent revolt by the slaves.

On the other hand, he may have discovered a wire fence covered with beach sand.

Mr. Boshoff, a 39-year-old marine archaeologist with the government-run Iziko Museums, will not find out until he starts digging on this deserted beach on Africa's southernmost point, probably later this year.

After three years of surveys with sensitive magnetometers, he knows, at least, where to look: at a clutch of magnetic abnormalities, three beneath the beach and one beneath the surf, near the mouth of the Heuningries River, where the 450-ton slave ship, the Meermin, ran aground in 1766.

If he is right, it will be a find for the history books - especially if he recovers shackles, spears and iron guns that shed light on how 147 Malagasy slaves seized their captors' vessel, only to be recaptured.

Though European nations shipped millions of slaves from Africa over four centuries, archaeologists estimate that fewer than 10 slave shipwrecks have been found worldwide.

If he is wrong, Mr. Boshoff said in an interview, "I will have a lot of explaining to do."

He will, however, have an excuse. Historical records indicate that at least 30 ships have run aground in the treacherous waters off Struis Bay, the earliest of them in 1673.

Although Mr. Boshoff says he believes beyond doubt that remains of a ship are buried on this beach - the jagged timbers of a wreck are sometimes uncovered during September's spring tides - there is always the prospect that his surveys have found the wrong one.

"Finding shipwrecks is just so difficult in the first place," said Madeleine Burnside, the author of "Spirits of the Passage," a book on the slave trade, and executive director of the Mel Fisher Maritime Heritage Society in Key West, Fla. "Usually - not always - they are located by accident."

Other slave-ship finds have produced compelling historical evidence of both the brutality and the lucrative nature of the slave trade. From the British ship Henrietta Marie, the only slave ship ever excavated in American waters, archeologists recovered 80 sets of iron shackles, cast-iron cannons and pewter mugs.

The Henrietta Marie, discovered in 1972, was partly reconstructed and turned into a popular museum exhibit that toured the United States. Now housed at the Maritime Heritage Society's museum, the exhibit depicts conditions aboard for 190 African slaves who were sold in Jamaica just before the vessel sank 35 miles off Key West around 1700.

Archaeologists who excavated the Henrietta Marie were lucky to find the ship's bell engraved with its name. For Mr. Boshoff, who at every opportunity tramps about on this beach with a global positioning device, a measuring wheel and wooden marking poles, identifying a wreck may be more of challenge.

His best hope of proving that any find is in fact the Meermin, he said, will be to unearth one of the Malagasy spears that records show were carried aboard the ship.

The ship's final voyage is well documented in letters and court records in archives in Cape Town, which are being organized electronically by Andrew Alexander, a University of Cape Town history student who is working with Mr. Boshoff. The documents tell a story rife with folly, trickery, men tossed overboard, bottled messages, rescue ships gone awry and captives-turned-captors-turned-captives once more.

In the end, half of the 60-member Dutch crew and perhaps dozens of slaves were killed. The surviving crew went down in ignominy for losing their ship; the Malagasy slaves met bondage and servitude.

The Dutch East India Company dispatched the three-masted Meermin from Cape Town in December 1765 to buy slaves on the west coast of Madagascar, nearly 1,700 miles away. The growing Dutch settlement at Cape Town relied on slave labor, and the warring tribes on Madagascar were known to trade their captives to European merchants for guns and goods.

In late January, the Meermin left Madagascar with 147 slaves, including some women and children. Fearful the slaves would die in the airless cargo hold, the ship's captain ordered at least some of them unchained and allowed on deck. Another senior officer decided to employ five slaves to clean spears and other weapons that the crew had picked up in Madagascar as souvenirs.

It was a stunningly stupid move. Armed, the slaves killed about half the crew, stabbing them to death or tossing them overboard. Surviving sailors barricaded themselves in the ship's lower quarters, surviving on raw bacon, potatoes and brandy.

Once they realized they could not sail the ship on their own, the Malagasy allowed several crew members on deck to guide them back to Madagascar.

