The Sacred City

Oh! what a colourful market. Such trinkets and wares you’ve never seen.

Snake charmers wobble about in their turbans, seemingly possessed by the snakes that come wobbling and swaying like drunken walking sticks out of their big woven baskets.

Men who eat the hearts of lambs to gain their courage bleat and grunt and shuffle about on all fours under the bright rugs that cover the stalls. Their dirty hands reach up occasionally and snag your clothing. The shy tourist doesn’t quite know what to make of this ludicrous spectacle, but the local old women are well accustomed to the grabbing hands of the naked bleaters and thrust their canes under the stalls, vigorously through the rugs and don’t even hear the shrieks and whimpers that come back from under the rugs.  

Great barrel-chested men with all sorts of ornamental facial hair sell weapons from the farthest reaches of the continent. Imported, old-fashioned pistols and native swords, many with huge curved blades and golden handles. They apparently don’t need a permit to sell such deathly instruments and the tourist would do well to stay away from these stalls, for passing merchants are prone to challenge you to a duel so as to be given a discount on anything they wish to buy. And if challenged, you would be wise to accept, and I hope you are well prepared.

Big fountains fill the main squares, fountains without running water. The sovereignty seem to have forgotten their cultural duties, and the once proud fountains, which depict ancient heroes in death throes and were once a main attraction for tourists, stand neglected and dirty, with stagnant green water frothing at the rims of the huge cracked bowls.    

The locals are neither proud of their town or willing to relinquish it to foreigners or foreign languages, and the tourist will find him or herself feeling at times quite unwelcome in this sacred city. Never fear, however, for when feelings of isolation pang at your heart, the tourist can always return to the port, where the shrewder in the government’s administration have organised a promenade where tourists can mingle, and eat together in sanitised restaurants and enjoy museums, jaunts out to sea, and even flavour some local delights. But beware yet, for the tourist companies can never completely keep away the shady characters and skeletal beggars that come down from the little alleys of the dark heart of town, and bother the civilised.

A Window on the World

A window on the world, I’m looking out onto high green plateaus and untouched forests, sloping here, rising there, through mountain mists that sprinkle on in every direction.

The birdsong is alien to me, the birds unseen. Wild cats fill the trees with damp fur and glowing eyes and slink away from my eye. They leap from branches where frogs move their sticky padded feet across the bark, while colourful poisons throb around their veins under their bright wet skin.

In the waters lizards flow, cutting their way through the rapids and dark brown water, where snakes uncoil in the murky depths like relaxing springs.

Spiders fill my hair and make my skin spike up and my muscles clench. All the wildlife is alive at my feet and stretches onwards and upwards, in every conceivable angle. A place where there are no people, a wild place, where all life vies for life and time goes on endless and uncounted.