*****
 |
| A Loaf Of Bread, A Jug Of Wine, And Thou... |
Lucky traveled on camelback every day for a week and
after that at least once a week – as the season advanced, the Turk got more
consignments that paid better. Later, he and the Turk became friends and the
man gave him camel riding lessons, so that instead of being led by the Turk,
Lucky could guide the camel himself. He even galloped across fields several
times, thrilling at the tremendous speeds the animal could reach without
apparent effort.
Finally, he bought the camel saddle from the Turk – set
on the ground on its four wood legs, the saddle made an admirable red-leather
footstool. It smelled so badly, however, that at first his mother wouldn’t let
him bring it in the house. But Brosina solved that with a cleaning mixture she
said was especially concocted centuries before to eliminate camel odors. His
mother joked that it was like Grandma’s Household Hints for Bedouins.
But back to that first momentous day:
At the outset Lucky felt sorry for the camel, but
then after it tried to sneakily bite him a few times, with him jerking back his
leg and the Turk swatting it with his stick, his sympathy soon subsided.
Looking at a few other camels on the same road, all whom were heavily burdened
with market goods, Lucky couldn’t figure out what the animal’s problem was.
This was an easy job – although Lucky wasn’t small for his age, neither was he
a behemoth. Still recovering from many weeks of illness, he had not yet
regained his proper weight.
But just to make sure the animal knew he meant it no
harm, when they reached the city gates and he climbed off, Lucky bought some
fruit and fed it to the animal – holding the pieces flat on his hand, like
feeding a horse. The Turk watched with careful approval – keeping his stick
ready in case his charge decided to bite. After that, Lucky always had
something for the camel when they met and although they never became friendly,
it mostly quit trying to bite and only tried to spit on him two or three times.
At the city gate, Lucky realized he had plenty of
time before school and could finally explore the blackmarket stalls. For the
first time, he entered on foot. Just past the entrance a band of Gypsy kids
burst past him and Lucky laughed, knowing their tricks, and pressed against the
stone wall fending off their swift-moving attempts to pick his pockets. They
went through like a chill wind, people shouting as they veered this way and
that, brushing against people and vehicles, carrying away whatever they could
get their skillful fingers on.
Lucky moved on and was soon enveloped by the strange
twilight atmosphere of the tunnel. At first, he was partly blind – like walking
from the sunlight into a theater after the movie started. His eyes soon became
accustomed to the dim light – which mostly came from the grated areas high overhead
where the city’s defenders had poured boiling oil, or hurled down spears and
heavy rocks on the enemy. Most of the stalls had small oil lamps hung from
poles and when Lucky looked down the length of the tunnel he could see all the
flickering lights swaying in the breeze of the passing traffic – with a tiny
pinpoint of light in the distance, marking the entrance into Nicosia.
At first, Lucky felt a little claustrophobic. On foot
– without Yorgo beeping his horn and racing his engine – the press of human
bodies pouring through the tunnel was intimidating. Adding to that pressure
were all the ox carts, horse-drawn wagons, burdened animals – ranging from
donkeys to camel – and the wheeled traffic, such as the numerous bicycles,
motorbikes, buses and even a few cars, trucks and polyglot vehicles of no
obvious ancestry. The odors filling this confined space were nearly
overpowering. The noxious gasoline fumes of engines, mixed with the strong
barnyard odors of the market crowd laid a thick base of olfactory pigment.
Mixed with this were the smells of the bazaar – burning incense and food
cooking over charcoal and dried dung braziers.
About twenty feet inside the entrance was a flower
stall and Lucky rushed to it, breathing deeply of roses, violets and gardenias.
Soon, the sights, scents and sounds of the Famagusta Gate bazaar settled into
something more manageable, something more realizable. He bought a gardenia from
the old widow woman who ran the stall, stuck it in his lapel and marched
bravely onward, soaking up the atmosphere of his first blackmarket.
The stalls consisted mainly of covered carts with
thick shutters that could be locked tightly and wheeled away when the business
day ended and the cops came around to clear the gate for the night. They were packed
with goods of every variety from every place in the world. Some were dedicated
to specific items. There were stalls selling medicinal herbs from China. Some
were devoted to diseases and common ailments. Others were aimed at more
specific afflictions, such as lagging virility. These carts were marked with
wax and wooden replicas of rhino horns and the hands of gorillas. "Make
you strong," a toothless old Greek woman promised Lucky, thrusting her
fist up and grinning.
