III I saunter around this city with such curiosity. Serenity reigned in my heart indeed I was singing between my teeth, a song from my childhood. The men I met were very tall and wore long foustanellas* down to the ground. Their walk was slow, graceful, I’d say, as it is usually in the East. Some others wore caps on their grey heads and others large, tragic women’s hats with feathers. However, suddenly, an inexplicable sadness covered my heart. These people didn’t have any eyes. I paid attention to them: their glances had already worried me. The fear stopped me for a while and rendered me motionless and silent. When I managed to stir somewhat and run after them I finally realized that they’d vanish once they reached the corner like a dream. They’d vanish to reappear on the other corner from where they came to continue their despicable saunter, unaffectedly. There was no doubt anymore. A horrible scam was put together for me. I understood I was the victim of a terrible trap. Then, as I realized the seriousness of my mistake, I sat down and cried bitterly.
brush not ten feet beside him. In an instant, he realized that, with the wind blowing away from them, the deer didn’t hear or smell the horse and rider headed their direction. No sooner had the deer fled in a scurry of dirt and brush than the buckskin jumped, nearly out of his skin. One moment Joel was sitting solidly on the back of the buckskin and the next they were both ten feet to the right, with Joel experiencing a launch akin to take-off on a NASA space mission. With a power that he could hardly imagine possible, the young horse had rocketed forward, leaving Joel behind. In actual fact, it would have been better if he did get left behind, but Joel’s left boot stuck in the stirrup. And with the force of the jump, his boot had slipped through the stirrup. Now he was being dragged at breakneck speed across the rock-strewn hillside. His foot was supposed to slip out of the boot and free him from danger but what was supposed to happen just didn’t. Spooked by the deer, the buckskin gelding blasted up and out of the coulee, racing to the barn. Joel knew that this couldn’t last for long. There were just too many boulders between there and the barn, and the odds that he would hit at least one were pretty good unless he did something in a hurry as he bounced along on his back, dragged by the horse and only inches from the pounding hooves. In a flash, Joel imagined his exposed cranium hitting a granite boulder at twenty-five miles per hour. With one cry he asked, pleaded, begged, and commanded the horse to stop with a desperate “Whoa!” As a boy, his dad had told Joel that anyone could stop a horse, sooner or later, by pulling back on the reins, but his dad showed him an unusual technique—dropping the reins to the horse’s neck and asking it to whoa. Right here, right now, he was glad that he had worked so hard with the gelding on exactly this maneuver. But practicing in the round pen and the arena was one thing; Joel was about to discover how effective his training would be in the wide-open space of the pasture.
The day of our departure came too soon. Entire families gathered at the plaza to bid farewell to their most respectable sons. After a year of preparation, don Diego de Losada had managed to convince one hundred and fifty men to take their chances with him. No small achievement, considering their prospects for survival. Our expedition was bound for the province of Caracas—where the town of San Francisco had briefly existed—and we were destined to rebuild it in the name of Our Lord Jesus Christ for our most gracious king, His Sanctified Catholic Majesty, Don Felipe II. Less than five men out of each of the previous two expeditions into the area had been left alive to tell the tale. I had heard stories about battles, about how I would be lucky to be killed at once. Cannibals liked to tie a Christian to a tree while they danced in circles, possessed by the devil, chopping pieces out of him every time they came about, cooking his parts under his nose or even eating them raw, shooting arrows at him until his blood had drained, blood they would collect in little bowls and drink as they danced, smearing it on their bodies, spitting it on the ground. One chief in particular, Guacaipuro, who commanded the Indian forces of the valley of Caracas, put the fear of God into Spanish and tame Indians alike, for it was said he had no mercy for either. All of the other chiefs pledged their allegiance to him. On the land of one of these, the settlement of San Francisco had been established almost a decade ago, but Guacaipuro had burned it to ashes. It was to that place we were heading. Dressed in their feathered morions, coats of mail and cloaks, twenty men on horseback under don Francisco Ponce’s command melted stoically like butter in the sun, to be accompanied by fifty harquebusiers with their pouches heavy with stone munitions, eighty men on foot, eight hundred servants, two hundred beasts of burden, several thousand pigs, four thousand sheep—all intended to secure the beginnings of a new city.