By day, the Dutch headed in the general direction of the island. But at night they steered full sail for Cape Town. By the end of February, they had made it to 90 miles east of Cape Town. Spotting shore, the slaves decided they had reached their homeland and dropped anchor in the bay. Seventy slaves piled into two small boats and headed ashore, promising to light three fires on the beach to signal the others if the land was Madagascar.

They did not get far. Dutch farmers, suspicious of the stationary ship without a flag, had alerted the local magistrate and organized a force of local men to patrol the beach. When the slaves hit shore, they were killed or captured.

For the next week, the Meermin remained at sea while the Malagasy aboard tried to figure out what had happened and the Dutch on shore tried to figure out what to do.

At some point, records indicate, more slaves came ashore in a raft, spotted a black shepherd running away and decided they had reached Madagascar. Their fate is unclear.

Dutch authorities in Cape Town dispatched two rescue ships, but neither managed to find Struis Bay.

The Meermin's officers at sea were trying to communicate with the Dutch on shore by the only method at hand: letters in bottles. Two floated ashore, were retrieved and delivered to the magistrate on March 6. The officers asked for three fires to be lit on the beach to deceive Malagasy into letting the ship come ashore. "Otherwise all will go immediately to their deaths," one letter said.

Another letter advised that the "Neegers" were unaware of their location and could be caught off guard.

The trick worked. The ship sailed toward the beach, hitting a sandbar. Confronted with the Dutch force, the slaves gave up.

For a week, the Dutch authorities worked to retrieve the ship's goods, recovering 286 muskets, 12 pistols, 5 bayonets, compasses and barrels of gunpowder and musket balls. They held an auction on the beach of ship cables, ropes and other less valuable items, then left the broken Meermin to be swallowed up by sand.

Much has transpired on this beach since then. Before the area became part of a nature reserve, fishermen drove up and down it. One farmer erected a fence. Valuable artifacts uncovered by the tides over centuries could now be sitting in someone's garage. When he first saw the vast expanse of sand near the river's mouth, Mr. Boshoff said with a grin, he thought to himself: "Phew! What have I let myself in for."

On the other hand, the sand might have preserved what water would have destroyed. Historical records suggest that the ship went down in or near the river's mouth, narrowing the search for its remains. Mr. Boshoff has also retrieved the ship's original blueprints, which will help him identify its size and shape.

His research is financed by a grant from the South African lottery board, which sometimes uses profits to back heritage projects.

He describes himself affably as "a one-man show." Major potential donors, like the Dutch government, want to see proof of the Meermin's remains before signing on to his project, he said. Eventually he hopes to generate enough interest to search for other slave wrecks in the vicinity, including the French ship Jardinière, which sank 28 years after the Meermin in the same bay.

"This is a long-term thing," he said. "Twenty years, plus."

Mr. Boshoff's field reports dutifully note both his struggles and his strides. His first efforts to find the Meermin involved lashing a magnetometer to a foam surfboard and towing it down the beach behind a 4-by-4 vehicle. The next day, he hammered a six-and-a-half-foot pole into the sand at the points where the device had recorded the presence of metal, hoping to hit something.

"This was a singularly unsuccessful exercise," reads his report of November 2002. Later he determined the device was too rudimentary to register the presence of any metal deeper than five feet or provide accurate readings.

Subsequent surveys from the air and on the ground went better. Last week Anglo-American, the mining and natural resources conglomerate, lent Mr. Boshoff a $40,000 magnetometer and the services of Albert Mandobe, a field assistant. For days Mr. Mandobe painstakingly paced the beach with a nine-foot metal pole strapped to his shoulder while the device recorded each magnetic abnormality as precisely as an electrocardiogram records heartbeats.

The magnetometer's measurements will be used to design a contour map that Mr. Boshoff says will guide excavation. Three sites look promising. The fourth, Mr. Boshoff has concluded, is probably the buried fence.

Success, he predicted, would ultimately be a combination of patience, skill and resources. Plus, he added, a measure of "blind luck."