Prologue

The Secret of the Crane’s Tear

It all began a long time ago.
When the Phoenicians built Byblos, the first town ever to be built, Baal’s gentle heart swelled and he decided to give them an extraordinary gift. ‘The first child to be born in this town,’ he said, ‘shall always be reborn!’ It happened and that child was I. I do not remember exactly when it was, but if I replaced centuries with years, which seems quite natural to me, I would now be sixty years old.
The Phoenicians considered my continuous rebirth as a natural thing. It was a gift from their god and therefore they didn’t envy me nor did they feel sorry for me. They named me Phoenix, which meant ‘the one who is always reborn’, and some said that it could also mean ‘the travelling soul’ or ‘the crying soul’.
I spent my first life in Byblos and when I realized that my time was running out I went to Baalbek, where, in the temple of god’s tear, was my grave. From cedar’s branches, incense and myrrh I made a pyre, and soon my body vanished in the fire and my soul turned into a flock of cranes.
The priestess from the temple of god’s tear gathered the remains of my body and buried them beside the altar, and the cranes dropped a tear over Byblos, thus giving my soul away to a newborn boy.
But when I was reborn I didn’t know that I was Phoenix. I wandered the world and thought that I was looking for happiness and some space under the sun, just like everyone else. It was only when I came back to Baalbek that I realized who I was and what my role in the universe was. I realized that I was Phoenix, the one who is always reborn.
And so it was in every life – I wandered the world, searching for something, only to realize in the end that in all those years I was searching for my grave. But that is my fate and I follow it bravely.
As the Phoenicians were the greatest sailors of the time they called themselves Canaanites, which meant ‘the ones who sail’. However, during the course of time it happened that the bedouins, as we called other peoples, began to call these passionate sailors after me – Phoenicians, ‘the ones whose souls travel’ or ‘the ones whose souls cry’.
The Phoenicians were the most gifted people of the ancient world. They invented the imagination, the wheel and the alphabet. They were the best builders and the greatest sailors of their time. They were the first to realize that the earth is round and the first to sail around it. And they never made war.
Unfortunately, they lived surrounded by the bedouins who didn’t understand the greatness of their exploits. They were alone in the cruel world and one could say they lived in a wrong time; or more precisely, they lived out of time.
One day, when the Phoenicians’ role in the universe came to an end and they silently sank into time, I suddenly realized that I was left alone. But what could I have done? I could not, of course, sink along with them, nor could I become a bedouin.
However, I was lucky enough to discover the mysterious fate of the soul. One day, a flock of cranes flew down onto the roof of the temple of god’s tear in Baalbek and one of them came to me and dropped a tear. I was stunned with surprise. ‘Why did the cranes come to the temple of god’s tear?’ I asked myself. ‘Why did the crane drop a tear and what is this tear supposed to mean?’
And then, in one shining moment, I discovered the secret of the crane’s tear – it was somebody’s soul! I was delighted. I realized that the great shining eye that sees everything had chosen Baalbek as the home of the most beautiful souls. I realized that I was not alone and that the beautiful and exciting story of the Phoenicians was to continue.
What I have just begun is an exceptional undertaking – I want to write Phoenician Myths. When Baal gave Phoeni- cians the alphabet and told them to write the story of themselves, they didn’t understand him and sold the alphabet to the Greeks. That is why they never wrote anything and remained an accidental and vague flash in the universe, like a remote flash of lightning.
So, I want to do what should have been done so many centuries ago – I want to outwit death and stop time. But to do so I have to alter the whole of history, which, of course, is not possible. History was written by the victors, the ones who so proudly used to say, ‘We came, we saw and we conquered!’ But if I should succeed…
If I should succeed in doing that, it will be a just reward for all Phoenicians, the most gifted and brave among people, the ones who by the flash of the mind – and not of the sword – opened up new ways along which men had never gone before. It will also be a reward for myself, brave and crazy in the infinite circle of time, a reward for all those years of quest and longing, and for the torments in which I burnt.

The Rhapsody’s First Part

The Princess with the Purple Voice

The Phoenicians believed that the source of everything was in the tear. One day, the Great Architect of the Universe – for reasons known only to him – dropped a tear and out of her the universe was created. Ever since then, in the glowing centre of the universe, glitters the great shining eye that sees everything.
One day, when it cast a glance at the earth, cruelly lost in the universe, the great shining eye dropped a tear. Out of this tear everything on earth was created: seas, rivers, mountains, birds and monkeys. When the great eye saw rivers and monkeys roaming the earth without aim, it felt sorry for them and dropped another tear. Out of her was created Baal, the oldest of all gods.
The generous and wise Baal did many good deeds: he showed rivers the way to the sea, taught birds how to sing and persuaded monkeys to become humans.
Afterwards, Baal wandered the world for a long time, looking for the most suitable place to settle down. One day he came to the cedar forests of Lebanon and, surrounded by the scent of the cedars and the sea, he realized it was the most beautiful place on earth and decided to settle down there.
Many centuries later the Phoenicians arrived on the fertile shores at the foot of Lebanon. When Baal saw how diligently they worked, how wisely they traded and how bravely they sailed the seas, his gentle heart swelled and a tear dropped out of his eye. From this tear, on a rock above the sea and at the foot of the cedar forests, arose Byblos, the first town ever to be built.
The Phoenicians from Byblos believed that Baal had given them the most beautiful thing in the universe – the sun. Saddened because he couldn’t give them eternity, Baal would drop a tear every morning and behind the gentle cedar forests the sun would arise out of her, in the most beautiful of all colours – purple. That is why the Phoeni- cians on the other side of Lebanon, where the sun arose, built a temple and gave it the name Baalbek, ‘the temple of god’s tear’.
Once a year, all the people from Byblos went to Baalbek to celebrate the biggest Phoenician holiday, ‘the week of debauchery’. It was a festival of beauty, love and birth. On the last day of the festival, they would choose the strongest young man and the most beautiful girl and proclaim them ‘king and queen of debauchery’. The young man also had to be the best flute player and the girl had to know how to sing beautifully.
The Phoenicians returned to Byblos the next day and continued to work, build and sail, but the king and the queen of debauchery would stay in Baalbek for another year, to wake Baal with songs and the sounds of flutes playing.
Delighted by the beauty of the singing Baal would shed a tear, which would drop into the girl’s bosom and then turn into the sun. The young man would take it up onto his shoulders and carry it to the top of Lebanon, and on the other side of the mountain, in Byblos, a new day would begin.
The Phoenicians called the young man Alleluia (Baal-el-luia), which meant ‘the one who carries the sun’ or ‘the one who brings the light’, and the girl was called Astarta, ‘the beauty with a tear in her bosom’.
One summer, a young man from Byblos was chosen as the king of debauchery and spent a year in Baalbek. When the year was up, he sailed with his mistress to the Peloponnesos, where he built a town and gave it the name Corinth.
The young man taught the Greeks crafts, trade and sailing, and like all Phoenicians, he was a very gifted story-teller. Most often he talked about his stay in Baalbek and how he used to carry the sun to the top of Lebanon every morning. In those days the Greeks were very ignorant and didn’t know what imagination was, so they didn’t understand him at all. They called him Sisyphus, ‘the biggest of all liars’.
Sisyphus lived a long and beautiful life. He was a wise and just king of Corinth, and when his time under the sun ran out, he gave his soul over to the cranes. The Greeks, however, later invented a strange story about Sisyphus, ‘the most cunning mortal’, who allegedly competed with gods and defied them. Therefore, the gods condemned him to eternal pains: he had to push a giant stone up to the top of a hill and when he finally reached the top, the stone would roll down again, so that his efforts were fruitless.
As I said, the Greeks didn’t understand Phoenicians at all. To the Phoenicians life was a joy and every new day was a gift, deserved by nothing. The Greeks, on the other hand, thought that life was not only hard but absurd as well.
And so, from the beautiful Phoenician story of Alleluia, ‘the one who carries the sun’, they made up a myth about Sisyphus, ‘the biggest of all liars’, and about the absurdity of pushing the stone up the hill. And fate, unfortunately, had played with my life in a similar way.
One summer, I was lucky enough to be chosen as the king of debauchery and was named Alleluia, ‘the one who brings the light’. My mistress was a girl of exceptional beauty with a wonderful voice. The Phoenicians gave her the name Europa, which meant ‘the princess with the purple voice’.
A year later we left Baalbek and sailed to the west, but misfortune befell us on the voyage. The strong winds smashed our ship against a rock and my mistress Europa was drowned. I returned to Byblos, but never recovered from the loss of my princess with the purple voice.
And then, one day, the Phoenicians brought me miraculous news. In Phoenicia, there was a belief that the soul of a girl drowned at sea turns into a birch. And some bedouins had told them that on a hill, in a distant land, they had seen a birch singing with a purple voice. As you may guess, I immediately went to seek her.
I wandered for years from harbour to harbour and from hill to hill, but I did not find the birch with the purple voice. Yet beside every birch I came across, I erected a tombstone with the name of my mistress on it. In the course of time it so happened that the bedouins began to call all the lands I had travelled by one name – Europa, that is, the princess with the purple voice.
And in this I found at least some consolation for my misfortune.

The Beauty with a Tear in her Eye

If the Phoenicians considered my continual rebirth as a natural thing, didn’t envy me or feel sorry for me, it was not so with the bedouins from the surrounding countries. And so, people from all four corners of the world began arriving in Baalbek with the desire to discover the secret of eternal life.
Among the first to arrive were the bedouins from Egypt, emissaries of a pharaoh whose name I cannot recall. They said they had heard of a man from Byblos with the exceptional power to be reborn and that their ruler was asking the Phoenicians to reveal to him the secret of eternal life.
The Phoenicians told them that it was true such a man existed, but from what they knew, nobody else under the sun could outwit death and stop time, and suggested to the Egyptians that they should go to the oracle of Baalbek.
‘It is true,’ said the prophetess whose name was Nefertiti, that is, ‘the beauty with a tear in her eye’. ‘Phoenix is the only man who is being reborn and nobody else can ask Baal for the same gift. But I believe,’ she added, ‘that we could also do something for your ruler.’
The Phoenicians, apparently, knew of the miraculous power of balsam (Baal-sam or the sun’s tears), the fragrant resin obtained from trees on the slopes near Baalbek. They discovered that the bodies of the dead, when sunken into balsam, would be preserved in their shape for a long time. ‘So will we,’ Nefertiti said, ‘preserve the body of your ruler forever.’
‘And what about the soul?’ the Egyptians asked.
‘The body has to be stored in a coffin made from cedar wood,’ Nefertiti told them. ‘And it is then to be buried in a sepulchre built in the shape of a pyramid. By doing so you will enable the soul to easily return to the body from which she escaped – once she decides to do so. The peak of the pyramid will be the best sign-post to her,’ she said and added, ‘It stands quite to reason that the higher the pyramid, the easier it will be for the soul to find.’
And so the Phoenicians – by selling the secret of eternal life, the balsam and the cedars – made a fortune, and the Egyptians applied themselves to building an eternal home for their pharaoh. And so the first of the great sepulchres of civilisation was built.

&

One of those who came to Baalbek in search for the secret of eternal life was Gilgamesh, the famous king of Erech, whose exploits are described on the tablets from the Assur-baal-nipal’s library.
‘When my friend Enkidu died,’ Gilgamesh said to the prophetess, ‘it was a frightful sight. Poor Enkidu could no longer see the sun nor the moon, he could not hear the cricket’s song nor could he speak. When I saw this, my heart trembled with sadness. ‘Am I also going to die some day like Enkidu?’ I thought. And would it not be terrible, my girl, if I, the most powerful man under the sun, died and never saw the sun again?’
‘It certainly would,’ the prophetess answered. ‘That is why, Gilgamesh, you must go to Byblos and ask the Phoenicians to take you, with their galleys, to an island at the end of the world, where you will find a purple plant that has the power to give one eternal life.’
And so Gilgamesh went to Byblos. There he took a galley and after several weeks of sailing he reached the island at the end of the world, that is, the Ballearic islands (Baal-el-yar or the horizon of the sun’s disc). There the Phoenicians gave him a stalk of sweet basil, saying that it was the miraculous plant he was looking for. ‘It’s enough to smell it only once,’ they said, ‘and you will live forever.’ Gilgamesh gave them a handful of gold and returned to Erech.
He spent the rest of his life convinced that he was immortal, so when Death knocked at his door one morning, he was very surprised. ‘Why are you staring at me so, Gilgamesh?’ Death asked. ‘Did you really believe that anyone else but Phoenix could outwit me? Come with me, my boy, it’s time to caress my bosom.’
Sad Gilgamesh went up to a hill near Erech and looked at the young sun. ‘Oh sun,’ he said, ‘for whom will you now shine?’ And then, Death embraced him with her gentle arms.

&

One day pharaoh Amenhotep IV came to the oracle of Baalbek intending to discover the secret of eternal life. He was fascinated with the beauty of the Phoenician cult dedicated to Baal’s tear, but even more fascinated with the beauty of the prophetess with a tear in her eye.
And when he realized that he could not get eternal life, he didn’t despair but found a reasonable solution: he asked the Phoenicians to give him the beautiful prophetess for a wife. They agreed and so Nefertiti became an Egyptian queen.
The Egyptians welcomed the new queen with delight. They said that Egypt had never seen such beauty. But the priests of the god Amon, the supreme Egyptian deity, did not think so. They could not accept the fact that the priestess from a Phoenician temple had become an Egyptian queen. And they began to conspire.
When the pharaoh learnt of this, he got furious with the priests. He ordered all the temples dedicated to Egyptian gods to be destroyed and proclaimed the sun – Baal’s tear – the only divinity. In the middle of Thebes he raised a huge temple and named it ‘the temple of the invincible sun-god’, and he himself became the high priest of the temple. Eventually, he renounced his own name and became Baal-Aton, ‘the son of Baal’s tear’.
So, it was out of immense love for Nefertiti that Amenhotep did what he did. When he, one day, suddenly died (some say that he was poisoned), Amon’s priests came out of the shadows and immediately took their revenge. And according to them, Nefertiti was to blame for everything.
We will not expose the details of her death here, we will only say that she died in terrible pains. But that was not all. So big was the hatred of Amon’s priests that they destroy- ed every monument that bore her name, except for a beautiful statue made from alabaster.
They took the left eye out of the statue (Phoenicians believed that the prophetess wept out of her left eye) and put the desecrated monument in the centre of Thebes as a warning for future pharaohs. On the monument they engraved the inscription: the beauty with no tear in her eye.
I don’t know what happened to the soul of Amenhotep IV. As for Nefertiti, her soul went back to Baalbek and turned into a palm tree. Since then, centuries have passed by, but she’s still standing on the hill above Baalbek, reminding travelers of the fate of the beautiful prophetess with a tear in her eye.
Only sometimes, in the summer evenings, when the young wind descends from the cedar forests, one can see her slender body trembling tenderly, and a tear dropping out of her crown.

