Empire of flower and dream
"Tell me more when you get there"
September 30, 2003
The Iranian
The empire of gun and sword
Once upon a time, there
was an average man who aspired
to become rich and powerful. He was not a bright man
at all, but had inherited thousands of guns and swords from his
father who had been a warrior all his life. Day and
night, instead of reading by the fire, or listening to the stories
of earth, wind, and the far sea, he would sit in his little tent
and think of how he could lure others into using his weapons.
One day, he decided to learn how to make a special
potion which would throw people into trance and make them suggestible
to his
immoral commands. He went to the tribe's medicine man and begged
him to reveal to him the secrets of making such a potion. Since,
the medicine man was doing research on human nature, he accepted
to reveal the secrets of the potion because he wanted to see the
effects it would produce on ordinary people.
The average man, elated, invited many of his tribe's
men to his home one night and poured a little potion into every
one's drink. Little by little, as they fell into an inevitable
trance, the man started chanting and singing incantations. As the
hypnotized men were becoming completely absorbed by the incantations,
the man gave each one of them a gun and a sword.
The mesmerized
men started walking towards their own tents where their wives and
children were sleeping. Each one took out his sword from its cover
and slayed his wife and children in sleep. As the soil beneath
their feet were turning red, the lured men set their own tents
on fire and burned all their written stories, drawings, and codes
of tribal peace and wisdom.
The average man, feeling
empowered and invincible, filled the valleys and mountains with
his own sinister laughter.
He laughed and laughed and laughed, he now had many many followers
whom without a thought, would commit to his wishes. He laughed
and laughed and laughed till the whole earth became red with his
laughter... The empire of gun and sword was created.
The empire
of cry and poetry
Once upon a time, there were simple people living on
a simple land. Every now and then, they would celebrate the birth
of a poet, since their great prophet had told them that their world
would crumble down if there were no poems being created. Poems
were the words of angels. Every one knew poetry by heart, even
small children. Even their homes smelled of poetry. The walls were
adorned by verses about wine and beauty.
Unfortunately, their land
had many many wells, many infinite wells, which ended in utter
blackness. Each poet, who was born into their
tribe, would eventually fall into one of these wells after a while.
The simple people would cry and pray to their God that one day
these wells would be filled with soil so that no one would plunge
into their abyss. The old men of the tribe would call these wells "human
ignorance". The question was how would "human ignorance" be
cured? Well, there was no an easy answer for such a question.
It
was not that the simple people were bad people,
but due to lack of better understanding; they would
always follow their kings instead of their poets. No matter how
much warning
their poets would give them, they would always feel the strange
loyalty to obey their kings.
One day, everything took a turn for
the worse, that was the day when the kings ordered building small
rooms without windows that
had chains and locks inside. The simple people without
questioning the purpose, started erecting walls and pulling chains
into the tiny rooms they were creating. Then after everything was
built, the kings ordered the simple people to recruit
all the poets and bring them into the small rooms and chain them
to the walls. The simple people did so; then, the kings
named the small rooms "prison". Thereafter, all the poets
lived in prison and all the kings continued living in their castles.
And what happened to the simple people? They started
falling into the wells, one by one.
The empire of flower and
dream
I have never seen the empire of flower and dream, but my mother
tells me it exists. She tells me it exists when her hands run through
my hair and I imagine other places where she will fly to before
me, perhaps. She says the empire of flower and dream was created
by a man who dreamed he was a flower or by a flower who dreamed
of a man (I always get confused).
I say to her: "Tell me more
when you get there," and fall
asleep.
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