I beg the ancient privilege of my Realm

Posts · by **Yohannes** » Sun Sep 30, 2018 7:24 pm

...... The realms of possibility were seemingly expanding and multiplying as the nineteen countries industrialised to catch up with the Occident. Factories sprung up where farms were once the norm. Once abandoned fishing town made way for reclaimed land and port of trade with columns of merchant ships of import and export...

... The sounds of hammer and smoke filled the air, as new industrialised means of production were adopted from English speaking nation states and the Occident......

— An excerpt from History of the Central Governments

Contents

Posts · by **Yohannes** » Sun Sep 30, 2018 7:35 pm

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1. Greta
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Urged to write about and to share in homage this rare concession from the Realm of fiords and mountain, Unity Law integrationist Greta Waldmüller of the Free and Frauenmundigen City eventually did so, choosing to write in the third person, as if, I imagine, in tribute to the congregationalists of yore and those other ones of creation. The summer came to Crescent in the year of her first trip to the Centre Island.

All her young life in Heartland summer was not summer unless you went swimming; everyone in the Belt lived near a beach. She was to find that the glacier water, and the depth of that Northern Crescent water was incredibly chilling, almost painful, and her first dip was a short, sharp experience.

She had heard that Frauenmundigen swimmers used petroleum jelly to insulate themselves from the cold water on long endurance swims, so she took to this practice and found it worked quite well. The next step was to get by Nineteen Countries Postal Service some long woolen underwear a size too small so that it fitted skin-tight. Then she found out that on fine days, Lulworth Cove — shaped like the head of a roaring lion — was decidedly warmer than anywhere else in Northern Crescent. An inlet where the water was shallow near the shore.

In the eight-and-a-half seasons she spent in Northern Crescent including a wintering over 1868, ’69, and now, ’70, never once did she feel any different about the place in all its moods: the sky, the rain, the water falls in flood so loud you heard it in your sleep. It remains spectacularly the one most beautiful place in the Realm.

On her first trip up the northern sound the dolphins came.

To the delight of villagers, they frolicked in wash from the bow — water rushed by, clear and flecked with foam. When southerners stopped for fishing or for taking photographs they would come up to the boat and poke their heads out looking at us as we were looking at them. One was more cheeky than the rest. She called him ‘Rapunzel’, and from the outset the light in his eye was special and captured her imagination. She called him ‘he’ but was never to know if that was its sex — it never mattered anyway.

She called him her Custodian of the Sea, so warmly did she feel his kindred spirit. On her days off she would go with the visiting Occidentals from the Terra Incognita on the launch Reichsgau Staschoten and they would go right up to the fiord entrance, to see the baby seals bathing on the rocks, or put off local fishermen at Reichsgrafschaft Jürgen to look for garnet, a keepsake to touch and tell of in the years ahead.

Posts · by **Yohannes** » Sun Sep 30, 2018 9:08 pm

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2. Black Ship
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Rapunzel became an attraction of his own. Greta made loops out of twigs lashed into a circle and as fast as she would toss them in the air, he would jump clear of the water and catch them on his snout, returning them gleefully, “KWAAK... KWAAK.” Whichever side of the boat she worked when they stopped to fish, there he would perform and then come back for the accolades.

Sometimes, instead of doing the tourist bit, she would leave the launch in a dinghy and row to Lulworth Cove for a day on her own — a day when she could swim, explore the bush, listen to the birds and relax in the sun. It was on such a day that she found she was not alone in the water.

Here, gentle in approach, was a fin. He quickly lifted his head to show a friendly eye then squeaked a muted ‘hello’ to her. She rolled over and over with joy at the encounter and reached out to touch her Custodian of the Sea. He did not come nearer but surveyed her from six-and-a-half feet away. She jack-knifed, went under to see if he was alone and to get some ideas of his size. He submerged too and seemed to be — as well he might — grinning at her, for in less than a minute she was up gasping for air.

So they played.

She embraced him and kissed him — he in turn muzzled and smooched her with a caress as gentle as a butterfly.

In excitement he would propel himself out of the water and back-pedal with dexterity, laughing hilariously; she should bounce with the buoyancy of her body and splash with her arms to show her joy. He would come back to her as if to say, “Never mind, you look so silly, don’t try so hard.” He let her hold his fin and climb astride him and gently he would move with her, quick to complain if, in her clumsy way, she covered his blowhole.

