Phoenician Myths - Zeljko Prodanovic (ebooks children's books free .TXT) 📗

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