Link Undoubted link between the national good and the death of thousands in faraway lands unavoidable suffering of many for the well-being of the few the general said was the equilibrium one had to always seek our happiness interlinked with the death of others the general insisted our joy and lives depended on the suffering of others the general said that was a god given equilibrium
o the University of Southern California Medical Center, wait for him, and get him back to the hotel. That’s his business for the morning, nothing else. The ride takes about fifteen minutes, as rush-hour traffic is over and the streets are quieter at this time of day. They arrive and the driver opens the door for them. Ibrahim gets out with Hakim, and they walk toward the reception area. A blonde girl of about twenty-five greets them. “Good morning, sir, please have a seat. The nurse will be with you shortly.” “Thank you.” The nurse comes to get Ibrahim. Before she guides him away, Hakim asks how long they’ll keep him inside and the nurse says about one to two hours. They have to perform a CBC and obtain a few scan images; the doctors have organized two MRIs, and they need to do a small procedure to get a specimen. After that, he’ll be free to go. After they take his uncle away, Hakim takes a stroll on the grounds of the medical. He walks for a while and then dials Talal’s number. The phone rings four times before Talal answers. Hakim asks for news and Talal confirms that it will take a few days. Hakim finds a bench and sits. His mind goes to Matthew and Bevan once more. He is eager to learn more of what they do, the specifics of what they deal with, and whom they report to. He dials again and calls Peter at the office. “Hi Peter, how are things there, today?” “Not much different than any other day. How are things with you and your uncle?” “They’re doing the tests. He’ll be in for a couple of hours.” “Okay. Do you need anything else?” Peter senses Hakim has something to say to him. “Look, Peter, I’d like to sit down with you in the next couple of days, is that okay?” “Yeah, what’s on your mind? Talk to me.” “There is no rush. Just hang tight, we’ll talk when the time comes.” Peter understands he has to leave this alone until the right time; after all, you don’t push the people who have money and the power that comes with it. “Suit yourself, Hakim, I’ll be ready.” He stresses the last words and Hakim likes the sound of that. “Thanks, Peter, I know I can count on you when it comes to the serious stuff; thanks a lot.” He spends the next hour or so outside, with his thoughts traveling to the future and what he needs to organize with Talal next to him at the top of the ladder. But he wonders what to do about Jennifer. The question breaks the …
tables; there was absolute silence until the teachers gave them the okay to go and pick their bowl of porridge, their daily breakfast. Once the order was given, two at a time, like little soldiers, they stepped to the counters, each took his bowl and a spoon and walked back to their seat where they focused on their food. Anton and Dylan took their coffees and a slice of toast each and walked to their table when the maid, Ananya walked in and with quick strides reached Father Nicolas and said something to him as if whispering. Father Nicolas raised his hand and called Sister Naomi, told her something then both Father Nicolas and Ananya took their leave. Dylan looked at Anton and signaled to him to stay put while he walked to George the cook. He leaned over the small divider between the kitchen and the eating area, talked to George, then went back to his seat and kept having his coffee. Sister Naomi walked around the tables holding her stick in her hand and moving from side to side she meant business to these kids who knew very well the feel of the stick on their flesh. Time passed in absolute quietness. When all the porridge was consumed and the children took their bowls back to kitchen counters, Sister Naomi escorted them to their classes for their first lesson. Dylan and Anton went to their job at the laundry. “What you think happened?” Anton asked Dylan when they were loading the washers with dirty clothes. “I don’t know, but we’ll soon find out. George will let us know.” A few minutes later George came in and declared, “the old skunk is dead.” Dylan stopped loading the washer, “When? I knew he wasn’t that well, but…” “An hour ago.”
The moon gleams with soft rays over Mycenae, while the blow of wild air bursts Agamemnon’s tomb open, next to the spirit of the almond tree jutting out like Oreste’s mania swirling skyward like a dancing serpent while Electra’s dance depicts the end of the Asphodel’s dream in the Hellenic essence of my soul rivulets still hold the sunshine in their hands and the paradisiacal lust of the first kiss dangles from the lips of the Kore glorifying innocence as the kyrie eleison travel eastward to the Mediterranean Sea say, let’s dance and long for this year’s newborns, for this year’s red eggs a wavelet appears from the blue forest with the light wave froth calling and promising nostalgia in the Hellenic essence of my soul tomorrow isn’t yet and splendorous yesterday dwells in the void what else can one ask other than the profound meaning of the non-existent now? Bravo, he says to me, always follow the stars and read their minds the end is never a goal, only the way to its faraway shore that gleams clear in your viscera
The Executioner Grunts were heard from the dens, a mad person was looking at me from the window, a bird was sitting on the huge bulb of his eye, a bird he had buried, as a child, in the edge of the garden; the woman with the covered face was following my way, that ugly, dump woman with whom I slept once; after she died she often visited me in fact I saw her once unfolding the small carpet over where I kneeled so people would feel sorry for me; it was when he took me in, the one with the small garden at the far side of the back yard; when we knocked the executioner opened, “I’m innocent” he said, “this killed them; it’s not my fault the others couldn’t hear it” and he pointed at the flute on the table; the dead cried and leaned on the fireplace, even if others said it was the rain, my aunt started yelling when they tried to take her childish drawing which she still held in front of the Lord during the Last Judgment Day, while, as evening came, the passing musicians played tirelessly at the street corner although no sound was heard since their violins were already faraway in the unrealized.
Manolis Aligizakis 