Outside the Emergency Hospital in Kabul's Shahr-e Naw commercial district, a mob of more than 300 people soon congregated, some offering to give blood, others desperately trying to find out whether their relatives were among the dead and injured that had been admitted.
But he had expected they would congregate in some sort of specialised sensory cell akin to the taste buds of the tongue or the hair cells of the ear.
The humble stationery shop adjacent to George Whitman's, Shakespeare and Company – the successor to the legendary interwar bookstore of the same name where Hemingway et al used to congregate – was some of the hottest real estate in Paris.
The tourists who flock to New York want to congregate at some central spot like the Piazza del Duomo in Milan or Florence; they want to stroll through a market-cum-boulevard like Las Ramblas in Barcelona.
That runoff, they say, would eventually pollute a beach where thousands of visitors congregate to enjoy some of the best water quality in Southern California.
Within minutes, between 100 and 150 people had congregated outside, some after they were released from inside the Stonewall, and some after noticing the police cars and the crowd.
When guides shout "bangka," the word for boat, boatmen who have been congregating in some open-air sheds respond.
Most had been private houses in which the Christians illegally congregated, and some of these houses, as at Santi Giovanni e Paolo, are still preserved underneath the present church buildings.
Then, as if shamed into remonstrance by the witnessing lenses, a few dozen men congregated for some ritualized anger, alternating shouts of "Death to America" with "God is Great".