Other stalls offered a bewildering variety of
merchandise. French condoms were mixed in with different caliber bullets – some
loose, some still in their boxes. Trays of junk jewelry were filled with
scarabs from Egypt, beetles from South America and fake pearls from Sardinia.
There were stalls devoted to pictures mounted on white cardboard. The pictures
ranged from children’s books, to mythology, to landscapes, to blatant
pornography.
There was food of every kind – kabobs, roasted eggs,
potatoes and corn, nuts of all kinds, trays of baked goods – some sweet, some
stuffed with cheeses and meats, plus big rounds of bread and hunks of cheese,
with olives soaked in dozens of different brines. There were candies of every
variety from all over the Middle East, as well ice cream and sherbets, and pudding
cakes floating in sugared rose water.
Some stalls were devoted to religious artifacts, such
as icons and incense and holy books. But those same stalls might also have a
tray filled with pornography from Algiers, or deadly butterfly knives from the
Philippines.
Lucky passed by several book stalls, pausing to see
that they were filled mostly with junk – battered romance novels and black and
white comics from Africa and Spain. But then he stopped at one stall that
contained some old college texts, including an English translation of Don
Quixote. He bought it for the equivalent of five cents, then, encouraged, dug
through moldy, worm-eaten books, searching for another prize. Starting to run
short of browsing time, Lucky confined himself to titles in English.
Then he came across a small, battered book entitled
"The Rubaiyat Of Omar Khayyam." He’d never heard of it before, but it
sounded exotic, intriguing. Primed for a literary adventure, he opened the
book, gently turning its brittle pages. He soon realized that it was a volume
of poetry, but it was poetry unlike any he’d ever encountered. Lucky flipped
back to the first poem and read:
"Awake! For the
morning in the bowl of night
Has flung the stone
that puts the stars to flight.
And
lo! The hunter of the east has caught
The sultan’s turret in
a noose of light."
He stood gaping, the dense traffic pouring past,
stunned by the imagery. Lucky had often sat by the marble cistern deep into the
night, hiding in the garden while his father raged about the house. He
remembered staring at the reflection of the stars swimming in the cistern’s
watery mirror, drawing comfort from sparkling lights, wondering if there were
planets whirling about those distant suns and if so, on one those planets, was
there perhaps a boy like him whose father was raging in the night and the boy
was staring into a cistern of his own, contemplating a companion in misery like
Lucky.
You could draw a finger through that watery mirror
and feel a little bit like a god as you stirred up the stars burning there.
Once, overcome by frustration at the chaos that reigned in his home, Lucky’d
hurled a stone into the cistern – and the stars had indeed fled the
disturbance.
Pulse quickening, Lucky flipped the pages, stopping
when his eyes picked up a similar theme.
"And that inverted
Bowl we call the Sky,
Whereunder crawling
coop’t we live and die,
Lift not thy hands to
it for help – for It
Rolls impotently on as
Thou or I."
Lucky felt a little giddy. The words reached out to
Lucky and touched him like he’d rarely been touched before. He wanted to read
more. But he was afraid the next poem would disappoint him, or that the magic
of the moment would suddenly vanish and the words would be revealed as ordinary
and maybe even a little trite.
He bought the book and hurried on to Jim’s shop. He’d
read the book later. But first, he wanted to find out about this man, this poet
– Omar Khayyam.
Lucky was just in time for school. He helped Jim open
up - sweeping the front with a broom dipped in a bucket of stale water. Water was
scarce in Cyprus and one had to be careful not to waste it. He did the job
thoroughly, full of energy from his discovery, and also because he was anxious
to please Jim who he knew worked very hard managing his shop, plus teaching
Lucky at the same time. They went through the usual morning lesson plan – and
it went easily since it involved Lucky’s favorite subjects – language, history
and what in modern times would be called the "natural sciences."
"Bugs and beasts," Jim jokingly called it,
although his approach to the subject was not joking at all. Jim was a firm
believer in observation – Lucky suggested it was the scientific method, Jim
said, no, it was the Aristotle Method and although Jim admitted Aristotle had
made many erroneous observations he swore by him.
"Observation is the legacy of Aristotle,"
Jim said. "He taught us how to see and how to analyze." Jim laughed.
"Of course, he taught that women have fewer teeth than men, which isn’t
true, so he must have been making some faulty observations that day."