Thee Great Inventor

And now we shall learn how the alphabet was made.
According to one story, the alphabet was invented by no other than the Phoenician god Baal. They say that Baal, day after day, looked upon the Phoenicians as they went about bravely sailing the seas, wisely trading and building beautiful cities. And one day he said, ‘It would be a shame if such a nice people passed through time, leaving no trace behind them. Therefore, I will give them the alphabet and let them write the story of themselves, on the soft papyrus from Byblos.’
But, as I said, this is only a story. The real truth is that the alphabet was invented by a certain Elagabalus from Byblos, the same one who invented the imagination and the wheel and stated that time was round.
One day Elagabalus (Ela-ga-Baal or the shadow of the sun’s disc) was sitting on the shore, drawing peculiar signs in the sand. When the Phoenicians asked him what he was doing, he replied that he wanted to make an alphabet.
‘I want to create a sign for every sound,’ he said. ‘When I do that, we will be able to move them around as we like and write in the sand any word. That way we will be able to write the story of ourselves and leave a trail behind us. And so we will not remain an accidental and vague flash in the universe, like a remote lightning.’
Of course, the Phoenicians didn’t understand him. ‘But Elagabalus,’ they said, ‘that would mean that we want to outwit death and stop time. And who else but Phoenix has succeeded in doing that? Eternal is only Baal and the sun that he has given us! Moreover, Elagabalus,’ they added, ‘even if we did write it all in the sand, wouldn’t the sea wipe it out overnight?’
‘Oh, heavenly eye,’ Elagabalus thought, ‘it is in vain that your shadow shines upon them!’
However that may be, Elagabalus continued to draw in the sand and, after a certain time, he invented the entire alphabet. But, as I said, the Phoenicians didn’t know what they would need it for and sold it to a Greek from Thebes.
One day I was lucky enough to meet this extraordinary man. I found him on a hill above Byblos where he sat under a cypress tree, looking out to the sea.
‘First I invented imagination,’ he said. ‘When they asked me what imagination was, I told them it was the greatest of all gifts. ‘We will now finally be able to escape reality,’ I said, ‘which is so boring and ugly.’ But they didn’t understand me. ‘Poor Elagabalus,’ they said, ‘keep dreaming, brother, and you will get nowhere!’
‘Then I invented the wheel,’ he said and added, ‘but it would have been better if I hadn’t. As you know, they sold it to the Hyksos, and these bedouins then made chariots and harnessed their dreadful horses to them. And you saw what happened – they swept through Phoenicia like a storm!
‘And when, in the end, I invented the alphabet, they looked at me wonderingly again. ‘But Elagabalus,’ they said, ‘if life is only a flash between two deaths, and we all know it is, what do we need the alphabet for?’ And I don’t need to tell you what’s going to happen. They will also sell the alphabet to some bedouins, who will then write stories about their victories and our defeats, and in the end it will appear as though we were bedouins.’
When he realized that his role in the universe was coming to an end, Elagabalus turned into a crane, the sacred Phoenician bird, and flew out to Crete. There he turned into Aleph, the sacred Phoenician bull. More precisely, he was half man, half bull.
Tired of people and their stupidity, he wished to live in solitude. That is why he built a miraculous garden, which had only one door, one room and numerous corridors.
At the entrance he placed the inscription ‘Tan-ry-Baal’, which meant ‘the house of the sun’s shadow’. He wrote it in his own alphabet, from right to left. But the Cretans read the inscription the wrong way, from left to right, thus changing the name of Elagabalus’ garden to ‘laabyrnat’, which later became labyrinth. At that time Crete was ruled by King Minos, and the Cretans, again by mistake, gave Elagabalus the name Minotaur, that is, Minos’ bull.
And so, in the perfect silence of his house of the sun’s shadow or labyrinth, Elagabalus spent 666 years. And then, having realized that day is nothing else but the child of night, and that life and death are only the inside and the outside of the labyrinth, he drowned himself in his own solitude.

Pythagoras’ Testament

One day the purple Phoenician galleys arrived at Rhodes and the Phoenicians told the curious bedouins about their latest adventure. According to their story, some time ago they set sail with the intention to discover what lay hidden south of Egypt, but the voyage lasted much longer than they had expected.
Apparently, it took them two entire years to sail from the Egyptian port on the Red Sea to Gibraltar (gir-Baal-tar or the guardian of Baal’s tear) on the other side of the Mediterranean Sea. And when, after two years of sailing, they finally reached their destination, the Phoenicians realized they had sailed around an immense and until then unknown continent. They gave it the name ‘Aleph-rik’, that is, Aleph’s horn, which later became Africa.
But, as I said, the Phoenicians also told them something very unusual. They said that at one point, when they reached the end of Africa and began to sail to the west, to their big surprise the sun remained on the right-hand side, in other words, in the north. This sounded so strange to the bedouins from Rhodes that they could only shake their heads and exclaim, ‘That’s impossible!
‘If we sail from Rhodes to Corinth,’ they continued, ‘the sun will always stay on our left, or in the south. If we then keep sailing from Corinth to Syracuse, which, as we all know, is farther to the west, the sun will again stay on our left and in the south. This is just another Phoenician lie,’ they said, ‘nothing else.’
It probably would have remained ‘just another Phoenician lie’ if the story had not reached Pythagoras, the famous philosopher with the purple eyes. When the tyrant Polycrates exiled him from his native Samos, Pythagoras took refuge in Croton, in southern Italy, where he founded a school called the Semicircle of Pythagoras, in which he, among other things, taught astronomy, geometry and music.
So, Pythagoras gathered his disciples and asked them how they would explain what the Phoenicians had told the bedouins.
‘I think that the Phoenicians didn’t lie at all,’ said one of disciples, a certain Empedocles from Sicily. ‘To me this is only a proof that the earth is much bigger than we think.’
‘It happened,’ Calisthenes the cartographer added, ‘that at one point during their voyage the Phoenicians passed under the sun, and then sailed so far to the south that the sun remained behind them. And when they then began to sail to the west, the sun – as they said – was now on their right, or in the north.’
‘But that would mean,’ Anaximander from Melos said, ‘that the earth is round!’
‘Exactly!’ Pythagoras cried. ‘And, on the other hand, this is nothing else but proof for what I am saying: that the universe is a geometrically ordered whole, or more precisely, an infinite circle ruled by the harmony of the spheres.’
When the Greek bedouins, who believed that the earth was flat, heard of Pythagoras’s discovery, they laughed and said, ‘Since the philosopher has proved that the Phoeni- cians have sailed around Africa, he could now undertake an even bigger venture. He could sail with Phoenicians around the world and so prove that the earth is round!’
However that may be, our friends from Croton continued to sail through the universe in their search for truth. But soon after they set sail, Pythagoras had a very unusual experience. One night he fell asleep under a cypress tree and awoke under a cedar.
‘Ha!’ Pythagoras exclaimed. ‘But, how is this possible?’ And while he wonderingly looked around, trying to comprehend what had happened, a flock of cranes emerged from the cedar’s crown and flew to the south.
He immediately gathered his disciples and told them what had happened.
‘There is no doubt,’ he said, ‘that observing the universe is a very exciting task but, as I said, a dangerous one as well. Let me just remind you of what happened to our friend Thales from Miletus, who watched the stars so much that he didn’t see where he was walking, and fell in a well. Therefore I would suggest,’ he added, ‘that we stay on earth for some time and try to discover the mysterious fate of the soul. So, how shall we explain what happened to me?’
‘As far as I know,’ Empedocles offered, ‘cedars grow in Phoenicia, on the slopes of Lebanon.’
‘And I heard the Phoenicians say,’ Calisthenes added, ‘that souls fly like cranes.’
‘Does that mean,’ Pythagoras said, ‘that my soul came from Phoenicia?’
‘It’s quite possible,’ said Anaximander. ‘Phoenicians say that souls fly to Baalbek, a town at the spring of two rivers – Leontes and Orontes – and at the foot of the cedar forests of Lebanon.’
‘Very interesting,’ Pythagoras mused. He then decided to go to the port of Croton and wait for Phoenician galleys. When the Phoenicians arrived, he questioned them about the soul’s mysterious journey to Baalbek.
‘Baalbek is the centre of the world,’ the Phoenicians told him. ‘And for that reason the great all-seeing eye chose Baalbek as the home of the most beautiful souls. But, as we said, we are only ordinary mortals and don’t know much about these things.
‘If you are lucky enough and your soul goes to Baalbek, there you will meet a certain Baalzebub, the famous satyr from Phoenicia. He is the lord of the shades and the only one under the sun who can talk with both the living and the dead. He will then reveal to you the mysterious fate of the soul.’
‘That’s interesting,’ Pythagoras said. ‘But how can I be sure that my soul will go to Baalbek?’
‘And how can you be sure that you will wake up tomorrow, philosopher?’ the Phoenicians retorted. ‘If you, as you say, one night fell asleep under a cypress tree and the next morning awoke under a cedar, this seems to us as quite a reliable sign that your soul is from Phoenicia.
‘And if you need yet another proof, then, as we said, you will have to wait a bit longer. It will come only once you have parted with your soul.’
‘What do you mean?’ Pythagoras asked.
‘When you die, philosopher.’
And so years passed, but Pythagoras unfortunately never managed to discover the mysterious connection between the cedar from Croton and the cedar forests from Phoenicia.
And when he realized, one day, that his time under the sun was running out, he took a piece of parchment and wrote on it:
‘On this parchment Pythagoras of Samos leaves the message for the generations to come. That he, out of his immense love for truth and wisdom, had found answers to many questions from different fields of knowledge, especially in those of astronomy, geometry and music. But that he, unfortunately, couldn’t find the answers to two questions: he couldn’t calculate the circumference of the universe and didn’t manage to discover the mysterious fate of the soul.’
When he died his disciples Empedocles, Calisthenes and Anaximander witnessed, with their own eyes, cranes with Pythagoras’ soul in their beaks fly out to Baalbek, to the spring of the two rivers and to the cedar forests of Phoenicia.
The Greeks later invented a story that Pythagoras had a golden hoof and a silver horn, and that he was able to sojourn in two places at the same time. And that he, allegedly, for 666 drachmas, sold his soul to a satyr from Phoenicia by the name of Baalzebub, who – as the story goes – roams the world as a vagabond and buys the cheap souls of unhappy rhapsodes and crazy philosophers.
And we shall later see that all this was utter nonsense.

The Conqueror of the Knot and the Tortoise

While Alexander the Great was preparing for the war against Persia, he heard some unusual news: the Phrygian king Gordius was boasting that he had tied a knot that nobody could untie. And the prophecy said that only he who loosened the knot would become the ruler of Asia.
And Alexander hurried on to Phrygia.
‘I admire your skill, Gordius,’ he said. ‘You’ve entangled it quite nicely, there is no doubt. But do we Macedonians not say that a hundred wise men cannot untie what one fool has entangled!’ – and with a lightning blow of his sword he cut the knot. ‘So Gordius!’ Alexander added. ‘Now you can tie another knot and I am going to take what the prophecy so generously gave to me – Asia.’
On the way through Phoenicia Alexander decided to pay a visit to the oracle of Baalbek and see the famous prophetess Nefertiti, the beauty with a tear in her eye. His general Seleucus tried to dissuade him from doing this, saying that, having cut Gordius’ knot, he had already opened the doors to Asia, but Alexander was persistent.
‘But, Seleucus,’ he said, ‘Gordius only promised me Asia, and I want to have the whole world! Besides, I want to see the beautiful prophetess with a tear in her eye,’ he added and went to Baalbek.
‘As far as I can see, Alexander,’ the prophetess said, ‘fortune will favour you for the most part of the way. You will conquer many lands, from Egypt in the west up to the big river in the east, which is, by the way, the end of the world. In short, the world will tremble under your feet.’
‘That’s exactly what I wanted to hear!’ Alexander thought.
‘But,’ she went on, ‘I also see a dangerous sign. At one point the way is suddenly interrupted.’
‘What do you mean?’ Alexander asked.
‘I will tell you only this,’ the prophetess replied. ‘I see an old man carrying his house on his back, like a tortoise does. And your fate is in a mysterious way connected with his fate. Therefore, when you meet him – and you will meet him, don’t doubt at all! – don’t scorn or humiliate him. And one more thing: don’t realize all this too late!’
Alexander laughed. ‘Don’t worry, my beauty,’ he said. ‘I will certainly beware of the mysterious old man who carries his house on his back, like a tortoise.’ Then he left. ‘What a pity!’ he thought while leaving Baalbek. ‘How pretty she is, but what nonsense she talks!’
Alexander spent the next few years realizing his big goal – conquering the world. First he conquered Egypt and in the sacred oasis on the Nile the Egyptian priests proclaimed him pharaoh and son of the god Amon. Then he went to Babylon and ordered that the Hanging Gardens be rebuilt. Through Persia he swept like a storm and declared himself the king of kings. Finally, he came to the big river in the east, which, he thought, was the end of the world. Then he went back home.
When he arrived in Greece, the Greeks welcomed him as the greatest conqueror and the indisputable master of the world. They proclaimed him son of Zeus and Poseidon.
But one man took a different view of Alexander. He called him ‘the conqueror of the knot and Asian fog’. It was Diogenes, the famed philosopher-cynic from Sinope. That same Diogenes who lived in a tub and stated that wisdom was frail but power even more so. And Alexander, of course, went to see him.
‘I know, Diogenes,’ Alexander began, ‘that you cynics despise us – ordinary mortals. But yet you could leave your tub for a while, at least to let the sun shine on you.’
Diogenes laughed. ‘But even if I got out, Alexander,’ he said, ‘what good would that do, when you are so great that you shield the entire sun.’
‘You’ve put it nicely, Diogenes,’ Alexander said. ‘But I’ve heard that you call me the conqueror of the knot and Asian fog. What do you mean by that?’
‘It’s a metaphor, Alexander,’ Diogenes replied.
‘A metaphor!’ Alexander shouted. ‘To you it’s a metaphor! Do you, philosopher, know that I did what nobody has ever done – I conquered the world! In Egypt I became pharaoh and son of the god Amon. In Persia I was crowned king of kings and here they call me the son of Zeus and Poseidon! And to you I am the conqueror of the knot and Asian fog. And yet you call it a metaphor!’
‘But Alexander…’ Diogenes said.
‘Listen to me, philosopher!’ Alexander interrupted him. ‘Do you want me to pierce your tub with my spear, like a melon? Or do you want me to go up to the Acropolis and pierce your heart from there with my golden arrow! Tell me, which do you prefer?’
They looked at each other for a while, then Alexander turned around and left. ‘When I return to Athens,’ he told his general Seleucus, ‘I don’t want to see that lunatic here any more!’
A few days later Alexander left Athens and went to tour his empire. He made a stop in Babylon and ordered that girls be brought to him and the old wine from Phoenicia. ‘At last, I can have some fun,’ he thought, ‘and start living as it befits me – as the king of kings and the most powerful man under the sun!’
Soon, Seleucus arrived with tidings from Athens. ‘What’s the news?’ Alexander asked.
‘Everything is in perfect order, sir,’ Seleucus answered. ‘You won’t see the lunatic from Sinope ever again.’
‘What happened to him?’
‘Oh sir,’ Seleucus said, ‘you should have seen it. When we came to take him with us, he refused to leave his tub. ‘This is my house,’ he said and burdened it upon his shoulders, and carried it so, on his back, as a tortoise carries its house. We later threw his tub into the sea and him we sold to a tyrant from Corinth. But, only a few days later, he died.’
‘You’ve done it well, Seleucus,’ Alexander said, ‘very well.’
Seleucus then left, and the face of the pretty prophetess from Baalbek began to hover before Alexander’s eyes. He heard her whisper to him, ‘When you meet an old man carrying his house on his back, like a tortoise, don’t scorn or humiliate him… And don’t realize this too late!’
He tried to understand what had gone wrong. He tried to discover the invisible thread, which, in a mysterious way, connected his fate with the fate of the strange philosopher from Sinope. For six days he sat in the splendid rooms of the Hanging Gardens, drinking the old wine from Phoenicia and thinking it over… But the answer he couldn’t find.
And at dawn of the seventh day, his motionless body was found beside the statue of the immortal god Zeus.
Thus, the same summer in the year 323 of the ancient era, the great philosopher Diogenes from Sinope and the great conqueror Alexander from Macedonia died. As far as I remember, Diogenes’ soul went to Baalbek and turned into a cypress tree, and what became of Alexander’s soul, I don’t know.
After all, we are not dealing with the souls of ordinary mortals here.

