Phoenician Myths by Zeljko Prodanovic (great reads .txt) 📕

/> ‘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