Learning to read - an excerpt

It was my favorite present, a book, and not just an ordinary book. With a boy and a girl sitting on an origami animal, smiling and waving at me from the hard sky-blue cover, this was my first book in color. “My First Encyclopedia,” grandma read the letters on the cover, and I delved in.

A picture of a tall gray skyscraper in New York; an Eskimo wearing white fur and holding a spear standing by his Igloo; an English double-decker riding the streets of London, and a rickshaw pulled through the alleys of India. Each page was a treasure of hand-drawn pictures, and under each picture, a caption, which grandma kept reading to me until I’d memorized them all.

I sat with my book on the black and red sofa in the heated library room, listening to the wind blowing outside. It was a stormy night, as stormy as in the black and yellow picture of a horse hanging on the wall. The horse, carrying an empty cart, was waiting patiently in the storm for an old man, who was collecting seaweed in knee-high water far in the background. “I hope he makes it safely to his horse,” I thought when grandma told me that the storm outside was so fierce that I’ll need to stay the night.

As night fell, lightning was flashing, thunder roaring, rain was drumming on the window shutters, and I remained lying on my stomach memorizing the pictures and their captions. I was oblivious to the smell of eggs frying in olive oil rising from the kitchen, where grandpa was preparing my dinner. I ignored my favorite treat: a glass of hot chocolate and a plate of fresh coconut cookies that grandpa had laid on a tray next to me. I was surrounded by thousands of books, but aware of one only, which now I knew by heart.

The following day, street glittering clean and sporadic patches of cumulus clouds drifting eastwards in the blue were all that was left from the storm. On our way home, I read everything along our path. I read ‘Police’ on a blue and white police car and ‘Taxi’ on a taxi. I read ‘Grocer’ and ‘Barber. ’ I read the black letters on a ‘Beware, Enemy Area Ahead’ sign, and the street names in white letters on navy background on every house entrance. Climbing the staircase to our apartment, I read every neighbor’s nameplate. By the time we reached our door on the fourth floor I could read. And the first person I wanted to share my new skill with was Michelle.

Heading for the Demonstration - an excerpt

(image credit)

From the court behind the clock-tower a few hundred yards away, I slowly became aware of an unintelligible, yet clearly orchestrated rising and falling chant. It sounded like yet another demonstration, I smiled, heading for the uproar.

The medieval fountain-court at the foot of the tower was a favored venue for heated demonstrations. The stone-paved yard could accommodate several hundred people, and the circular wall that had once surrounded the village fountain, which had not seen water flowing in decades, was regularly used as a podium, from which passionate speeches and pleas were delivered. It was a popular place for many unauthorized protests, as the ragged stone pavers and the freshly-painted blue iron-poles surrounding the court made the place inaccessible to police cars. Whenever trouble erupted, the many roofed alleyways that once led to the old gaol, too narrow for horse-mounted police, provided easy escape routes. A demonstration here was something I could not resist.

It didn’t matter that I had no idea what the demonstration was about. Seldom did I identify with the protestors; rarely could I find an event that didn’t tingle my cynicism. 

My last demonstration had been in the height of the autumn duck-hunting season, when I found myself marching amongst a vocal group holding anti-hunting banners. I felt I could support their cause. But when they started bragging how they’d covered a popular hunting pond with diesel to stop hunters, I couldn’t resist asking if ducks preferred to be shot or poisoned.  They were quick to introduce me to their entire collection of verbal abuse, and although I managed to diffuse the tension and prevent the situation from evolving into a fist fight, the fast heart beat, the clenching fists, and the clarity of the ready-to-fight mind empowered and excited me for many days.

Fights were not the only reason I was attracted to demonstrations. In protests, especially unauthorized, I found the drama and fervor that were missing from my everyday life in England, where the only heated arguments I witnessed, outside pub quarrels, were about sports and weather – neither could I care about.  I missed vibrant colorful characters; eccentrics who loved to express their unconventional ideas and were not afraid to let raw emotions clash. I craved heated debates and the intensity of feelings they created. All this I found in demonstrations. And of course, it was a great place for seduction.