Hannibal ante Portas

‘Here, Gargamel, is how it all began…
‘One day the Romans arrived in Sicily and captured the Phoenician city of Messina. When the Carthaginians asked them why they did it, the Romans told them that the Phoenicians from Messina allegedly raped some girls from Neapolis and so they came to Sicily and out of revenge sacked Messina. The Carthaginians accepted this as a reasonable explanation.
‘But shortly after that, the Romans sacked another Phoenician town, then another. Then they began to intercept our galleys and in the end they began calling the great Mediterranean Sea – that, as you know, belongs to all of us – Mare Nostrum or ‘our sea’.
‘And the prophetess from Baalbek sent us the message: ‘Get ready, Carthaginians! Your enemy, the beast with the wolf’s eyes, is tightening a noose around your neck. And it would be wise to cut it on time!’
‘The Carthaginians realized that things had become very serious, so they decided to build an army. A certain Anaxagoras, a descendant of the famous general Ptolemy, who with Alexander the Great conquered Persia and Egypt, was brought in from Alexandria and he began teaching Carthaginians the art of war. At that time I was nine years old.
‘One day Anaxagoras gave me a spear and said, ‘Play with this until you learn to kill a flying falcon with it!’ He then gave me a sabre and said, ‘Don’t leave it until you learn how to cut the enemies’ heads as if they were sunflower stalks. If you want to surpass Alexander the Great – and we all know that a greater warrior never lived – then you will have to learn all this and much more.’
‘And when my father Hamilcar was killed in a battle against the Spanish bedouins, I took the lead of the Carthaginian army. I was twenty-five years old.
‘One day the Romans crossed the river Ebro and captured our city of Alcanar. I did not hesitate much. I ordered my soldiers to take Alcanar back and throw the Romans into the river. They did so and the Romans could barely wait for it: they immediately declared war on us.
‘I must say that I took all this very calmly. I was young and did not know what fear was. So, I mounted my elephant and with sixty thousand mercenaries and sixty elephants first crossed the Pyrenees and, a few months later, the Alps as well. In the spring of the following year, the famed general Cornelius Scipio waited for me at Trebia. He claimed that I would end up like the Persians at Marathon but, as you know, he was terribly wrong. I defeated him utterly and he barely managed to escape alive.
‘In autumn of the same year, at Lake Trasimene, Gaius Flaminius appeared before my elephants, but it would have been better for both him and the Romans if he had not. The Romans suffered another crushing defeat and Flaminius, in an attempt to run away, drowned in the lake.
‘And the next year, in the great battle at Canae, I won a brilliant victory. Fifty thousand Romans burnt in the flash of my sword, and a few days later – at the head of my army and on the back of my elephant – I emerged on the hill beside the Tiber. And so, Gargamel, after twenty years, I finally arrived in Rome.’
‘Oh, oh!’ exclaimed the Bithynian king Gargamel. ‘And what did you do then, Hannibal?’
‘Of course, I could have done whatever I wanted. At the same moment I could have descended to Rome and levelled her to the ground, as the Romans had done with our cities. I could have gone to the senate and told those hawks why I had come. I would have told them, ‘Well, Romans… I was a child when I left Carthage and I have not seen her for twenty years. For twenty years I roamed the Spanish forests and chased the bedouins like hares. I learnt how to cut men’s heads like sunflower stalks and I am safer on an elephant’s back than in a woman’s arms. And do you know why?
‘Because you are mean and think that everything under the sun should be solved by force and meanness. Because nothing is sacred to you and because you have nothing else to do but plunder our cities and kill our children. And yet you think that you are better and stronger than others! But what now, Romans?’
‘Or should I wait a bit longer, I thought, and let them tremble before me, like birch trees in the young wind? I remained on the hill above the Tiber for some time, watching the eternal city disappear in the gentle dusk, then I ordered that the tents be pitched and the fires lit.

&

‘One day, I went to see the prisoners from the battle of Canae and among them I came across a young man with a book in his hands. At first I looked at him, surprised, then asked him what he was reading.
‘ ‘History,’ he replied, ‘by Herodotus from Halicarnassus.’
‘Interesting,’ I said, then added, ‘And what does Herodo- tus say?’
‘Herodotus is the father of history, sir,’ the young man answered. ‘And in this book he describes the dramatic clash between Greeks and Persians, or if you like, between Europe and Asia. Here is, for example, what the great Greek says at the beginning of his book:
‘Here Herodotus from Halicarnassus displays his investigations, so that the achievements of men do not remain forgotten in time and that the great and glorious deeds of both – Greeks and barbarians – do not remain without glory. And especially to show why the two peoples fought against each other.’
‘And what does Herodotus say, young man?’ I said. ‘Why did the two peoples fight against each other?’
‘It’s a long story, sir,’ the young man answered. ‘It all began a long, long time ago. One day the Phoenicians raped some girls from Lesbos, but the Greeks, unfortunately, could do nothing about it, because they did not know where the Phoenicians had gone. It then was repeated on Rhodes and other islands as well.
‘When he saw that the Phoenicians were getting away with this, the Trojan prince Paris went to Greece and stole the beautiful Helen, the wife of the Spartan king Menelaus. This time, however, the Greeks knew were the girl was taken, so they raised an army and set off for Troy. And this is how the glorious war between the Greeks and the Trojans began, the war that Homer from Lydia described in such a moving way. As I said, the war lasted ten years. Eventually, the Greeks cunningly and with the favour of gods defeated Trojans, and then razed Troy to the ground.
‘And several centuries later the Phoenicians arrived in Greece again – probably with the intention to rape some more girls – but this time the Greeks managed to intercept them and sink their galleys. And the Persians, who disliked the Greeks, could hardly wait for it. They raised an army and under the excuse of protecting the Phoenicians, set off to Greece. And so began this famous war, which Herodotus, in his History, depicted in such an exciting way.’
‘Interesting,’ I said. ‘But if I understood you well, young man, the Phoenicians were to blame for both wars.’
‘Unfortunately, sir, that’s true.’
‘And who is to blame for this war?’ I asked.
‘Which war?’ the young man said.
‘The one you and I are involved in, or if you like, the war between Carthage and Rome.’
‘As far as I know, sir, it all began when the Phoenicians from Messina raped some girls from Neapolis.’
‘So, the Phoenicians are to blame again.’
‘It appears so, sir. You know, the interesting feature of history is that it repeats itself!’
‘Very interesting, young man,’ I said. ‘But tell me, since I see that you know about these things, what is, actually, history?’
And without wasting a second, he answered, ‘History, sir, is what you are doing right now – right now, you are writing history.’
I smiled and said, ‘What do you mean?’
‘History, sir, is written by victors,’ the young man an- swered. ‘And you have defeated us – I must say – in a brilliant way. And when, soon, you descend to Rome and raze her to the ground, as the Greeks did in Troy, you will write the last page of the glorious history of this city. You will then return home and Carthaginians will welcome you as a great general, who, in a victorious campaign, wiped off the face of earth one of the most beautiful cities in the world. And you will talk about your exploits and enjoy the fame, which – I must say – quite deservedly belongs to you.
‘So, that’s history, sir,’ the young man added, ‘the story about victories and defeats. He who survives tells the story, and that’s all. There is no wisdom in it or mercy.’
I smiled again and the young man, confused, looked at me and said, ‘Are you going to kill me, sir?’
‘I don’t know, young man,’ I said, ‘we shall see…’
‘And you ask me, Gargamel, what did I do. I ordered that the prisoners be released, then went on the hill beside the Tiber and looked once again at the marble city that lay before me. ‘Well, Romans,’ I said, ‘I will give you one more life. And you be careful how you spend it!’
‘And then I ordered a retreat.’

&

We should, perhaps, end the story of Hannibal here. We should leave what happened later in the darkness of the centuries long gone, we should not open the old wounds nor disturb the souls of those who burnt in the infinite circle of time. For what happened later is not a story, but life itself. More precisely, an unceasing and brutal struggle between life and death, or if you like, between good and evil.
So, Hannibal (han-Baal or the singing tear) returned to Carthage, which he had not seen for more than twenty years. Weary of the world and its glorious history, he went to a hill beside Carthage and began to cultivate his garden. He grew fig and orange trees and, as time went on, slowly forgot both Rome and the Romans. It seemed that the Romans had forgotten about him as well.
I say it seemed… For one day (Hannibal had already been in Baalbek a long time) the influential Roman senator Marcus Porcius Cato, better known as the ‘Censor’, arrived in Carthage. Many years ago, he had been among the prisoners from the battle of Canae. Although it is quite possible, I can’t reliably say that he was the young man with Herodotus’ History in his hands.
I don’t know why the Censor came to Carthage, how long he stayed there, or what he saw, but here is what he did when he returned to Rome: he immediately went to the senate and declared, ‘Carthage must be destroyed!’
When the surprised senators asked him what he was talking about, he briefly said, ‘A new Hannibal is rising in Carthage. And now you tell me: Do you want to sit here and wait for him to arrive again at the gates of Rome and say, ‘What now Romans?’ Do you want to tremble before him again like birch trees in the young wind or are you going to do something to prevent it? So, I repeat – Carthage must be destroyed!’
And indeed, in a matter of days the Romans raised a huge army and set off for Carthage. At the head of the army was Aemilianus Scipio, grandson of the same Cornelius Scipio, whom Hannibal had defeated in the battle of Trebia, many years ago.
So one morning the Roman galleys arrived at the port of Carthage, and before the Carthaginians could realize what was going on, the Romans had already burst through the gates of the city. And what did they do? As you may have guessed – they killed all the Carthaginians and set the city on fire.
And while the purple flames were cutting up the gentle Carthaginian sky, Marcus Porcius Cato and Aemilianus Scipio stood on a hill watching this frightful sight. And when, in the dusk of the sunny day, the last flame faded away, the Censor quietly smiled. ‘That’s how you do it, Scipio,’ he said. ‘You come, you see and you burn it! There is no wisdom in it or mercy.’

&

This was – oh, heavenly eye – the story of a city and its people. Of Carthage and Carthaginians, who, in their innocence, allowed the weak and wicked to not only surpass and defeat them, but to erase them from the face of earth. Glory to those who burnt in the infinite circle of time. Eternal is only Baal and the sun that he has given us!

The Stoic, the Consul and the Harp Player

This is a story about the complexity of dramatic circumstances that interlaced the fate of a Phoenician with the fates of two lunatics. Although one could say that this is only the Roman version of the Greek story of Alexander the Great and Diogenes, we will tell it nevertheless.
One day a young man wrapped in a purple toga arrived at the oracle of Baalbek and asked for the prophetess with a tear in her eye. ‘I am Gaius Julius Caligula,’ the young man said, ‘the new Roman emperor. And you, my beauty, must certainly know why I have come – I want you to reveal to me the secret of eternal life.’
‘My emperor,’ the prophetess said, ‘only Phoenix has the power to be reborn.’
‘Why only him?’ the young man asked.
‘Because Baal, the oldest of all gods, wanted it to be so.’
‘You mean Bacchus?’ the young man said.
‘Yes, emperor, Bacchus.’
Of course, Nefertiti knew that it was a misunderstanding. She was referring to Baal, the Phoenician sun god, and the young man was talking about Bacchus, one of the lesser Roman gods, whose feasts, so called Bacchanalia, had been forbidden in Rome for a number of centuries. But why should she argue with the crazy young man, to whom the great shining eye so incautiously assigned the role of Roman emperor.
‘So, it’s very simple, emperor,’ Nefertiti said. ‘All you have to do is proclaim the god of love and wine, Bacchus, the supreme deity.’
‘And then I’ll live forever?’ the young man asked.
‘Yes,’ Nefertiti replied. ‘Bacchus will then, out of gratitude, give you eternal life.’
When he arrived in Rome, Caligula – to the amazement of the Romans – erected a statue of Bacchus in the middle of the Pantheon and proclaimed Bacchanalia the supreme holiday. ‘There is no other god but Bacchus,’ he said, ‘and I am his messenger!’ On one of Rome’s hills he built a temple dedicated to ‘the unsurpassed god of debauchery’ and asked Romans to send their most beautiful daughters to his temple.
When he heard one day that the Romans were angry with him, Caligula was very surprised. ‘But wouldn’t it be a sin,’ he said, ‘to let such beautiful girls fade in solitude, instead of bearing children to the most divine man?’
Thus Caligula did follies in Rome and the Romans kept silent, shaking their heads in disbelief. The only one who dared to speak up was Seneca, the famous philosopher-stoic from Cordoba. When he was asked, one day, what he thought of the young emperor, his answer was brief, ‘Fortunate is he who goes mad early on…’
And soon Caligula amazed the Romans again.
‘I’m not happy at all with what’s happening in Antioch,’ he said. ‘So, I have decided to appoint a new consul – my horse. I’ve already sent him to Antioch and told him, once he gets there, to kick that donkey of a consul, Flavius, in the middle of the forehead and kill him on the spot! And then he may quietly rule in the beautiful city of Antioch!’
The Romans were silent again, managing only to shake their heads in wonder. Only our Seneca spoke. He said, ‘Like emperor – like consul!’
When Seneca’s words reached Caligula, he became enraged. ‘Where is that scoundrel of a stoic?’ he shouted. ‘I’ll strangle him with my own hands!’
Caligula would certainly have done it and our story would end here had the news not arrived in Rome that at the gates of Antioch Marco Flavius had killed Caligula’s horse. Instead of confronting Seneca, Caligula hurried to the senate. He did not know, however, that his time under the sun had run out. By the order of the senate, the prefect of the praetorian guard waited there for him, and killed him on the spot.
And so, by the complexity of dramatic circumstances, our Seneca saved his skin. Soon, however, he had to leave Rome. Caligula’s successor, Claudius, banished him from the city – just in case – and he took refuge in Phoenicia.
Seneca spent ten years in Phoenicia, writing plays and fishing. And then, to his big surprise, an invitation came from Rome. He was asked to introduce the young Nero Ahenobarbus to the secrets of stoicism and prepare him for the dangerous vocation of Roman emperor. So, Seneca slung the gentle Phoenician soul over his shoulder and went to Rome.
‘In the centre of the universe shines the great all-seeing eye,’ Seneca said, ‘that rules the universe and, thus, our brittle lives as well. If it is so – and we all know it is – then any fear is unnecessary. So, what would you do, Nero, if by accident Rome was to catch on fire?’
‘I would run to quench it,’ Nero replied.
‘Oh, Nero…’ Seneca sighed. ‘Does it befit the Roman emperor to run about Rome with a bucket in his hands, quenching fires?’
Nero only blinked his eyes.
‘Stoicism is an art, Nero,’ the philosopher continued, ‘and you, as far as I know, want to be an artist, above all.’
‘Oh yes, Seneca!’ Nero shouted. ‘Above all, I would love to be a virtuoso, the best harpist in the world!’
‘Very good,’ Seneca replied. ‘Can you imagine this picture then: Rome is burning in a terrific fire and you are standing on a hill and, with perfect peace of mind, you watch the frightful sight. And in addition to everything, you find the strength to play, like the greatest virtuoso under the sun, your favourite aria. Can you imagine that picture?’
‘I can!’ Nero said and added that a more beautiful example of stoicism certainly did not exist.
‘Yet it does,’ Seneca said. ‘The story of the fire serves as an example for one of the biggest virtues of a stoic, and it is – to look life straight in the eyes. But what would you do, Nero, if by accident you were to find yourself in a hopeless situation?’
‘What do you mean?’ Nero asked.
‘If you, for example, were forced to look death in the eyes.’
‘I don’t know,’ Nero said and blinked his eyes.
‘Here is,’ Seneca continued, ‘what our teacher Zeno did when the great shining eye brought him in a hopeless situation. He looked at the sun and whispered, ‘Good-bye!’ – then took his own life!’
But Nero quickly got bored with both Seneca and stoicism and decided to take matters into his own hands. First, he poisoned Claudius and proclaimed himself emperor. Then he poisoned Claudius’ son Britannicus as well, so preventing the possibility that some day this one should poison him.
When he decided to divorce his wife Octavia, his mother Agrippina opposed it, and he ordered, without hesitation, that she be put to death. Then he got rid of Octavia also (she was thrown in a well), and married the beautiful patrician Sabina. And so on, and so forth…
Nero then decided to build a palace ‘the world had not seen yet’. ‘It will be bigger than Cheops’ pyramid!’ he said. Of course, the senate did not agree, for to make room for such an immense building, half of Rome would have to be destroyed.
Years passed, and then, one day, the senate was debating whether they should plant orange or olive trees in the Ebro valley, in Spain, and whether Marco Flavius was a good consul for Antioch.
‘Just look at those lunatics!’ Nero thought. ‘What they talk about! Now, suddenly, it’s so important to decide whether olive or orange trees should be planted by the Ebro and who will be the consul in Antioch. And for my palace, there is still no room!’
Then he remembered Seneca and stoicism.
That same moment he left the senate and went to his villa. From there he ordered that Rome be – immediately and without delay! – set on fire, and he took his harp and went into the garden. ‘And bring Seneca to me!’ he said.
When Seneca arrived, fires were burning with full force all over Rome, and Nero was playing the harp calmly and with dignity – like a true stoic, he thought.
‘Look, Seneca!’ Nero said with a radiant smile on his face. ‘Rome is burning in a terrific fire and I am sitting here, in my garden, playing the harp!’
‘Blessed be he,’ Seneca said, ‘who managed to surpass his master and in such a magnificent way manifest the virtues of a great stoic.’ He then turned around and left.
He went to the senate and told the senators what he had seen. They decided to ‘bring the comedy to an end’ and ‘get rid of this lunatic, once and for all.’ But Nero uncovered their plot and did what one could have expected. He ordered that the conspirators be put to death and for his former master he had a special punishment – suicide.
‘Well, master…’ Nero said. ‘You’ve seen with your own eyes that the first part of the story of stoicism I mastered brilliantly. But the part about Zeno and the biggest of all virtues – I didn’t understand quite so well. And I thought that you could show me, with your own example, what it looks like when a stoic encounters death and looks her straight in the eyes,’ he said and handed him the shiny Syrian sword.
Seneca smiled. He wanted to tell him something, but what was the use? He had already told him everything, and still this fool understood nothing.
‘Great spring,’ Seneca whispered, ‘Baal’s tear shining on my face for the last time, good-bye!’ And then he thrust the shiny Syrian sword into his gentle heart.
Our story of Seneca ends here, and as for the crazy Nero, he ordered that the building of his palace be started and then went to Greece, to the Olympic games and theatres. When he returned to Rome, he was greeted by the news that the senate had condemned him to death.
When he somehow realized that this was not a joke, he attempted to flee Rome, but soon learned that all the gates were closed. Making the use of his affection for the theatre, he disguised himself as a vagrant and went into hiding in the back streets of southern Rome.
When he was finally caught, he told the prefect of the praetorian guard – the same one that had killed his uncle Caligula – to tell those ‘scoundrels’ from the senate, ‘that they have no idea what a virtuoso and a stoic the world is losing!’
And then, imitating a great actor, he commanded his guard, ‘Kill me centurion!’