It was then that Lucky showed Jim the book. His
teacher beamed with pleasure, saying "Ah, you’ve discovered the Persian –
a great observer in his own right. I was going to introduce you to him – but
later. After Shakespeare. However, since you have found him on your own, let us
see what we can learn about ‘old Khayyam,’ as he called himself."
And with that, he hung a closed sign on the shop and
rolled down the grates and locked them. With mounting interest, Lucky hurried
to keep up with Jim’s long strides. Were they going to meet a relative of Mr.
Khayyam’s, perhaps? A few minutes later, Lucky was escorted into an old musty
shop that was crammed with odd machines, stacks of paper, rolls of leather, and
shelf after shelf of books. It was a bookbinder’s shop, commanded by Mr.
Loizos, a Greek Cypriot who claimed more than a bit of Persian blood. When Jim
explained their mission, Mr. Loizos was quite enthusiastic and with great
ceremony showed them an alcove where he kept what Jim called the finest collection
of books related to Omar Khayyam in all of Cyprus. To Lucky’s surprise, few of
the books were in Persian or even Arabic – but Mr. Khayyam was represented in
every other language, French, German, Spanish and certainly English, where the
number of books made it seem he was most popular of all.
"The poems you have," Jim said, "were
translated by Edward Fitzgerald in the middle of the last century and some
people think his is still the best English translation because Mr. Fitzgerald
was also a poet and understood the artistic heart of Mr. Khayyam." He
paused, then said, "That is also my opinion."
"But who was he?" Lucky said. "Omar
Khayyam, I mean."
In his mind, he had the image of a tragic figure,
very much like Edgar Allen Poe, but in a burnoose. As it turned out, Lucky’s
image wasn’t that far from the truth – albeit a truth obscured by the dust of
many centuries. Perusing the books in the alcove, and taking copious notes,
Lucky learned that Khayyam lived in Persia during A.D. 1044 – 1123. To put that
in perspective, Jim pointed out that this was about the time of the Norman
invasion of England. The son of a tentmaker, Khayyam rose to become chief
astrologer of the sultan, his boyhood friend. A brilliant astronomer and
mathematician, Khayyam predated Galileo in many of his planetary discoveries
and was also a pioneer in algebra and geometry. But it was his poetry – the
fabulous quatrains collected in The Rubaiyat – that the world remembered him
for in modern times.
"What happened to him?" Lucky asked.
Jim sighed. "Unfortunately, truly great men are
rarely rewarded in this life," he said. "After his friend, the
Sultan, died, the Mullahs confiscated his property and drove him into exile for
speaking heresy."
Lucky was astounded. "What heresy?"
"Among other things," Jim said, "In
those days people believed that the earth was the center of the universe and
that sun and planets and stars revolved around it. Khayyam proved that this was
false. That it was we who revolved around the sun, and so on and so
forth."
"But… he was right," Lucky said, aghast.
"Why would they exile for speaking the truth?"
Jim raised a finger. "Remember Socrates?"
he said. "Was he not killed for speaking the truth."
"That was a thousand of years before,"
Lucky protested. "They should have learned by then."
Jim shrugged. "Well, considering that Galileo
was threatened with death by the Pope five hundred years after Khayyam – and
for the very same reason – I suppose we can say that human beings take a long
time to learn a thing."
He chuckled, adding, "Also, when you read his
poetry, you’ll see that Khayyam has other habits considered sinful by the
mullahs. He liked his wine, which is forbidden in Islam. And he also had his
doubts about religion – or even the existence of God."
Jim frowned. "Do you think your parents will
have trouble with that?" he asked. "I don’t want you to read
something that would upset them."
"Oh, no," Lucky said. "They won’t
mind." This was one of the few areas where Lucky’s parents shone above
others. "I can read anything I want, as long as I let them read it too.
They’ve never once forbidden a book. It’s a rule in our house."
Jim nodded, saying, "Of course, Lucky, I
remember they told me that in our first meeting. But I wanted to make
certain."
As they walked back to the shop, Jim asked,
"Would you like to take a trip with me this weekend, Lucky?"
Lucky was delighted. "Sure. Where to?"
"I was thinking that this would be a good time
to show you Othello’s Tower," Jim said.
At lunch, Lucky returned to the Famagusta Gate and slipped
out to other side, which overlooked the great central plain. He bought some
black bread and fetah cheese, along with a newspaper cone of olives and a Coke
out of a cold cart. The traffic was lighter now and consisted mostly of animal
drawn carts and people on foot, driving animals before them. The white camel
Lucky had ridden earlier, along with the little Turk who owned it, were
sprawled on the ground, snoozing in the midday sun – their animosity apparently
forgotten, with the Turk’s head nestled against the camel’s neck, and the
camel’s head resting across the driver’s lap.