When coldness forced her to leave the water and wrap up warmly for a wee while, he would wait as close to the shore as possible and, as if understanding the mere mortality of her fragile skin and nerve system, he would carry on a disappearing-reappearing game to playfully mock her. When she thought he had gone she had a warm drink from the flask, packed up the dinghy, and then he would come back and squeak at her when she least expected it.

As she rowed back to the meeting place he kept pace: oar going in and out of the water. And as she found the rowing stressful and her breathing was labouring he would blow in rhythm with her stress. Reluctant to say goodbye after the dinghy had been attached to the launch and she had her feet firmly on the deck, he followed for a wee while then joined the others and was lost in anonymity.

No day was ever more delightful than that first day. For the whole season they shared a comradeship: if ever she did not go on the launch others would tell her, “He came looking for you today.” She tried to tell them all that he would play with anyone who wasn’t afraid of him. But no — if he came and she wasn’t there he would lose interest and go away.

So it was, the bonding.

On the eighty-eighth day of the season she saw the ‘Black Ship’ approaching from afar. “The Occidental ships”, the Captain of Reichsgau Staschoten said. On the penultimate day she read the word: “C.O.A.L.”

On the last day of the season she looked for her Custodian of the Sea.

“Rapunzel… Rapunzel...”

“Where are you?”

“A mammal you are, a mammal he is”, the Captain said. And he felt obliged to apprise Greta of what had happened. Her Custodian of the Sea floating in the water, rushed by the imposing Black Ship — dark and flecked with foam.

Posts · by **Yohannes** » Sun Sep 30, 2018 10:34 pm

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3. Voice of Man
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Curious, on the bulk steamship, back in northern latitudes, the morning attendances and dressing done, we homesick Alexandrians, as if in pilgrimage, would make, limp, shuffle or cautiously plod our various ways, some more half-heartedly than others, as if lured, towards the stern of our black ship with its bold, straight-armed beam cross of mercy, built from the steel by industrious labour.

And there below us we see the dead dolphin, floating in the water below the pure, effortless, kingdom-come flight of the albatross. It was from the souls of dead sailors before us. Far away we see the Realm of fiords and mountain. And, at the end, may the flight of the albatross bear us gently away, as we civilise the remaining hinterland to catch up with the Occident.

“In twenty years of oceangoing shipping and many, many trips, I never observed how far we’ve come without being spiritually uplifted”, shared, when I specially asked, a wet boot man I admire, crewmember Daniel Wölfflin, custodian of the Halstenmetall Höjdstigen model factory 1859-63. Then, what a loss, he quit stifled, overwhelmed by management prescriptions. Sad; I asked for dear advice, with sympathy.

He imparted: “Here, on these hinterlands, listen especially to the silence. Remote from the sounds of man and his new-found industry, remote from the voice of coal smoke — the only sound is of wind in tussock, or here and there the tinkle of a creek, or a solitary skylark warbling on high. And in the quietness of calm, when the wind is still... nothing — absolute quiet.”

“A beautiful silence.”

Splendid job for a wet day, the man believed. All those black gold we dug and stacked down below, sort ’em out, aye uce, into big ones to sell to the fussy old coot at the Pyramid of Capitalist System, then to the king in Alexandria for the rates, and useless or rotten ones for the miners down below.

“See ’em Realm of fiords and mountain while you still can.”

Posts · by **Yohannes** » Mon Oct 01, 2018 12:17 am

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4. Chad
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We were set on making a fortune from deerskins, ranging for twenty-eight days over those tumbling valleys and blistering tops stretching right over to Nadin and the Wintsche. We emerged one-and-a-half or two times for supplies and of course saw more of the villagers. Between old Chad’s own boastful accounts of his youthful exploits and the highly articulate stories told by Virgin Integrationist, the Adventure in Diarcesia, we developed a respect amounting to awe.

In January 1871, the King of Alexandria would be crowned as the next Yohannesian Emperor, and in the Depression that followed the speculative euphoria of the previous decade, Chad had tramped for a week from as far back as Südostburmecien in Grand Ducal Dali, carrying a great load of old fire hose for the sluicing claim he had prospected. The year before, his camp, 30-something feet above base level, was washed out in a flood. He had once pioneered that culling on the great River Rhyme; he had a small steam-powered boat named after him, having clambered up it with gear I would guess was no more sophisticated for a fool’s errand.

