Rahul the Guide, of the City of Lies, is a short squat man, of deeply bowed legs, with a long scar from the tip of his nose stretching in a crescent till the side of his mouth.
He does not squeeze your hand when shaking upon a meeting, nor does he let it sit limp in the grasp of his own as a day-old cod.
Instead he is just in between, a good-enough grasp not to let your forget he is a man, but not strong enough to let you be cowed or to effectuate that rule in your ruleset for primate challenge. That rule is never far from the horizon, it waits just over yonder hill for the trigger to be called, for them to escape off the coast of your mind for the thousand reptiles to flood in and effectuate your launch into Zone Red.
He has lived here for so many years that he cannot remember a time when he did not, yet quite readily you can tell that he was not born here, for he does not have that pallor of skin that so marks the inhabitants of the City of Lies. His skin is olive with a tinge of gold, perhaps mistaken with a urine like color by tourists.
His smell wafts over you. It's a disaster. It is broken in two, as a man split within himself, with a sickly sweet scent covered, nay masked, with a terrible awakening of fresh lilac.
His shifty gaze makes you uncomfortable. You're not sure what he is worried about, but a lifetime in the City of Lies has changed him, perhaps to the better. You get the feeling that he does not trust you, and perhaps he is too paranoid, like that elder brother of yours that never believes anything or anyone. The one that warns you always not to let other men talk to your girl for too long, for their is evil in their hearts. That evil, or just that natural storm, the one that is inevitable and that cannot be hated, for how can you hate the storm? It does not choose, it simply is. Perhaps your brother know himself too well.
This is not Zen that Rahul expounds on, rather he expounds on the virtue of seeing through the madness.
What madness you ask yourself. Soon you remember why you like it better here, in the City of Lies: you know its all a lie. You cannot hate here, you simply accept that it is so. Life is good.