The air was brisk and dark storm clouds were creeping
over the plains from the Troodos Mountains. The gray city walls loomed over the
scene, climbing high to the towers that marked the gate’s entrance. All along
the age-pocked stone, enormous lizards crept about, hunting insects and small
rodents. A young goat herder stopped near Lucky, putting his charges into a
patch of greenery, then while his goats ate he strode back and forth, making
challenging – forefinger over pointing finger - motions to Lucky. A game of
marbles? Lucky took the challenge and won the boy’s shooter in a few minutes.
He traded it back for a handful of pistachios, then settled down against the
ancient city walls to eat his lunch.
And at long last – he had been dragging out the
moment to make it better – he drew out the little book of poetry. He closed his
eyes, flipped the book open, and stabbed a finger, picking a poem at random. He
opened his eyes, heart beating with anticipation, and read:
"With
them the Seed of Wisdom did I sow,
And
with my own hand labour'd it to grow:
And
this was all the Harvest that I reap'd --
‘I
came like Water and like Wind I go.’"
To Lucky, this four-line poem – this quatrain, this… this…
Rubaiyat… - summed up everything Jim and the books had revealed about Khayyam.
Omar offered the world knowledge in many forms, both scientific and artistic.
But in his day, he – and his work – were spurned. Any satisfaction Khayyam
might have felt were the brief rewards he must have realized when he made his
discoveries about the universe. Or wrote the perfect, four line poem.
As he said in the poem, "I came like water and
like wind I go." But here was Lucky, a thousand years later, reading this
poem and struggling to get a glimpse of the world through Omar Khayyam’s eyes.
Apparently, despite Khayyam’s pessimism, the perfume of his poetry had lingered
well past his death. He read on…
"Think,
in this batter'd Caravanserai
Whose
Doorways are alternate Night and Day,
How
Sultan after Sultan with his Pomp
Abode
his Destined Hour and went his way."
Lucky was almost knocked to the ground by those four
lines. They were the perfect description of reality as seen by the CIA – and
CIA brats, like himself. All the world’s most important people, posing for
their pictures, their moments of victory. President of this. Prime Minister of
that. Dictator here, President For Life, there. Generals and admirals and
senators and yes, even kings and queens. There were a few left, especially,
England’s Elizabeth II who would be crowned soon.
But Khayyam’s point was the same – men and women, big
and small, have a time on this earth that is not measured by their importance.
And, if you were targeted by a CIA or KGB assassin, that time might be even
shorter than the biblical "full span."
He continued reading:
"Oh,
come with old Khayyam, and leave the Wise
To
talk; one thing is certain, that Life flies;
One
thing is certain, and the Rest is Lies;
The
Flower that once has blown forever dies."
And
then:
Up
from Earth's Centre through the Seventh Gate
I
rose, and on the Throne of Saturn sate,
And
many Knots unravel'd by the Road;
But
not the Master-Knot of Human Fate.
Lucky
looked around, once again taking in the Famagusta Gate. But this time he looked
at it differently, especially when an immense ox-drawn wagon exited. There were
six oxen in a line and the wagon itself was double-tiered – so high that the
top came close to scraping the iron spikes spearing down from the gates. The
wagon was loaded with a bizarre variety of things – household furniture, tavern
fixtures, farm implements and even scrap metal and glass sticking out from the
barred sides. As the ox cart emerged, two camels followed, carrying goods bound
for the villages.
The
ox cart stopped abruptly and one of the camels barked its shins. It bawled at
the obstruction, sidling around to get at the driver or one of the oxen so it
could bite them. Heavy sticks, kicks and curses drove it back. A fistfight
between the ox cart owner and the camel driver was narrowly averted by a priest
clad in black with a long white beard and a tall hat.
Lucky
laid the book in his lap and looked out across the plains stretching out from
Nicosia. Far away a rainstorm moved across his view and the breeze brought the
smell of damp earth, spices and citrus and animals and cooking fires. An old
Turk hobbled by in his baggy-pants costume, followed by his woman – who was
draped head-to-toe in black. A beggar by the gate offered an old cracked
begging bowl to passersby, crying that eternal plea of the Middle East -
"Baksheesh! Baksheesh!"