The Last Psalm

Some time ago, I visited my old friend Lucian of Syria and asked him to write for our chronicle of Phoenicians a few words about himself. First he refused, saying that in Baalbek there were many people more interesting than him, but in the end he agreed. So, here is what he wrote…

&

‘My name is, or more precisely – my name was, Aranzabal ha-Nophri, and I come from the famous city of Samosata in Syria. My name (Aran-za-Baal or the guardian of the first rhyme) can even today be found in Phoenician descendants from the Basque Country, and my ancestors were Orpheus, the greatest poet of Phoenicia, and Nephertari, ‘the one for whom the sun rises’. Otherwise, the students of the ancient literature know me by the name of Lucian.
‘As for my life, I have nothing to say in particular, except perhaps for the banal fact that it lasted 66 years and that I devoted it to the most beautiful of all illusions – literature. After all, the most interesting things in my life happened only after my death.
‘So, in short… I spent my childhood in native Samosata, on the banks of the Euphrates, and my youth in Asia Minor, wandering Greek cities as a rhapsode. I was forty years old when, tired of wandering, I decided to settle somewhere and start doing something pleasant and useful. So, I went to Athens and devoted myself to the most beautiful of all trades – writing.
‘I wrote some sixty books and I can say that all of them were written with my own blood and with the greatest of all goals – to change the world with a quill. But, as I said, it was all a long time ago and I don’t remember my books any more. After all, the subject of this story is something quite different: the book that I am writing right now – the Last Psalm.
‘When I realized that my time under the sun was running out, I went to Alexandria and, like the famous Apollonius of Rhodes, found refuge in the most sacred of all temples – the Alexandrian library. And while I waited for death, surrounded by books and with perfect peace of mind, Baalzebub, the famous satyr from Phoenicia, who had the power to travel through time, came one day to Alexandria. And what did he tell me?
‘Believe or not, he told me that the Christians would, in two centuries time, burn the Alexandrian library to the ground! At first I laughed, then realized that this was quite possible. I remembered that the Romans had already done it, about two centuries earlier. ‘But that’s not all,’ the satyr added. ‘Of course, the library will be rebuilt, but several centuries later the ‘Prophet’s robbers’ will burn it again.’
‘And while I was listening to him in disbelief, the satyr as- ked me to come to Baalbek after my death and set up a new library there. As you may have guessed, I accepted and when my time ran out, I moved to Baalbek. And when my Greek friends heard of this, they gave me — out of envy, of course — the nickname ‘satirist’, that is, the one who sold his soul to the satyr.
‘So, I spent the next two centuries in the library of Baalbek, copying the books from the Alexandrian library – which, by the way, had been brought by the satyr – trying to save what still could be saved. Then, in the year 391, along with the books, the satyr brought me the news that by the order of emperor Theodosius, the patriarch of Alexandria and his Christian hordes had really burnt the famous library!
‘Fortunately, the satyr had already brought to Baalbek most of the books, and I kept copying them in peace till the year 641. Then, something terrible happened. The bedouins from Mecca or the Prophet's robbers – as the satyr used to call them – first burnt the library of Alexand- ria, and then came to Baalbek and burnt my library as well! Of course, I was astounded. But what could I have done?
‘It was then that I cast doubts on the purpose of my undertaking – and literature in general – for the first time. ‘This is folly!’ I thought to myself. ‘Have all those books been written by some, only to be burnt by others? People are fools,’ I said, ‘and let them remain fools!’
‘I went to Last Chance, the famous tavern in Baalbek, and found company among the bohemians and the old wine from Phoenicia. Soon after that, the satyr built a new library and tried to persuade me to return to my work – copying the books – but it was all in vain. I did not leave Last Chance for the next ten centuries.
‘And then, in the spring of 1614, Domenikos Theotocopulos – better known as El Greco, the famous Greek from Toledo, arrived in Baalbek. And, to the amazement of all, he said that he wanted to paint a painting which would comprise all other paintings. As you can imagine, everybody laughed. I realized, however, that the Greek was absolutely right. If I wanted to protect from fools the beauty and the wisdom of countless books, I had to do exactly that: to write a book that would comprise all other books!
‘As you may have thought, I left the wine and my friends from Last Chance, took refuge in the silence of the satyr’s library and began writing the Last Psalm. Since then, almost four centuries have gone by, and I am still sitting in the library in Baalbek, writing. Unfortunately, El Greco quickly understood the absurdity of his idea and gave up. As for me…
‘As for me, of course, I have no intention of giving up, whatsoever. As I said, the book will have 666 pages. So far, I have written six.’

The Tale of a Singer

One day I sat in front of the temple of god’s tear in Baalbek, listening to the crickets singing joyfully in the crown of the cypress tree, when a young man came along riding on a two-humped Bactrian camel, a balalaika slung over his shoulder. As he came closer he smiled at me innocently, then got off the camel and sat down beside me. And as if we had known each other for years, I would even say for centuries, the young man sadly sighed and began to talk.
‘Dear friend,’ he said, ‘after all that has happened to me, I can’t tell you for certain whether what I am going to tell you has really happened. More precisely, whether it happened to me or to some other man who lived instead of me. In other words, I don’t even know whether I have lived at all.
‘So, if I have existed or if I still exist, then my name is Ashug-Kerrib and I come from Samarkand. And my sufferings began the day I met Alma.
‘Alma (Baal-ma or the crying tear) was – and you can take my word for it – the most beautiful girl under the sun and I was the best poet in Samarkand. As you may guess, love flamed my heart and warmed my soul.
‘But then shocking news came to me – Alma got married!
‘ ‘She went to Cordoba,’ they told me, ‘and there she became the sixth wife of caliph al-Gizah.’ At that moment it seemed as if I saw death itself, but I quickly pulled myself together and made a salutary decision: I left Samarkand and, firmly decided, set out to Cordoba. I had no foreboding, however, how long and troubled this journey would be.
‘First, I arrived in Shiraz where I met the famous poet and astronomer Khayyam and told him about the misfortune that had befallen me. He listened to me attentively, and when I finished, here is what he told me.
‘ ‘As far as I know,’ Khayyam said, ‘the distance between two stars is smaller than the distance between two hearts. So, your sufferings are in vain. But since Alma, as you say, is so beautiful, then you, Ashug-Kerrib, can with good reason be proud of the beauty of your sufferings, worthy of the best poet from Samarkand.’
‘I took Khayyam’s words as comfort, then left Shiraz. I went to Palestine with the intention to embark a ship that would take me to Cordoba, but soon a new misfortune befell me. Apparently, the Christians and Saracens were fighting over their holy land, but I didn’t know that.
‘As soon as I arrived in Gaza some brigands intercepted me and, with no explanation, clapped me into a dungeon. I tried to explain to them that I belonged to Zarathustra’s faith and that I had nothing to do with their war, but they told me that it would be much wiser to keep my mouth shut.
‘Among the prisoners, who, with no exception, were cruel and bizarre, I would single out one man, whose fate in a strange way interlaced with mine.
‘ ‘I am from the Sahara,’ said al-Korta, as the man was called, ‘from the proud tribe of Tuareg. When I realized that the Arabian bedouins had forced my ancestors to accept their faith, I raided the mosque in Fes and went abroad.
‘On the shores of the Red Sea I came across the Carmatians, who claimed that the Prophet was a liar and that the world was not created by Allah – but by Satan. I joined them and when the caliph from Baghdad captured our chief and put him to death, we ravaged Mecca and took the Black Stone with us. We threw it into the heart of the desert and the soldiers of Baghdad’s caliph found it only twenty years later.
‘Soon, however, I realized that I was neither a robber nor a murderer and that I am strongest when I fight alone. I went to Persia where I fought imam al-Sabah, because he was a tyrant, but I also fought the robbers who robbed his caravans.
‘And when these bedouins arrived, carrying the cross in one hand and the sabre in the other, I came to Palestine. They captured me in the battle by a purple river and that is how I got to the dungeon.
‘That’s my story,’ al-Korta said. ‘And you are going to Cordoba,’ he added, ‘and you will cover such a long way because of a woman. I’m not going to persuade you that this is folly, although I know perfectly well that love doesn’t exist. But I have to tell you this.
‘It was in this very dungeon that Samson, the great hero from Phoenicia, also spent his life. After leaving Baalbek, where he had spent a year as Alleluia, the one who carries the sun, he left his mistress Astarta and went out into the world. He wandered from town to town, flying from one woman to another, and then he arrived in Gaza and met Delilah.
‘And do you know what this bitch did to him? While he was asleep in her arms, she cut his hair – the source of his strength. The Philistines then blinded him and threw him into the dungeon, where he spun the mill wheel and ground Philistine corn. And so he who felt no fear when faced by sixty bedouins and six lions at the same time, was overcome by a woman! And now you go to Cordoba!’
‘I spent three years in the dungeon in Gaza. At the end of the third year we received news that the Christians had suffered a crushing defeat and that, in retaliation, they would put us to death.
‘The following morning they took us out and I watched with my own eyes as they cut off heads, one after another. When it came to al-Korta’s turn, he looked at me and smiled. ‘Death is a secret,’ he whispered, ‘just like love,’ – and then his black head rolled into the dust.
‘The next moment, a glittering sabre blade flashed towards my neck. I closed my eyes and when I opened them again… I was sitting in the Gaza harbour and, illuminated by the morning sun, playing the balalaika. That same morning I took a purple galley and sailed to Provence.
‘There I met a young man whose tragic fate will shadow my heart forever. His name was Jacques d’Avignon and he was a troubadour, or a rhapsode, who wandered Provence with a guitar in his hands, looking for love.
‘When I told him that I was on the way to Cordoba in order to find Alma, he was delighted. ‘That’s love!’ he cried and asked me to stay in Provence for some time, so that he could learn to play the balalaika (Baal-al-laik or string of the sun’s tear) and I could master the art of writing ballads.
‘ ‘Ballads (Baal-odes or the songs of love and death) originated in Phoenicia,’ he told me, ‘and were sung during the Phoenician holiday the week of debauchery. Young men, skilled in playing the flute or the balalaika, would sing a song and the queen of debauchery would decide which song was the most beautiful. The lucky performer would then spend one year in Baalbek, as Alleluia and the queen’s lover.
‘Ballads are the most beautiful poetical form,’ he added, ‘because one has to depict, in very few words, two biggest secrets in the universe – love and death.’ And then he sang one:

For centuries I seek a woman…
To give her my noble eyes,
my gentle soul, all my gifts.
Now I know that love I will never find.

For centuries I write a poem…
About love and beauty I sing,
as for the pain, I keep silent.
Now I know that death will heal all wounds.

‘And only a few days later the white Provençal road brought us to Albi. But we did not know that the soldiers of Pope Urban II had already arrived in this town, looking for some Cathari, who allegedly claimed that the world had been created by the devil and that in the eternal struggle between good and evil, evil would prevail. As I said, those cruel men waited for us at the gates of the town and took us with them.
‘When we told them that we were simple rhapsodes looking for love, they laughed at us scornfully and said, ‘This is the very place to find it!’ Then, on the charges that we were friends of the Albigenses and angels of evil, they condemned us to death. And on the same evening, we were hanged.
‘The next morning, as the purple rays cast their light upon the hill above Albi, I sat under the gallows singing a sad song and poor Jacques d’Avignon was streaming in the young wind. I dropped a tear, slung the balalaika on my shoulder, and went to Cordoba.
‘But as soon as I arrived there, a new misfortune befell me. This time they did not cut off my head nor did they hang me, but if you thought that death was the biggest misfor- tune, then you were greatly mistaken. So, what happened? I learnt, my friend, that Alma was not in Cordoba!
‘I learnt that the caliph’s caravan by which she was travelling had been intercepted by Moorish pirates from the tribe of Tuareg – the same one which al-Korta, my friend from Gaza, came from! – who then took her into the heart of the desert. And the bitter knowledge that Alma was not there and that my sufferings had been in vain was worse than the worst death. But, as I said, I quickly pulled myself together and went to the black deserts of Africa.
‘As absurd as it would be to describe this journey, I still must say that the sun did not move from the sky for months and that flames burst out of the sand like the rays of a big fire. So I walked through a living torch for months, dreaming of a deluge.
‘And then, one starlit night, I felt fear for the first time. It seemed to me that this time I was going to die, truly and forever. ‘I don’t want to die!’ I whispered to myself and for a moment closed my eyes. When I opened them again, I found myself lying in the heart of an oasis, watching the young moon bathing in a spring. And when I turned around, Alma was standing beside me, holding a jug in her hands.
‘ ‘Alma…’ I whispered, and she smiled and gave me the jug.
‘I am sorry, Ashug-Kerrib,’ she said, ‘I have caused you much pain.’ She came to me and kissed me, and a tear dropped out of her eye. And before I managed to say anything, she dropped another tear and then turned around and left. And with her also departed the palms, the birds, the spring and the stars.
‘Alma…’ I whispered once more, then fell into the sleep of a righteous man.
‘When I awoke again, I was riding on a two-humped Bactrian camel along the coast of Phoenicia. And a few days later, I arrived in Baalbek.’
‘And where are you going now?’ I asked.
‘Home to Samarkand,’ he replied. ‘I want to rest from all this and try to answer the question of whether Alma had really existed. Or did I only invent her in order to accomplish this impossible journey and to realize that love is a secret, like death.
‘And if you want to,’ he added, ‘you can try to answer the question of whether I exist. Or was I, too, invented by some idle rhapsode, to do all this instead of him and to serve him as a sign-post and a source of consolation.’
He stood up and left, and I sat in front of the temple of god’s tear for a long time and watched him, slowly walking out of our story and disappearing among the young cypress trees.

The Rhapsody’s Second Part

The Allegory of Dante

One sunny day in the year 1321 Baalzebub sat in front of the temple of god’s tear in Baalbek, reading the Memoirs of the great Phoenician adventurer Giovanni Casanova, when along the curvy road an elderly man arrived, wrapped in a purple cloak. The satyr laid the book aside and smiled joyfully.
‘Oh, look who has arrived,’ he said, ‘our new friend Dante Alighieri!’ (Baal-i-gher or the guardian of Baal’s shade).
The old man halted and looked about, confused. ‘Excuse me,’ he said, ‘but where have I arrived?’
‘In Baalbek,’ Baalzebub replied, ‘in Phoenicia.’
The old man looked at the satyr with surprise, then smiled. ‘You see,’ he said, ‘how unreliable life is. One travels half the world and ends up in Phoenicia. But tell me, please, how did I get here?’
‘My friend,’ the satyr replied, ‘you have just died.’
‘What do you mean, I died?’ the old man asked in wonder and thought, ‘What a joker!’
‘I’m not joking at all,’ the satyr said. ‘So what happened? As I said, a few days ago you died. Your body was buried in Ravenna and the cranes brought your soul to Phoenicia. And as you can see, you are now in Baalbek.’
‘What do you mean – in Baalbek?’ the old man shouted. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘I’m talking about death,’ the satyr continued quietly. ‘As you can see – death is a big change in life. But you don’t need to worry,’ he added. ‘Man is a strange creature and quickly gets used to everything – to death as well. But let me now show you Baalbek, the city of shades and your new home.
‘It all began like this…
‘As the Phoenicians believed that Baal had given them the most beautiful thing in universe, the sun, out of gratitude they built a temple here and named it Baalbek, the temple of god’s tear. Baalbek was the centre of a Phoenician cult dedicated to the sun or Baal’s tear, and it was here that the oldest oracle in the world arose, where the famous prophetess Nefertiti lived, the beauty with a tear in her eye. As I said, it was so for centuries.
‘And then the Greeks, led by Alexander the Great, arrived in Phoenicia and gave Baalbek the Greek name Heliopolis, ‘the city of sun’. They destroyed the Phoenician temple and in its place built a shrine dedicated to the most handsome of their gods – Apollo. Unfortunately, a mosaic depicting the six Greek sages is all that remains of the building.
‘A few centuries later, the Romans arrived. As they believed that Baalbek was the centre of the world and that they were the greatest builders, they built several temples, of which the one dedicated to Jupiter was the biggest structure the Romans had ever built. Unfortunately, time and the bedouins took their toll. As you can see, its only remnants are those six magnificent pillars.
‘As I said, the temple of Jupiter endured three centuries. Then the Christians arrived and destroyed it, and in its place they erected a church dedicated to their first saint – Stephen, who was stoned by Jews at the gates of Jerusalem.
‘A few centuries later, the bedouins from Arabia came and transformed the Christian church into a mosque. Eventually, the crusaders arrived and destroyed the mosque as well. And so, all that is left of Baalbek is what you see here: a few ruins, which remind us of the exciting past of Phoenicia and of the biggest virtues of men – vanity and stupidity.
‘So, my friend,’ the satyr added, ‘this is what is left of Baalbek or if you like, this is the Baalbek that can be seen.
‘But now, let me show you the real Baalbek, as I said, the city of sages or the city of shades.
‘Do you know who this man is? This is Elagabalus from Byblos, who invented the imagination and the alphabet and stated that the world will never be lacking fools and wars. He had two souls and when he died one of them came to Baalbek, and the other turned into Aleph, the sacred Phoenician bull, and spent 666 years in the famous Cretan labyrinth.
‘And the one chiselling the stone over there is the famous Phoenician mason Hiram, who built Byblos, the first town ever to be built. They say that he also built the Tower of Babel, Solomon’s Temple and the Colossus of Rhodes. Even now he leaves Baalbek from time to time, wanders through the world and builds. Unfortunately, his efforts are quite useless, for what he builds the fools immediately destroy.
‘And the one holding the globe in his hands is Phlebas from Sidon, the greatest Phoenician navigator. He sailed around Africa, discovered India-in-the-east and India-in-the-west.’
‘India-in-the-west?’ said the poet, baffled.
‘Yes,’ the satyr answered. ‘As you know, India-in-the-east is the land in which cinnamon and myrrh grow, and in which Krishna, a descendant of the Phoenician god Baal, is the biggest divinity. And India-in-the-west is the land of endless steppes, governed by the proud bird condor. When they discovered it, many centuries ago, the Phoenicians gave it the name Amar-rik, or ‘the crane’s beak’, in honour of the sacred Phoenician bird, the crane, which later became America.
‘And these two… The one playing with the young moon is Khayyam, poet and astronomer from Shiraz, and the other, smoking a hookah, is Abu’l-Walid from Cordoba, the famous philosopher whom the Christians called Averroës. In a mysterious way Khayyam managed to calculate that the distance between two stars is smaller than the distance between two hearts and that Satan is not the angel of evil, as the Prophet claimed, but a star, illuminating the mystical world of Islam.
‘And Abu’l-Walid said one day that many wise men lived before the Prophet and that one of them, Aristotle from Thrace, had even surpassed him. But that claim almost cost him his life. When his words reached the caliph of Cordoba – the guardian of the Prophet’s shade – he ordered that the philosopher be immediately thrown into a dungeon. And who knows what would have happened to our Abu’l-Walid if, one day, the mosque of Cordoba had not collapsed.
‘The caliph brought in the best architects and astronomers and asked them what had happened. They dug, they measured and they calculated, but they couldn’t find the answer. The caliph then summoned Abu’l-Walid and said to him, ‘Philosopher, you certainly know that your life is hanging by a thread. Now I give you a choice: if you tell me what happened, I shall set you free. And if you talk rubbish, like those fools did, then you will travel to hell with them, on my fastest camels.’
‘Abu’l-Walid then turned to those fools of architects and said, ‘What do you know, you miserable servants of Allah! If Allah let you raise this temple in his honour, should he also ask you when to destroy it?’ The caliph was very pleased with this answer and ordered that Abu’l-Walid be freed.
‘And the one writing on the parchment the history of Phoenicia, is Herodotus from Halicarnassus. In his lifetime he toured the whole world, from the Baltic (Baal-tik or the blue-eyed nymph) in the north, to the source of the Nile in the south, and from the Bactrian desert in the east to the Pillars of Hercules in the west. He then travelled through Greece as a rhapsode and told the bedouins what he had seen and heard, but they did not believe a word he said and called him ‘the liar from Halicarnassus’.
‘And, as you know, the Romans named him later ‘the father of history’.’
‘Yes, I know,’ the poet said.
‘But, I must tell you something,’ the satyr added. ‘He does not like Romans.’
‘Oh, oh!’ the poet exclaimed. ‘How come?’
‘It’s a long story,’ the satyr replied. ‘But in short, he thinks that they knew no boundaries, they were cruel, haughty and mean.’
‘Oh, oh!’ the poet cried again. ‘But how is that possible? He should know, better than anybody else, that the truth is different and that the very Romans had, for centuries, led the world towards progress and glory.’
‘Dear Alighieri,’ said Baalzebub, ‘let me tell you something – the truth is always somewhere in the middle. Besides, you must acknowledge that the Romans did many things unworthy of men. Especially of those who, as you say, led the world towards progress and glory.
‘I hope you will not misunderstand me, but it was myself who so many times witnessed terrible crimes committed by Romans. I saw, with my own eyes, drunken Roman soldiers kill Archimedes from Syracuse, the greatest mathematician the world had ever seen, and only because he told them not to disturb his circles!
‘I watched Roman legions kill and burn everything before them in Gaul, Syria, Iberia, Egypt, everywhere else they went – always under the excuse that others were barbar- ians and that they only wanted to lead them towards progress and glory!
‘And I saw, with my own eyes, how they unfairly crucified the unfortunate Aramean from Nazareth.’
‘Oh, oh!’ cried the poet. ‘But, please, what are you talking about?’
‘What do you mean, what am I talking about? Well, come then and see him. Ask him why did they crucify him?’
‘My Lord!’ whispered the poet and crossed himself.
‘But, as I said,’ the satyr went on, ‘the trouble was not that they crucified him. They had, after all, crucified many an innocent and weak. The trouble was that they later proclaimed him their only god and themselves the angels and guardians of his shade. And that they in his name committed so many crimes that even poor Herodotus could not count them. But you know all of this very well. You have experienced it all.’
The poet made a deep sigh and said, ‘Unfortunately, you are right.’
‘Yes, my friend,’ the satyr said. ‘While you were writing the Divine Comedy, while you roamed the wilderness of their hell and paradise and wrote your most beautiful verses in the chambers of their heavenly labyrinth, they were preparing a noose for you. And when you uncovered it, that wretch of a Pope, Boniface VIII, banished you from your native Florence and you never saw her again.’
‘But, my Divine Comedy is an allegory,’ the poet said.
‘I know it’s an allegory,’ the satyr said. ‘After all, what isn’t? A stone, the spring, the cypress tree, a bird, the stars, they are all allegories. Even you and I are allegories. And yet… You wrote them your most beautiful poem and they drove you away like a scoundrel and a robber!
‘You see, my friend,’ Baalzebub continued, ‘I don‘t hate anybody. I just want to call things by their real names. After all, it was not only the Romans who did evil in the world. You have seen poor Abu’l-Walid and heard how he barely saved his skin. You will see Pythagoras from Samos whom the tyrant Polycrates exiled from Greece, only because he said that the earth was round. You will also see Zarathustra from Bactria, who was killed by the Persians because he told them that they were ignorant, and the most beautiful of all women – Nefertiti – whose eyes the Egyptians took out, only because she was beautiful.
‘You see, dear Alighieri… The vanquished, the banished and the humiliated have come to Phoenicia. The most gifted among people took refuge here, and out there remain the caliph from Cordoba, Polycrates, Boniface VIII and their drunken soldiers. And they are looking for a new Archi- medes and Pythagoras, a new Abu’l-Walid, Zarathustra and Dante, to show them who the master is! Do you understand me, my friend? The problem is that the world is ruled by fools!’
‘Oh, oh,’ said the poet confusedly, ‘but everything is exactly so!’
‘Unfortunately, my friend, everything is exactly so!’
‘But tell me, please,’ the poet remembered suddenly, ‘which book are you reading?’
‘Oh, yes, I did not tell you this… I am Baalzebub, the lord of the shades. As you can see, I am a satyr, and I am the only one under the sun who can converse with both the living and the dead. Some time ago I went to the 18th century and the great adventurer Casanova, your countryman from Venice, gave me his Memoirs. A very exciting book indeed. He had also run away his whole life, ended up in prison, then ran away again. And do you know what he was looking for all that time? Love.
‘But, dear Alighieri,’ the satyr said, ‘I really have talked too much! And you, my friend, have travelled a long way and surely must be tired. So, come over here, find a nice place to lie down and have a rest. Stretch out under the old cedar and sleep as long as you like. Or climb onto one of the pillars of Jupiter’s temple and enjoy the Phoenician sun. Or sneak into the crown of the cypress tree and listen to the crickets. Now, my friend, you are finally free. Now you are a shade.’

Death of the Great Master

On the first day of May 1519, Leonardo da Vinci felt that his role in the universe had come to an end and that his beautiful Phoenician soul was about to leave for Baalbek. So, he decided to paint his last painting.
He was sitting in the purple rooms of the castle of Cloux near the Loire, painting, when Pablo Fuentes came along, the young Spaniard appointed by Francis the First as the painter’s ‘right hand’. Leonardo, as you know, was left-handed.
‘May I ask,’ Pablo said, ‘what the master is painting?’
Leonardo smiled and said, ‘The cranes carrying my soul to Phoenicia.’
‘You mean – to Florence?’
‘No, I didn't mean that,’ Leonardo replied. ‘It’s true that my body is from Florence, but my soul is from Phoenicia.’
Pablo was absorbed in his thoughts for a moment, then he said, ‘I must admit, master, that I don’t understand you.’
‘I don’t expect you to understand me, Pablo,’ the painter said. ‘But if you like, I could picture for you, in a few words, the exciting fate of my soul.’
‘I will listen to you with pleasure,’ Pablo said politely.
‘You have certainly noticed,’ Leonardo began, ‘that I write from right to left and not from left to right, like you and other people do.’
‘Certainly, master, I did notice that. And I have always wanted to ask you why it is that you do so.’
‘It is because I am a Phoenician.’
‘I apologize, but who are Phoenicians?’
‘Phoenicians were an ancient people who invented the alphabet. As they worshiped the sun, they believed that the alphabet should be written from right to left, that is, from east to west, as the sun travels.
‘However, a few centuries later, they sold the alphabet to the Greeks, who by mistake began to write it in the opposite direction. Therefore you write with your right hand and from the west to the east, in other words – backwards, and I am left-handed and write as the sun travels.’
‘True,’ Pablo said confusedly and thought to himself, ‘Who would have thought that!’ He then remembered that a few days ago some merchants from Italy arrived and told that Leonardo’s famous fresco, the Last Supper, in the church of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan, had begun to ‘fade and vanish’.
‘I would like to ask you something, master,’ Pablo said. ‘Some people from Italy arrived, saying that your Last Supper is slowly fading and disappearing.’
‘Is it true?’ Leonardo asked.
‘Unfortunately, master, it is. According to those people, very strange things are happening. The monks noticed that it was happening only at night, so they concluded that it was the doing of nobody else but the devil himself. Therefore, they decided to keep candles alight, but unfortunately this didn’t help. The painting is still fading away.’
Leonardo laughed. ‘Pablo, my son,’ he said, ‘those monks are fools. First of all, there is no devil. There is, though, Baalzebub, the famous satyr from Phoenicia, whom they call Beelzebub, Lucifer, Satan and the Devil, and to whom they ascribe all sorts of silly things. But he, of course, has nothing to do with this.
‘You know what happened? I painted their Savior and all those angels and apostles only because I had to. I was paid to paint them and therefore I painted them. But deep in my heart I despised them.
‘That is why, while working on the Last Supper – the work of my life, as they said – I deliberately let the plaster dry before I painted, instead of painting on the wet plaster, as I should have done.
‘As I knew that the fresco would not last for long, I painted those fools of monks as the apostles and they were joyful like little children. In the end, I painted myself as Judas from Iscariot.’
Pablo looked around confusedly, as if he wanted to say, ‘Oh, master, what on earth have you just told me?’ but only whispered, ‘Who would have thought that!’
‘Now I will show you the real work of my life,’ said Leonardo and from a nearby room brought out a painting, later to be mistakenly called the Mona Lisa.
‘Oh master,’ Pablo exclaimed, ‘I have always wanted to ask you, who is this lady with the mysterious smile.’
‘This is my Phoenician lady,‘ Leonardo said, ‘or if you like, the beauty with a tear in her eye.‘
Pablo looked at him in wonder.
‘Many centuries ago,‘ the painter went on, ‘this woman was a priestess in a temple in Phoenicia. The Phoenicians called her Nefertiti, the beauty with a tear in her eye. One day she told me that I would be born again, that I would have a purple soul and that I would become a great painter. She got it right, and then out of gratitude, I painted this painting.’
Pablo only blinked his eyes, then looked at the painting.
‘Seemingly, there is no tear,’ Leonardo said. ‘But with a bit of luck, you can see a tear shimmering in her eye.’
Pablo gave a confused smile, then said he had a lot of unfinished work to do and left.
When he came the next morning, Pablo found his master lying in bed and thought he must be asleep. He decided not to wake him and went to the nearby room to see the beauty with a tear in her eye once again.
He stood before the painting, but a few moments later he trembled with fear – out of her left eye dropped a tear. As soon as he managed to pull himself together, the same thing happened again – out of the same left eye dropped another tear, then another. Distraught and out of breath, he ran to the painter. ‘Master,’ he shouted, ‘master, your Phoenician lady is crying!’
He came to him, but the painter did not move. He lay with his hands clasped together and with a blissful smile on his face. ‘Master…’ Pablo whispered once more and then realized that the great master had died. He felt that he was short of breath and wished to leave. He turned around and walked away, but stopped by the painting that Leonardo had painted the previous day.
And he could not believe his eyes again – the cranes were gone!

Torches of the New Age

One of the biggest delusions in the history of the world was the belief that the earth stood at the centre of the universe and that the sun traveled around it.
The first man to realize that sunrise and sunset were illusions was Aristarchus from Samos, the famed astron- omer with the purple soul. But when he revealed his discovery, a poet by the name of Cleanthes accused him of impiety and asked the bedouins from Samos to stone him.
‘Have you heard the ranting of that crazy astronomer?’ he said. ‘He claims that the earth moves around the sun! As if we are blind and as if all those famous Greeks, from Homer to Aristotle, were also blind.’
‘But Homer was blind,’ said the bedouins.
Cleanthes stopped for a moment, then went on, ‘Such follies could be heard only from the Phoenicians and I am telling you that this astronomer is not a Greek, but a Phoenician!’ Fortunately, the bedouins did not understand what these two were arguing about, and so our Aristarchus saved his neck.
But when he died his discovery descended into oblivion and sixteen centuries passed before another Phoenician, one who would prove that ‘the crazy astronomer from Samos’ had been right, emerged – Nicolaus Copernicus, the canon from Frauenburg.