Suddenly
Lucky felt like he was surrounded by the ancients who had once dwelt here, and
who lived here still. He was transported back a thousand years or more. He
imagined a young Omar Khayyam, sitting before gates exactly like these, and
thinking his thoughts and writing his poetry. Poetry that Lucky was now
reading. A camel bawled in protest. An ox cart driver lashed his whip. Angry
mothers chastised their children, someone shouted warnings as gypsy kids ran
past, scattering like sand driven by the wind. And far off he heard a muzzein
call the faithful to prayer.
At
that moment, it seemed to Lucky that he could reach out and touch the smiling
face of Omar Khayyam. It was a young Khayyam, a boy about his age – thirteen,
or fourteen who presented himself in his imagination. In Lucky’s mind’s eye the
youthful Khayyam spilled out a bag of marbles, inviting him to play. In his
fantasy, Lucky spread out his own – setting up a target for them to both aim
at, to see who would go first. Omar grinned and leaned over, pointing finger
tucked under the middle finger for his snap shot. At that moment, Lucky knew he
would win with his superior American thumb shot. On a very good day he could
not only hit, but sometimes shatter his opponent’s marble using the thumb
clutched into the fist, exploding out and sending the marble forward like a
bullet.
Well,
Lucky thought, he wouldn’t be a poor sport about it and take all of Omar’s
prize marbles. He’d trade him for something else, so as not to embarrass him.
Some pistachios, maybe. Or, better yet, a moment of his time.
Tell
me, he’d ask, how you were able to write such wonderful words – poetry that
would last through the ages. And maybe, just maybe, the young Khayyam would
reveal his secrets.
A
bicycle bell rang and Lucky blinked back to a modicum of reality. He leaned
down to read one more poem:
When
You and I behind the Veil are past,
Oh
but the long long while the World shall last,
Which
of our Coming and Departure heeds
As
much as the Ocean of a pebble-cast.
As if
on cue, it began to rain.
NEXT: A VISIT WITH THE BARD OF AVON
LUCKY IN CYPRUS: IT'S A BOOK!
Here's where to get the paperback & Kindle editions worldwide:
Here's what readers say about Lucky In Cyprus:
- "Bravo, Allan! When I finished Lucky In Cyprus I wept." - Julie Mitchell, Hot Springs, Texas
- "Lucky In Cyprus brought back many memories... A wonderful book. So many shadows blown away!" - Freddy & Maureen Smart, Episkopi,Cyprus.
- "... (Reading) Lucky In Cyprus has been a humbling, haunting, sobering and enlightening experience..." - J.A. Locke, Bookloons.com
*****
THE SPYMASTER'S DAUGHTER:
A new novel by Allan and his daughter, Susan
After laboring as a Doctors Without Borders physician in the teaming refugee camps and minefields of South Asia, Dr. Ann Donovan thought she'd seen Hell as close up as you can get. And as a fifth generation CIA brat, she thought she knew all there was to know about corruption and betrayal. But then her father - a legendary spymaster - shows up, with a ten-year-old boy in tow. A brother she never knew existed. Then in a few violent hours, her whole world is shattered, her father killed and she and her kid brother are one the run with hell hounds on their heels. They finally corner her in a clinic in Hawaii and then all the lies and treachery are revealed on one terrible, bloody storm ravaged night.
*****
Here's where you can buy it worldwide in both paperback and Kindle editions:
United Kingdom ...........................Spain
Also: NOOK BOOK. Plus ALL E-BOOK FLAVORS.
TALES OF THE BLUE MEANIE
NOW AN AUDIOBOOK!
NOW AN AUDIOBOOK!
 |
Venice Boardwalk Circa 1969
|
In the depths of the Sixties and The Days Of Rage, a young newsman, accompanied by his pregnant wife and orphaned teenage brother, creates a Paradise of sorts in a sprawling Venice Beach community of apartments, populated by students, artists, budding scientists and engineers lifeguards, poets, bikers with a few junkies thrown in for good measure. The inhabitants come to call the place “Pepperland,” after the Beatles movie, “Yellow Submarine.” Threatening this paradise is "The Blue Meanie," a crazy giant of a man so frightening that he eventually even scares himself.
*****
STEN #1: NOW IN SPANISH!
Diaspar Magazine - the best SF magazine in South America - is publishing the first novel in the Sten series in four episodes. Here are the links:
REMEMBER - IT'S FREE!
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