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When he discovered that sunrise and sunset were illusions, Copernicus wrote a book about his discovery and, with the zeal that only the youthful can have, wished to publish it. So, he went to see a publisher in Regensburg.
‘I will tell you immediately why I have come,’ he said. ‘I have discovered that the earth is only a small dot in the universe, which revolves around the sun. I have written a book about this and now I want to publish it.’
‘Is that right?’ the publisher said with a derisive smile.
‘Yes, sir,’ Copernicus replied. ‘I want to destroy the old delusion that has followed us for centuries, and tell the world the truth!’
‘That sounds good, canon,’ the publisher said, ‘but surely you must know how dangerous destroying old delusions is these days.’
‘Sir,’ Copernicus exclaimed, ‘I do not fear the gallows or the stake! I am not afraid of the Roman censors or the fires of hell they threaten me with. And if it is meant to be – I will be the torch of the new age!’
The publisher laughed and said that, while he understood Copernicus’ desire, he was not prepared to burn with him at the stake. Then this message arrived from Rome: ‘Canon, don’t cut the branch you are sitting on and don’t under- mine the foundations of god’s temple, which has been built for fifteen centuries!’
And what could he do? Nothing, really. He resigned to fate and remained a canon. However, in the loft of the cathedral he hid a telescope and from time to time watched the stars, and so spent his life neither in heaven nor on earth.
And the great shining eye that sees everything assigned the role of the torch of the new age to the philosopher with a purple beard – Giordano Bruno.

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Giordano spent his life in flight. When the ‘Roman rats’ – as he called the Inquisitors – finally caught him and put him in jail, he told them that they may have caught him but they would never tame him. Although he had told them a thousand times that he would not recant, the rats kept coming and tried to tame him, and this absurd game lasted for almost ten years. Then, one day, they decided to try for the last time. The main censor, whom Giordano called ‘the chief of the rats’, came to Giordano’s dungeon.
‘Well, philosopher with a purple beard, what have you decided?’
‘So, again this entertaining question’, Giordano replied.
‘Well, you still claim that the mad canon from Frauenburg was right?’
‘Copernicus, censor, was not mad.’
‘Philosopher,’ the censor said, ‘I didn’t come to persuade you that Copernicus was mad. I only came to tell you what you should expect if you don’t recant – the stake!’
‘And do you, chief, really believe that you can scare me? Do you really believe that in order to live a few more years, I would annul all that I have said and throw into the Tiber everything I know? And, above all, that I would renounce the most beautiful death? The game is over, chief. Tell your rats to build my pyre!’ The censor looked at him and crossed himself.
‘But, for god’s sake,’ he said, ‘what about your soul? Where will she end up?’
‘In Baalbek,’ Giordano replied quietly.
‘In Baalbek?’
‘Yes, censor, in Phoenicia, home of the most beautiful souls!’
He smiled and looked at the censor, who crossed himself three times. A few days later, on the Campo dei Fiori in Rome, Giordano Bruno was burnt.

&

The purple flames were still burning when a curious youth arrived at the Campo dei Fiori and asked a canon what had happened.
‘We just burnt the crazy Giordano,’ the canon answered.
‘Why?’ the youth asked.
‘Because he claimed that we were all fools and he was the only smart one!’
‘Oh!’ gasped the youth with surprise.
‘Yes, yes, young man,’ the canon went on. ‘This lunatic stated that the earth revolves around the sun!’
He spat at the fire and left, and the youth remained on the Campo dei Fiori for a long time, watching the purple flames frolicking joyfully in the young wind. It was Galileo Galilei, the young astronomer from Pisa.
Many years later Galileo wrote a book in which he claimed that Copernicus was right and that the earth was only a small dot in the universe, revolving around the sun. As he had expected, the Roman censors soon arrived and confiscated the book, and they took him to be tried in Rome.
‘You have three options, astronomer,’ the chief censor said. ‘The first one is to show us that the earth really revolves around the sun. If you can do that, we will admit that we were wrong and that we are blind. But because, as we all know, you can’t do this, we will give you a second option – to recant and admit that Copernicus was mad, and that you were deluded. There is also the third option, but I don’t think you are as crazy as Giordano Bruno, to burn at the stake. So, astronomer, what do you say?’
‘I wasted my life,’ Galileo said, ‘trying to tame with my eyes what nobody has ever seen – the universe. Of course, it was a delusion.
‘I wanted to embrace with my mind this endless space and discover the secret of its heart. Do I need to tell you in what torments I burnt?
‘But what else can we do,’ he added and skimmed over the faces of the six censors, ‘so cruelly lost in the universe, but burn in the flame of our own delusions?’
It took the censors six days to interpret what Galileo had said and to pass the sentence. And it said: ‘The astronomer has recanted and shall not be burnt. But, since he still looks at us with the eyes of a heretic, we cannot let him go either. He will spend some time in jail and then we shall see.’
Some years later, when he was freed from the dungeon, Galileo retired to his estate and spent the rest of his life in solitude. One night, when he felt that the cranes from Baalbek were about to arrive, he walked up the Leaning Tower of Pisa and looked towards the sky. ‘Good-bye, dear stars!’ he said and kissed a star, and a tear dropped out of his eye.
And she is still, along with the earth, revolving around the sun.

St. George and the Vizier

The grand vizier Mehmed-pasha, known as ‘the Falcon’, sat on a hill above the river Drina and with a joyful smile in his eyes watched the masons build the large stone bridge, which he thought would finally connect the two banks of the turbulent river. The silence was suddenly broken by a song coming from the nearby forest. The vizier turned around and could clearly hear someone singing, ‘The girl harmed the falcon, she set the forest on fire...’
A few moments later the soldiers brought before him a scared-looking young man. ‘Leave him,’ the vizier ordered, and the soldiers went away.
‘Where did you learn that song?’ the vizier asked.
‘I heard it from a monk from Zvornik,’ the young man answered.
‘Are you from Zvornik?’
‘No, sir. I only spent some time on the wall of a monastery near Zvornik. I used to be a fresco.’
The vizier stared at him in wonder. ‘And where are you going now?’ he asked.
‘Home to Phoenicia,’ the young man replied.
The vizier looked at him again. ‘And where is it… This Phoenicia of yours?’
‘Phoenicia, vizier, was a miraculous land at the foot of Lebanon, but then one day she mysteriously disappeared. But I know that she is still there, hovering above the cedar forests, neither in heaven nor on earth.’
‘What a crazy monk!’ the vizier thought.
‘I am not a monk and neither am I crazy,’ the young man said.
‘All right, youngster,’ muttered the vizier nervously, ‘I see that you are not crazy. But if you are from Phoenicia, how then did you get to Zvornik?’
‘This is a long story, vizier,’ the young man said with a sigh. ‘But if you wish, I can tell you how it happened.’
‘Well then, tell me.’
‘One summer I was fortunate enough,’ the young man began, ‘to be chosen as the king of debauchery, and so becoming Alleluia, the one who brings the sun. In Baalbek, there was also a girl of indescribable beauty with me. We used to wake Baal every morning and, sad because he could not give people eternity, he would drop a tear out of which the sun would arise. I would then take it upon my shoulders and carry it to the top of the mountain, thus starting the new day.
‘One day the consul from Antioch came to the oracle of Baalbek and upon seeing my mistress he became fascin- ated by her beauty. And like a scoundrel, he wanted to rape her and take her with him to Antioch. We argued and when one of the soldiers swung his lance to hit me, I snatched the lance from him and killed him on the spot. Then I killed the other soldiers and, in the end, killed the consul as well.
‘Knowing that they would come to search for me, I went with my mistress to the cedar forests of Lebanon and took refuge there. And so I spent life as a brigand, fighting the Romans.
‘Later on, the Christians gave me the name Saint George and invented a myth about me killing the dragon. And so, many centuries later, I arrived in Zvornik.’
‘You have had a very exciting life, George,’ the vizier said.
‘Very exciting,’ the young man said, sighing unhappily.
The vizier then turned towards the bridge and looked at the white stone arches rising over the river. Who knows how long he would have looked at them, had the young man not spoken.
‘So, you are building a bridge, vizier,’ he said.
‘Yes, George,’ the vizier replied.
‘And do you know, vizier, that these two banks can never be linked?’
‘What are you talking about, George?’ the vizier shouted. ‘Do you not see that the bridge is almost completed?’
‘You can build a bridge, vizier, I don’t doubt that. But these two banks you will not connect.’
‘What a crazy monk!’ the vizier thought again.
‘I have already told you, vizier, that I am neither a monk nor a fool,’ the young man said. ‘I am only telling you what I know.’
‘What do you know?’ the vizier asked angrily.
‘Right from the very beginning, vizier, everything has gone wrong here,’ the young man said calmly. ‘When Baal taught rivers how to find their way to the sea, this river failed to listen. Instead of flowing to the south and taking the shortest path to the sea, she chose to go north, in other words, uphill. That is why Baal gave her the name Drina, ‘the one that flows uphill’ or ‘the one that flows backwards’.
‘Many centuries later onto the banks of the river a strange people arrived. When their king, who had two sons, was killed in a battle, the two brothers started quarrelling straight away. Soon such a frightful and cruel war broke out that the mountains trembled like stalks in the wind and blood flowed down the Drina instead of water. The elder brother slew the younger and people on both sides of the river were slaughtered.
‘It was only then, when he was left alone under the sun, that the elder brother realized how foolish he had been. He roamed the wasteland, cursing the young sun, which, saddened by this sight, dropped a tear.
‘I do not know what the unfortunate man was called, but the Phoenicians gave him the name Baal-Cain, which meant ‘the one who killed his brother’, and all these lands were named after him – the Balkans, ‘the lands above which the sun cries’. And since then, blood flows down the Drina instead of water, three times in each century.’
The young man went silent and the vizier sensed a strange anxiety creep into his heart. He looked at the bridge and it seemed to him that the white stone arches were fading and disappearing under the mild morning sun.
‘You see, vizier,’ the young man added, ‘how strange life can be. I spent it as a brigand but became a saint, and you will build a bridge, but will never connect the banks!’
He then stood up and smiled sadly. ‘I must go now, vizier,’ he said, ‘for Phoenicia is far away.’
He turned around and left and the vizier remained sitting on the hill above the Drina and watched him slowly walking across the water. Then, from the mountains on the other side of the river, he heard the song, ‘The girl harmed the falcon, she set the forest on fire...’

Dreamer from Alcala

Having left Baalbek, the cranes flew to the west and a few weeks later they arrived in Alcala de Henares, a small town on the banks of a river, the name of which I cannot recall. The cranes soon dropped a tear over the town and gave the gentle Phoenician soul away to a newborn boy. His name was Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, the one who would many years later introduce to us the great Phoenician hero – don Quixote of la Mancha.
I arrived in Alcala de Henares on a hot day, without any foreboding that the great shining eye had brought me to this town to meet these two exceptional men.
In front of a tavern in the centre of Alcala (Baal-cala or the purple town) sat an elderly man drinking beer. I decided to join him, not so much for the beer as for the desire to talk to someone after the long journey and to learn something about the town which I was in for the first time.
‘Welcome to Alcala de Henares, señor,’ the man addressed me. ‘Come, let me buy you a drink. Señorita, dos cervezas, por favor’, he called out to the waitress, while I got off the camel and sat down at the table. ‘May I ask,’ he continued, ‘where señor has come from?’
‘From Byblos,’ I said.
‘From Byblos!’ he exclaimed, smiling joyfully. ‘From Phoenicia!’
‘You have heard of Phoenicia?’ I asked.
‘Of course, amigo,’ he replied, ‘the land of cedars and brilliant sailors! By the way, it was the Phoenicians who gave the name to my country – Spain, ‘the land of the setting sun’. But, was all that not a long time ago?’
‘You are right,’ I said, ‘it was a long time ago.’
‘As I see, señor travels in time.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘And on a camel.’
‘As you can see.’
He smiled and I said, ‘And señor is...?’
‘Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra,’ he replied, ‘a Spaniard with a Phoenician soul!’ And then he told me, in short, the story of his life.
He had been twenty-five years of age when, like every Phoenician, he was overcome by a yearning for unknown places. He travelled to Italy where a cardinal employed him as a scribe. Soon, however, he realized that the cardinal was a fool and that the cardinal‘s god was not his god. Thirsty for adventure, he became a mercenary in an army whose goals he did not know. But soon after he was wounded and realized that war was alien to a Phoenician soul.
He decided to go back home, but the galley on which he had been sailing was intercepted by Moorish pirates and Cervantes ended up in a dungeon in Algeria. It took him almost five years to persuade these bedouins to let him go. And so after ten gloomy years, tired and disappointed, he finally returned to his native Alcala de Henares.
‘But if you thought that this was the end of my troubles,’ he added, ‘you would be terribly wrong. Haunted by a longing for remote lands, I began to wander again. The years flew by and I wandered from bad to worse, cruelly tormenting myself and others. But peace of mind and some space under the sun I could not find.’
‘What are you going to do now?’ I asked.
‘I want to write,’ he replied. ‘You see, all those years I dreamt of a story. I could even say that I lived more in this story than in life itself.’
‘Why do you not write then?’
‘Oh, my friend, how easy it is to say that! I began a thousand times. I would write a few pages, but then I would come to that fatal sentence: ‘Then don Quixote arrived, the famous knight of la Mancha.’ Here I wanted to introduce my hero, but I would get stuck here and I would not write another word.’
‘Don Quixote is the name of your hero?’ I asked.
‘Yes, he is my hero – don Quixote, the famous knight of la Mancha.’
We fell silent, each absorbed in our own thoughts, and we did not notice that a man on a donkey had emerged before us, riding along the dusty road.
He was tall and skinny, on one shoulder he carried a lance and on the other a balalaika. He smiled at us and said, ‘Good morning, gentlemen.’
‘Morning, brave man,’ Cervantes replied.
‘There is no doubt,’ the lanky fellow said, ‘that the gentlemen know who I am. But I prefer not to talk about my bravery, because it is not worthy of a true hero to talk about his feats. I will only say that there is no windmill in la Mancha that I have not challenge to a duel!’
‘You are from la Mancha?’ I asked.
‘Please, let me introduce myself. I am Alonso (Baal-lonso or Baal’s lancer) Quijano, better known as don Quixote, the famous knight of la Mancha! And this is Rocinante, my only friend,’ he said, pointing at the donkey.
Cervantes stared at me in wonder, as if he wanted to say, ‘Did your ears just hear what mine heard?’ – but the lanky one went on. ‘Even the sparrows from la Mancha talk about my bravery,’ he said, ‘but those bedouins, my neighbours, mock my exploits with envy.
‘When Dulcinea from el Toboso, to whom I wrote my most beautiful verses, despised my love, I left la Mancha forever. And here I am now, roaming the roads, fighting windmills and singing.’
‘You are also a poet?’ I asked.
‘I write poems, play the balalaika and I sing. But let me now sing you something,’ he said, took the balalaika into his hands and started singing:

Has anyone, dear god, travelled such a long way
Wandering from bad to worse, like me!
Beside the roads, instead of birches
My spurs swing…

Has anyone else, mother, lost so many battles
Yet went into a fight with no fear, like me!
Beside the roads, instead of birches
My spears swing…

And who else, black earth, died so many times
But each time rose from the dead, like me!
Beside the roads, instead of birches
My graves swing…

Here he halted and smiled at us lightly, and Rocinante, moved by this sorrowful song, dropped a tear.
‘You see what hell I went through,’ don Quixote said, ‘and yet some peace and some space under the sun I did not find.’
The donkey dropped another tear and then, as slowly as they had arrived, along the dusty road they departed Alcala de Henares.
We watched them for long time and when they disappeared over the white Castilian fields, Cervantes shook his head.
‘I have no doubt, my friend,’ he said, ‘that your eyes saw the same as mine – that was don Quixote, the famous knight of la Mancha and my hero. But, tell me, please… Was this reallity or dream?‘
‘It doesn’t matter,’ I replied. ‘After all, what is the difference?’
‘You’re right,’ the writer said and smiled, ‘what’s the difference!’
He then raised the glass. ‘Well, my dear Phoenician, cheers!’ he said. ‘I wish you all the best on your journey through time, and I am going to occupy myself with my story. For the beginning, I have that wonderful sentence: ‘Then don Quixote arrived, the famous knight of la Mancha!’
We laughed with boyish innocence, finished our beers, then parted forever.

The Court Jester

One day, when he saw cranes flying over Stratford with tears in their eyes, Shakespeare took out a sheet of paper and a quill, and with perfect peace of mind, began to write. But then, to his big surprise, Harry Hoffman came along, the actor from London better known as ‘Hamlet’.
‘So,’ the actor said, ‘I see it is not true that Shakespeare has left the quill forever and is now breeding geese, as the London gossip would have us believe. May I ask what the old master is writing – tragedy or comedy?’
‘My will,’ the poet replied quietly. ‘But tell me, Hamlet, what trouble has brought you to Stratford?’
‘My dear friend,’ the actor said, ‘I bring you joyful news – we have decided to publish your collected works!’
Shakespeare laughed. ‘So,’ he said, ‘nothing less but collected works.’
‘Yes, Shakespeare, we want to preserve the fruits of a brilliant brain for the future generations to enjoy!’
Shakespeare laughed again. ‘You have put that very nicely, Hamlet,’ he said, ‘but I think it is a very bad idea. And right now I shall write a will that nothing I have written is ever to be published, and that even my published works are to be burnt.‘
‘But Shakespeare!’ the actor shouted.
‘My dear Hamlet,’ the poet said quietly. ‘I have written some nice verses, that is true, and yet all that was gathering water with a sieve. You know what happened? While you were only playing all those creatures, I took all of it too seriously. In this absurd game I fancied that I was a king!
‘I strolled through London like a peacock, convinced that I was Caesar and that Brutus was waiting for me around the corner, with a sword in his hand. I was Mark Antony, craving Caesar’s death, so that I could conquer Egypt, and then Cleopatra as well. I was Richard III, Henry IV and Lear. I was Hamlet and you only played me awkwardly.
‘When I realized, one day, that I was not a king but a court jester and that all those years I did nothing but gather water with a sieve, I left London and came back to Stratford, to breed geese.’ He smiled and looked at the actor. ‘Vanity, my dear Hamlet,’ he added, ‘that’s all.’
‘Oh, Shakespeare,’ whispered the confused actor.
‘Therefore,’ the poet went on, ‘if you really want to do something for me, then do this… Make a play about me and name it: Shakespeare, the court jester. And in order to understand me the right way, I suggest that you play Shakespeare. I also suggest that you place the action in Phoenicia.’
‘Why in Phoenicia?’ the actor asked.
‘Because I am from Phoenicia,’ the poet replied. ‘So, the plot goes like this…
‘One day, young Shakespeare arrives at the court of the Phoenician king in Tyre. Fascinated with the beauty of the purple castle, he realizes that this is his world and that he has to stay there. He manages to secure the position of court jester and, using his angelic beauty and brilliant gift for acting – for lying, that is – he soon wins the favour of the queen herself, whom we shall call ‘queen of Baalbek’, in imitation of the famous queen of Sheba.
‘And indeed, one day our Shakespeare succeeds to dethrone the king and thus achieves an incredible feat – he is the first court jester in history to become king! Of course, the dethroning itself is the fruit of an exceptionally well-prepared plot, which, on the other hand, is nothing else but the fruit of brilliant Shakespeare’s brain.
‘Having thus finally achieved what he had been longing for, Shakespeare thinks, and with reason, that this extraordinary achievement deserves to be celebrated. He prepares such a feast as has never been seen at the Phoenician court before.
‘But when he awakes the next morning, he gets a very big surprise. He finds himself lying in his golden bed – in chains. ‘What kind of joke is this?’ he thinks. But when he looks up, he is even more surprised – above his head hangs a shiny Syrian sword, suspended by a single horse-hair. Here we will make use of the exciting story of Damocles from Syracuse.
‘Now to the stage comes the queen of Baalbek. With her is Adonis, the king’s nephew and her lover. Shakespeare, of course, immediately realizes his tragic fate: the absurd and dangerous desire to be what he was not and what he could never be, has brought him to death’s bosom.
‘ ‘The play is over, Shakespeare,’ the queen says and kisses him, and a tear drops out of her eye. Shakespeare smiles softly and then Adonis cuts the horse-hair with his golden sabre.’
‘But she tricked you, Shakespeare!’ the actor cried.
‘No, Hamlet,’ the poet reassured him, ‘I tricked her. The queen of Baalbek was – my soul.’
‘Now I don’t understand anything,’ Hamlet said.
‘And why do you think, Hamlet,’ the poet said, ‘that you need to understand everything? The beauty of life is precisely in the fact that we don’t know who we are, what we want, or where we go. We only play, like court jesters, gather water with a sieve and burn in the flame of our own delusions. When we burn out, it is a secret in the universe that burns out, and that’s all.’
They looked at each other for a while and then the poet smiled. ‘So, Hamlet,’ he said. ‘I wish you a nice journey home and a lot of success in the role of Shakespeare. And now I have to water the geese.’

The Advisor with the Hoof

‘Herr Mozart,’ the stranger said, ‘I apologize for troubling you at this time of the night. I will tell you straight away why I have come. I want to ask you to compose a requiem for our great friend, who will, in a few days time, pass his beautiful soul over to the cranes.’
‘I apologize if I am too curious,’ Mozart said, ‘but who is this ‘great friend’ of ours?’
‘Phoenix,’ the stranger replied, ‘the one who is always reborn and the only living Phoenician.’
For a moment Mozart was absorbed in his thoughts, trying to recall who that could be.
‘If you would allow me,’ the stranger said, ‘I can remind you of who Phoenix is.’
‘Certainly,’ the composer muttered.
‘If I am not mistaken, you are a Freemason,’ the stranger began. ‘And you must surely remember the day when you, in the Great Lodge of Salzburg, entered this holy order. You remember that you were then Hiram, the great master from Tyre, who had built Solomon’s temple. And you were certainly proud of being in the role of the great mason from Phoenicia, at least for a little while.
‘I don‘t doubt, either, that you know that the first ‘great master’ and teacher of all Freemasons was the Phoenician god Baal, the oldest of all gods.
‘When he saw how diligently the Phoenicians worked and how bravely they sailed the seas, Baal’s gentle heart swelled and a tear dropped out of his eye. From this tear Byblos was created, the first town ever to be built.
‘When the grateful Phoenicians built a temple on the other side of Lebanon and gave it the name Baalbek – the temple of god’s tear – Baal’s gentle heart swelled up again and he decided to give them an extraordinary gift. ‘The first child to be born in Byblos,’ he said, ‘shall always be reborn!’ As you may have guessed, it was our friend Phoenix, the only living Phoenician.’
‘How exciting!’ Mozart said and smiled innocently. ‘I apologize if I am curious again,’ he added, ‘but, who are you?’
‘That‘s a very interesting question,’ the stranger replied, ‘but a very complex one as well. I am, if you don’t mind – a satyr.
‘I was born in Phoenicia,’ he went on, ‘before the Flood, which, by the way, never happened. I am the illegitimate son of Alleluia, the one who brings the light, and his mistress Astarta, the beauty with a tear in her bosom. When I was born they named me Baalzebub, which in Phoenician means ‘the lord of the shades’, and some malicious folks changed it later into Beelzebub, ‘the lord of the frogs’.
‘Although my parents were of exceptional stature and beauty, the great shining eye trifled with me in a very awkward manner. As you can see, I have horns. My right eye is black and the other one green. And on my left leg, which is shorter than the right, I have a hoof.
‘I left Phoenicia a long time ago and for some centuries drifted over Europe. A few years ago I started working for the great alchemist from Weimar, Goethe. He is writing a play about a certain doctor Faust, who allegedly sold his soul to the devil.
‘As I said, I met Goethe in a tavern in Heidelberg while I was gambling with some crooks. When he saw me, he said that I reminded him irresistibly of Mephistopheles, the devil from his story. He offered to employ me as an advisor and I had no reason not to accept. My job entails visiting him from time to time and talk to him, so that he could describe this enchanter as convincingly as possible.’
‘If I understood you well,’ the composer said, ‘you are in fact – the devil.’
‘Well…’ the satyr replied. ‘Goethe maintains that I am part of the dark force that always wishes to do evil, but always does good. Whether this is true or not, you can judge for your- self.
‘But let us start from the beginning. One day some bedouins arrived in the deserts south of Phoenicia, bringing with them an absurd story about a promised land and the chosen people. The Phoenicians named them ‘Judeans’, which simply meant the bedouins from the south. It was in the primitive minds of these nomads that the story of the devil emerged for the first time. And its heroes were, believe or not, our friend Phoenix and I!
‘Being unable to comprehend the story about Phoenix – the one who is always reborn – the Judeans began saying that he was not a man but Satan, ‘the one who deceives’ or, if you like, a liar and a cheat.
‘Nevertheless, I liked this ridiculous story very much. As I was already a little bored with the role of a satyr and secretly always wanted to be Phoenix’s shadow, I seized this unique opportunity with both hands. And so I became Satan, a liar and a cheat, the angel of evil and the prince of darkness.
‘Centuries passed and I wandered through Phoenicia, frightening bedouins and amusing the Phoenicians. Then I became bored with that as well. So, I went to Greece and asked Hephaestos, the god of fire and blacksmiths, to employ me, but he refused, saying that he himself was ugly and lame and that he had had enough of his own shadow.
‘For a while I roamed the Greek islands and then I had the incredible luck to meet Dionysus, the god of wine and musicians. He gave me the job of advisor for drunkenness and debauchery, and I can say that it was the happiest time I spent under the sun. And then the Christians arrived.
‘The long forgotten story of Satan was resurfaced and, not wasting a moment, I went back to Phoenicia. So, I became the devil again, and my fame spread through the world at the speed of lightning.
‘But, as we talk about the Christians, I must tell you something else. It is about him, who, through no fault of his own, laid the foundations of the biggest delusion in the history of the world – the Aramaean from Nazareth.
‘One day a young man on a donkey arrived in Jerusalem. ‘I am a shepherd,’ he said, ‘tell me where my flock is!’ But the Romans arrested him on the charges of preaching a new faith and condemned him to death. Soon after they crucified him and that is the end of the story.
‘Later on, however, some suspicious characters appeared, claiming that the Aramaean had been their teacher and that he was crucified to redeem the sins of all people. And that his last words allegedly were, ‘My god, my god, why have you forsaken me?’
‘Since I have the divine gift to travel through time and in order to find out what really had happened, I decided to go back to that shiny morning. And here is what I saw and afterwards wrote down as well:
‘ ’Oh heavenly eye, the great spring shining upon my face for the last time!’ the Aramaean cried out. ‘You are the witness that I, the son of the shepherds from the Aramaic fields, guardian of winds and player on the flame, am dying – not knowing why. Sunshine, sunshine, why are you forsaking me?’
He closed his eyes and a flock of young cranes flew out of his heart.
And I, who know the secrets of earth and the secrets of heaven, guardian of poets and young cranes, have owls from Lebanon and crabs from the Orontes for witnesses , that all I wrote down, really had happened – in the year 666 after Orpheus’s death.’
‘This manuscript, titled The Gospel According to Satyr, exists even today and can be found in the library of Baalbek.’
The satyr fell silent and Mozart blinked his eyes and whispered, ‘This is really exciting!’
‘A few centuries later,’ the satyr went on, ‘the prophet from Mecca arrived and gave me the name Eblis, which is Baal-isa or Baal’s apostle. And here is what he said about me.
‘When Allah created the first man all the angels allegedly fell down in adoration before him, except me. When Allah asked me why I too was not paying reverence to the one he had made with his own hands, I answered, ‘I am better than him. You have created him from mud and I was made from fire!’ Then Allah banished me from heaven and now I drift through the world deceiving people. And you know, of course, that this is all utter nonsense.’
Mozart blinked his eyes again.
‘But before I leave,’ the satyr said, ‘I want to tell you one more thing. A hundred years after your death, a man will be born who will describe me in a brilliant way – Mikhail Bulgakov or Baal-gakov, that is, ‘the smiling tear’.’
‘But how can you know,’ Mozart interrupted him, ‘what is going to happen in a hundred years time?’
‘Well…’ the satyr said. ‘You certainly know that time is round. More precisely, it has the shape of an infinite circle. As I have been enclosed in this magic circle for centuries, over time I have developed a perfect sense for space. And as your fingers glide so easily from one key to another, so I, too, fly with ease through centuries.
‘So, what is going to happen? When you die, your soul will go to Baalbek and spend one century there. Then the cranes will take it to the north and in 1891, in Russia, our new friend Bulgakov will be born. So, he will have your soul and, remembering our encounter, he will transform it in a brilliant way into an exciting story.’
‘But, satyr,’ Mozart said, ‘we are now in November 1791. Does it mean that my time has run out?’
‘Unfortunately yes, my friend. But you have quite enough time to write the requiem.’
‘But I am only 35 years old,’ Mozart whispered.
‘My friend…’ the satyr said. ‘I have already told you that time is only an illusion. It does not matter at all how long you have lived, but what you have done. And you played your role in the universe brilliantly.’
He stood up and out of his right, black eye, dropped a tear. ‘So, my friend, goodbye…’ he said and as silently as he had come, he vanished into the night.
One month later, a little after midnight on December 5th 1791, Mozart interrupted his work on the requiem for a while and lay down to have a rest. And only a few minutes later there was a joyful cry of cranes over the roofs.
‘Oh satyr, satyr…’ murmured the composer, smiling, and one crane flew down onto his shoulder. ‘Let’s go, maestro,’ the crane whispered and dropped a tear, and then they all flew to Baalbek together.
And one hundred years later, as I said, the great Phoenician writer Mikhail Bulgakov was born, who, in his novel The Master and Margarita, gave his version of the story of the famous satyr from Phoenicia.

Thus Died Zarathustra

One sunny day young Johann von Aachen was sitting on a bench beside Goethe’s monument in Weimar reading Thus Spoke Zarathustra, a book by the Phoenician poet and philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. ‘It is a pity,’ he thought, ‘that this exceptional man had met with such a tragic fate.’ He knew that a few years before Nietzsche had lost his mind and had never regained it.
As von Aachen sat there reading, a man with a large moustache came and sat down beside him. The youngster looked at the man and could not believe his eyes – it was Friedrich Nietzsche, in person.
‘You are reading Zarathustra…’ he spoke.
‘Yes,’ the youngster answered.
‘Zarathustra was an exceptional man,’ the poet said, ‘and one of the most beautiful secrets in the universe. In fact, he was ein Übermensch, one who arose above good and evil.’
‘But how is this possible?’ von Aachen thought. ‘Did Nietzsche not go mad?’
‘You are mistaken, young man,’ the poet said, ‘I am not Nietzsche. Moreover, Nietzsche did not go mad, but went to Phoenicia.’
‘May I…’ the youngster began, but Nietzsche interrupted him.
‘You want to ask who I am,’ he said. ‘I am his shadow! You can call me Elagabalus – the shadow of sun’s disk. Believe me, young man, Nietzsche burnt like a torch and like the sun’s disc.’
The youngster looked at the large-moustached man and blinked his eyes.
‘You see,’ the poet went on. ‘Nietzsche spent his life on a string stretched between two stars. He walked so from one star to the other and then he happened to lose his balance and he fell down. And they quite wrongly said that he went mad. What really happened was that he went to Phoenicia and I stayed here, roaming around Weimar as his shadow.’
‘I am sorry,’ the young man said, ‘but I don‘t understand.’
‘You see,’ the poet explained. ‘While Nietzsche was here, they did not understand him at all. And now the same thing is happening – they do not understand me either. But I will explain to you what is going on here.
‘You see… When the great all-seeing eye dropped a tear, everything on earth was created from her. But, as if the tear had split into two halves, two worlds arose out of her – both good and evil arose on earth. Wisdom arose and stupidity as well. The Phoenicians arose, the ones who walk on the string and pull the world forward, but also the bedouins, who don’t understand the Phoenicians, who envy and despise them. The grasshopper arose and so did the ants.
‘Oh, I must tell you what happened to me recently. I was hovering over the roads beside Weimar, when from somewhere I heard the sound of the violin. I went after it and in the shade of a cypress tree, where he had taken shelter against the hot sun, I found his majesty, the grasshopper. He was playing the violin and singing, and the cypress tree above him danced like a girl.
‘ ‘How are you, maestro?’ I asked him, and he laid the violin aside and gave me a sad smile.
‘The world is unjust, sir,’ he said. ‘Tell me, please… Does someone who sings deserve such scorn?’
‘Of course not,’ I assured him. ‘And who is scorning you?’
‘The ants,’ he replied, ‘those cockroaches and bedouins of the worst kind. The other day, when I was walking by their catacombs, I clearly heard them saying, ‘When that fiddler and harlequin comes, with his chanting, don’t open the doors to him. Who on earth needs that rubbish!’
‘And only a few days later,‘ the poet went on, ’while I was hovering over the fields beside Weimar, I came across a very exciting sight. A young ant was sitting under an oak tree and with sadness in his eye he watched the white road in front of him.
‘ ‘How is it going, youngster?’ I asked him, and he smiled sadly.
‘As soon as I began to walk,’ he said, ‘they loaded a grain of wheat on my back and said, ‘You will carry it till death!’ Then I laughed for the last time. And when that enchanter, the grasshopper, came along, they smashed his head with his own violin.
‘Therefore I have decided to leave these catacombs, get a violin and find the grasshopper.
‘Then we shall wander the world, the great enchanter and I. We shall admire the sunshine and young rainbows, fly over fields of ripe wheat and sing – so beautifully that the cypress trees beside the roads will dance like girls…’
‘You see,’ the poet went on, ‘if Nietzsche were here, he would certainly drop a tear. And I don‘t doubt that you, too, were moved with the yearning of the young ant. The yearning with which he wanted, in such an innocent and moving way, to connect two worlds that can never be connected.
‘Now, young man, do you understand me a little bit better? Can you for a moment believe that they lied to you? That Nietzsche did not go mad, but really went to Phoenicia. And that I am only his shadow.’
Von Aachen only sighed deeply and blinked his eyes.
‘Oh yes,’ the poet added, ‘I have not told you how Zarathustra died…
‘One morning he came out of his cave, caressed the lion, the cranes and the camel. Then he went up to the hill and kissed the young sun. ‘Oh heavenly eye,’ he said, ‘the blazing torch shining upon my face for the last time – good-bye!’ Then Ahriman’s angels came flying on white horses and cut off his head with a golden sabre.
‘They say that the lion, upon hearing the sad news, roared like a wounded lion and shook the universe. The cranes cried all the way to Baalbek, and the camel has not taken a sip of water, to this very day. Thus died Zarathustra. And do you know, young man – how god died?’
‘I am sorry,’ von Aachen said, ‘but I have to go…’
‘Oh, no, young man,’ the poet said, ‘I have to go. And you keep reading that exciting book. Good-bye,’ he said and out of his left moustache dropped a tear.
A few days later Friedrich Nietzsche died and the cranes, with his soul in their beaks, flew backwards to Baalbek.

Three Knights and a Girl

This is the story about two Phoenician poets and a painter who shared the same soul. All three lived the same number of years, thirty-seven, and their lives were interrupted in the same manner – they died by the bullet. The gentle Phoenician soul first sang in Pushkin, then cried in van Gogh and in the end burnt in Lorca.
In his novel Eugene Onegin, Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin brought his hero into great temptation – at one point he had to go to a duel. Since the hero cannot die in the middle of the story, Onegin won.
Only a few years later, the great all-seeing eye played with Pushkin in the same manner – he had to go to a duel as well. As it usually happens, the cause was banal, and his adversary was an officer of the French army whose name I cannot recall.
‘The die is cast!’ Pushkin said. ‘Like my friend Onegin, I‘m also going to duel. And the crazy gendarme is threatening me. He says that he may not be good at writing verses, but he certainly knows how to shoot. But this does not disturb me. I‘m not doing this because I am quick on the trigger, but because I want to show that he, who is so beautifully playing with life, can even more beautifully play with death. After all, life is nothing but a postponement of death.
‘If I kill that gendarme, fine – there will be one fool less under the sun, and I will have the memory of the moment when I encountered death. And if I lose – there will be one secret less in the universe, and that’s all.’
The next morning, in the street of Ivan the Terrible in St. Petersburg, the poet and the gendarme stood one against another. As one could have expected, the gendarme was quicker.
While the poet lay on the street, mortally wounded, a girl with purple hair came along and caressed his face. Although he was more dead than alive, the poet smiled and whispered, ‘What happened, my little Gypsy girl?’
‘Nothing, Alexander Sergeevich,’ the girl replied. ‘We will have one secret less in the universe, that’s all…’ She dropped a tear, then turned into a white bird and flew away.

&

Vincent van Gogh spent his life in a labyrinth. He roamed the dark chambers of Elagabalus’ garden trying to find the exit, and when he realized one day that he would never find it, he simply shot himself. And so he tore his own heart, the labyrinth and the endless universe to pieces. This is how it happened…
That day, van Gogh was sitting on the magic hill in Provence, wanting to express the endless sadness and solitude of the universe with colours. He painted naked, dead girls lying beside a river, and above them were flying winged tombs. In the distance, the dark walls of a labyrinth could be seen.
As I said, van Gogh sat under an old olive tree, painting, when a girl came from somewhere, wearing a beautiful purple dress.
‘You are painting, Vincent…’ she said.
‘Yes,’ the painter replied. ‘I‘m painting my house without doors and windows, my dead mistresses and my winged brothers.’
‘And you are waiting for Theseus.’
‘Yes, Ariadne,’ the painter said, ‘I am waiting for Theseus to come out of the tale and open the doors of the labyrinth with his golden sword.’
‘But what if Theseus does not come?’ the girl asked.
‘Well, if he does not come,’ the painter said and smiled, ‘you will then marry the satyr from Phoenicia and live like a Gypsy queen, and I will, like Elagabalus, spend 666 years in a labyrinth, and then drown in my own solitude.’
The girl looked at him with a sad smile in her eye, then pulled a gun out of her bosom and quietly, as if she was picking a flower, shot him right in his heart. He died on the spot and the girl dropped a tear. Then she turned into a white crane and flew away.

&

Federico Garcia Lorca roamed the slopes of Andalusia, illuminated by the sunshine and the scent of the Guadalquivir, on whose banks the Gypsies raised forges, in which they forged the golden suns and silver moons. He roamed and sang, and thus arrived at that fated day.
The mild Andalusian sun was sinking into the Guadalquivir and our Lorca sat under an old cypress tree, with a tear in his eye. Then the Gypsies came from somewhere and asked him what misfortune had befallen him. He told them that his own soul had deserted him.
‘I do not know why,’ he said, ‘but she simply went out of me and flew away.’
‘Oh!’ the Gypsies exclaimed. ‘And what then, poet?’
‘I went all over Andalusia,’ the poet replied, ‘searched through Granada, Cordoba and Cadiz, I chased her with greyhounds and a falcon on my shoulder, but there was no trace of her. And what shall I do without her, compadres?’
While they were talking, on the other end, right on the spot where the sun had sunk into the Guadalquivir, a girl came out of the river and went to them. In one hand she had the moon, in the other a tambourine. When she approached them, the girl smiled and began to rattle with the tambourine. ‘Only for Lorca and the company under the cypress tree,’ she said and began to dance.
‘What a beauty!’ one of the Gypsies whispered without taking his eyes off her and the poet recalled the verses from his poem: ‘The beauty is walking along the road, playing the tambourine. Run away, my little beauty, the green wind is chasing you…’
When she finished dancing, the girl came to the poet and handed him the moon and the tambourine. ‘Good-bye Lorca,’ she said and kissed him, and a tear dropped out of her eye. Then she turned into a purple bird and flew away.
The end of the story, although it may appear absurd, is only the logical solution of this dramatic scene. One of the Gypsies, probably frightened by what he had seen, said something like this, ‘Maybe I don’t know anything about life, poet, but about death I certainly do. This is death!’ he said and killed the poet on the spot. He only killed the body, though, because the soul, as we saw, was already on her way to Baalbek.

Epilogue

The Wandering Rhapsode

Thus, in the dusk of that sunny day, I finished Phoenician Myths. I sat for a while in front of the temple of god’s tear, then took the parchment and went down to Baalbek. I wanted to find my friend Baalzebub, the famous satyr from Phoenicia, and give him the manuscript.
As was usual for that time of day, the town was swarming with people.
At the square in front of Baal’s statue sat Homer of Lydia, narrating in his bronze voice the famous story of Hector, tamer of horses. Beside him sat Calliope, playing the lyre.
A bit farther away, Leonardo was doing a portrait of the beautiful Nefertiti, and in the shade of a palm tree Salvador Dali was painting the queen of Sheba, flying over the desert on a winged Bactrian camel. Under the young cedar Orpheus was singing a melancholy song, and on one of the pillars of Jupiter’s temple sat Khayyam from Shiraz, smoking a hookah.
In the atrium of Baalbek’s library, Dante and Balzac were discussing the purpose of literature, and Lucian of Syria was writing Last Psalm, the miraculous book that would – as he claimed – comprise all other books. A bit farther Zarathustra was walking on a string stretched between two marble pillars, and Nietzsche watched him with admiration and whispered with his left moustache, ‘Ein echter Übermensch!’
By the source of the Orontes I found two great alchemists, Tesla and Einstein, as they talked about eternity. The Serb stated that only two things were eternal – the universe and stupidity – and the Jew said that he agreed, but added that he was not quite sure about the universe.
Not far away Diogenes was repairing his tub.
Then I went to Last Chance, the best tavern in Baalbek, where my friend Baalzebub was waiting for me. As usual, he was in a good mood. He drank beer and told the blue-eyed nymph behind the bar a tale from the centuries to come. I gave him the parchment, and with his left eye (with the right one he read from right to left) he scanned the first few lines.
‘Excellent, my friend,’ he said, ‘excellent! At last the world will learn something about the Phoenicians!’
While he was reading, I turned around to see who was in the tavern.
At one table Socrates, Shakespeare and Goethe were gambling for silver coins. At the other, Giordano Bruno was persuading Hannibal to take revenge upon Rome, and at the third Samson was relating don Quixote about Delilah. At a table in the corner van Gogh drank alone.
By the bar, on my left-hand side, El Greco and Cervantes spoke with nostalgia about the slopes of Toledo, and, on my right, Pushkin was trying to seduce Scheherezade with his verses. By the door Mozart played the violin.
And while I was looking across the tavern, a strange young man came in and took a place at the bar next to us. He ordered a beer and then turned towards me.
‘Excuse me,’ he said, ‘what’s the name of this town?’
‘Baalbek,’ I replied.
‘Very good,’ the young man said, ‘it’s the town I was looking for!’
The satyr stopped reading and looked up curiously at the young man. Then he stretched his hand and said, ‘Hello, I am Baalzebub...’
‘Oh,’ the young man exclaimed and smiled, ‘the famous satyr from Phoenicia!’ Then he turned towards me. ‘And this must be Phoenix,’ he added, ‘the one who is always reborn and the only living Phoenician!’
‘Very nice to meet you,’ I said, and the satyr asked, ‘Excuse me, but who are you?’
‘That’s very hard to say,’ the young man answered. ‘But in short – I am a wandering rhapsode. I wander the world, looking for three chimeras: love, beauty and wisdom!’
‘Oh!’ exclaimed Baalzebub and blinked his eyes. ‘But, tell me, please, how did you know who we are?’
‘Well, it’s a long story,’ the young man replied. ‘You see, I wrote a book about Phoenicians. In it I described Baalbek, the city of sages or the city of shades, and Phoenicia, the miraculous land, which, as you know, hovers neither in heaven nor on earth. And then I decided to come to Baalbek and meet my heroes.’
‘Interesting,’ the satyr said, and then asked, ‘What’s the name of your book?’
And the young man replied, ‘Phoenician Myths.’
Baalzebub and I looked at each other in wonder.
‘And who are your heroes?’ I asked.
‘As I said, Phoenicians,’ the young man answered, ‘the most brave and gifted among people. Here,’ he added and showed with a sweeping gesture of his hand across the tavern, ‘they are all my heroes. Of course, you two as well!’
‘Interesting!’ exclaimed the satyr again. ‘But let me ask you, do you know what this is?’ he said and showed the young man the parchment.
‘Of course,’ he replied, ‘a parchment.’
Baalzebub smiled. ‘You have inferred it very wisely. But, do you know what is written on it?’
The young man took the manuscript and glanced over it. ‘Ha,’ he exclaimed, ‘Phoenician Myths!’
‘Yes,’ the satyr said, ‘Phoenician Myths! And what is this telling you?’
The young man raised his eyebrows and suspiciously shook his head. ‘I don’t want you to get me wrong,’ he said, ‘but this parchment is apocryphal!’
‘What do you mean?’ the satyr asked.
‘False,’ the young man replied.
‘For goodness’ sake!’ Baalzebub cried out. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘About reality,’ the young man answered. ‘Or if you like – about illusion. After all,’ he added, ‘it’s not upon us to judge what reality is and what is illusion. Therefore I suggest that we listen to someone who knows about these things better than us. For example, señor Borges!’
Indeed, as soon as he’d spoken, Borges came in and headed straight towards us. He said, ‘Good evening, gentlemen,’ then asked what the problem was.
‘Señor Borges,’ the satyr said, ‘good that you have come. Here is the argument. Our friend Phoenix has just finished Phoenician Myths. But this harlequin, who, I understand, is in Baalbek for the first time, claims that the manuscript is false. He says that he wrote the Myths and that we are his heroes. In short, he claims that all this is an illusion!’
The poet mused for a moment, then shook his head anxiously. ‘You see,’ he said, ‘the question of reality and illusion is very complex. Sometimes even the most wise men cannot solve it. But, so far as I see, things are quite clear here – this is an illusion.’
‘Señor Borges!’ the satyr cried out, but the poet didn’t hear him.
‘You see,’ he went on, ‘writing is magic. And it often happens that we lose our way in that magic. Readers think that what they read is reality. The writer fancies that he lives in the world he’s writing about, and sometimes – strange as it may look – heroes themselves believe that they really exist. For instance, it happened to me several times. I will give you one example.
‘While I was writing the story Immortal, my hero Joseph Cartaphilus of Smyrna came and said, ‘Señor Borges, you know what? I don’t want to end my life in such a banal way!’
‘I asked him, in wonder, what he meant.
‘ ‘As I understand,’ he added, ‘at the end of the story I will drown in the Aegean sea. And you must admit, what kind of death is it to drown in the Aegean sea?’
‘As you may guess, I had difficulty explaining to him that it was only a story.’
‘Señor Borges...’ Baalzebub wanted to say something, but the poet interrupted him.
‘My dear satyr,’ he said, ‘let me explain. As I said, sometimes it is very difficult to distinguish between reality and illusion. But you have to understand – this is an illusion. You do not exist, nor Phoenix, nor Phoenicia, nor this tavern. Nor do I, unfortunately. This young man invented it all. Do you understand me? He is a writer, or if you like a rhapsode, and we are his heroes.’
‘Goodness me!’ the satyr cried out in disbelief.
‘Well gentlemen,’ the poet added, ’I hope we have the problem solved. So, I wish you a nice evening!’
He turned around and left, and the satyr and I watched after him, not believing our eyes.
And as if nothing had happened, the young man winked at the girl and smiled, then turned towards us. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘do you believe me now?’
The satyr blinked his eyes and whispered, ‘What a harlequin!’ and I looked about, confused. ‘So,’ I said, ‘all this is an illusion!’
‘Yes,’ the young man replied. ‘But to make the illusion look complete – and in order that our reader doesn’t feel deceived – I suggest that you read the last two passages from the parchment, in which is described your death.’
‘My death?’ I said in wonder.
‘Yes,’ the young man answered. ‘I think it would be quite pretty to end our tale in the way that you – like the famous bird phoenix – burn in flames!’ He then handed me the parchment and I began to read in a low voice:

So, in the dusk of that sunny day, I went on the hill above Baalbek, where, in the ruins of the temple of god’s tear, was my grave. I lit the pyre, then sat down under an old cedar and for a while listened to the crickets, singing joyfully in the cedar’s crown. And when the fire was in full blaze, I stood up and, with a smile in my heart, looked at the bronze city in front of me.
‘Dear Phoenicians,’ I said, ‘dear shades, good-bye!’
Then I turned around and with a slow, but steady step, walked into the fire. And while my brittle body quickly vanished, my soul kept dancing with the flames and teasing the young wind. And she whispered, ‘O joy of dying and joy of birth! Blessed be the flame that is ending one life and creating another! Good-bye dear sunshine,’ the beauty whispered, ‘good-bye dear universe! See you in the next life – or in the next dream!’
I became silent, and the satyr smiled. ‘Well, mister rhapsode,’ he said, ‘bravo! You’ve done it very nicely!’
‘Thank you,’ the young man replied and smiled back. Confused, I asked, ‘And what now?’
‘Nothing,’ the young man answered, ‘we’ve arrived at the end of the book. And if you don’t mind, I would like to buy you a drink. So, gentlemen, cheers! Thank you for your company, and I wish you a long and exciting life – and a lot of fame!’
Then he turned to the girl. ‘Give us something to drink, darling,’ he said, ‘I am paying tonight!’
That night we drank till dawn.

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Tag der Veröffentlichung: 11.03.2010

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