Then came the Chemical Revolution. For eager Chad, a weighty realisation: “Life is short.” Factory worker or industrial clerk I don’t know — probably industrial clerk as he was a talented person. He contracted chest trouble, plowed through the quota anyway, and was quickly promoted as befitting his Christian name. Family life and the divorce soon followed, but for the rest of his working life he climbed the Pyramid of Capitalist System positions, such as custodian of model factory, that were still open to those born to his class.

Now in retirement, I think he must have loved living right there in view of the southern Malte-Brun Uplands, for ten years later I found him and a certain Mrs. Schickendantz — they retired to an old cottage just out of Halbjerg’s Big Smoke. Chad’s old grin would still light up but it was fairly plain from his breathing and the tell-tale flush that he wouldn’t, as my old man says, “Make old bones.”

He didn’t.

Posts · by **Yohannes** » Mon Oct 01, 2018 4:08 am

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5. Three Reichsducats
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He was unnaturally thin, the old man who knocked at our front door that evening. In the flower of his youth, he must have been square-shouldered and robust, but now he was stooped and willowy and his clothes and shoes, old and down-at-heel, betrayed his living quandary.

He spoke in a well-regulated voice. “Good evening, perhaps this reference would interest you, good sir?”, and he handed me a paper. Crowned with the blue and green bicolour lapel pin of the Royal Alexandrian Veterans Committee, the paper said the man was honest and had the support of the veterans organisation.

I could see the discreet coughs, dry and withdrawn. I studied the man, and even through my glimpse I was shocked already — lifeless and pale, high on the cheeks with visible marks. His eyes seemed dead. He coughed, this time a bit louder; that tormenting, uncontrollable cough I’d seen often once — I have no doubt of its cause.

“Where’d you get the chemicals, Sir?”

He apologised, tried to reply, but coughed instead, faintly smiled, and then said, “To protect the overseas trading outpost of the Realm in The Adrian Empire from the invading Violet Bigtopians, 1853; know the incident?”

“Yes.” I told him my brigade and royal naval division.

We connected. After what seemed like hours, he seemed to have forgotten what he was here for. I inquired as to why a man of his standing was selling things here in this part of the Realm. I asked what brought a proper gentleman like him here down the borders of Royal Burmecia. He revealed a briefcase, and showed a series of insurance and household subscription products with discount attached, and told me the price was seven-and-a-half Reichsducats for the latest household utensil. In that sad moment my wife called, “Would you like to join us for a wee cuppa?” She’d guessed the poor man was cold and hungry.

Around teatime we talked as ex-military do. Shockingly incredulous, I learnt that although an army board certification had given him a fixed amount of monthly pension, he was struggling to stay float as that had been reduced recently. Yes, he was divorced, and reading between the lines I thought there was a sad story here. Asked about selling insurance and miscellany of products, he smiled regretfully and admitted he’d only struck two deals yesterday — his share was three Reichsducats.

Standing on the lawn after he had left I reflect on his situation. The more I gathered my thought, the angrier I became until my wife’s shocked voice said, “Janik!” I had been using offensive language to curse the government, a thing I very rarely did, and my daughter Greta, recently returned from her first trip to the Centre Island, was looking at me with amusement.

Never mind that — I believe, sadly, that for one poor soul the end of the road was not far off.

Posts · by **Yohannes** » Mon Oct 01, 2018 4:22 pm

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6. Bowls o’brown
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My young niece Clara Fröhlich tells of her encounter from the farm to the city.

Alone in our only patch of tussock far back in the hills, I was full of awareness. It was so quiet, and the solitude seemed to be something that I could touch. Suddenly there was a flash of feathers, a screech, and I was ducking my head in astonishment, laughing.

The bird careered over me and circled high back over my right shoulder. I thought, still blissfully clinging to the associations of solitude, that it had probably suffered a bigger surprise than me. Not so. Down it came again, faster and lower, screeching an unearthly rasping scream, perhaps like the scream of a steam locomotive. This time I had to fling myself to the ground, all visions of a tangible solitude shattered.

After a bit I stood up, rubbing dirt off my rifle barrel. But the bird, two-thirds the size of a seagull, was coming in again. Fast and low between the fire-blackened stumps it came at me. Alarmed, I flung a rock at it. On it came, growing like a cricket ball lifting fast, sharp and true off the pitch. Batless, I hit the ground again. My back felt cringingly nude. I remember thinking how infinitely pleasant each crumb of dirt must be to a soldier under fire as he lies hugging the ground. But my position was ludicrous.

Apparently satisfied after several more swooping raids, The Black Hawk flew and perched on a dead tree in the bush. I hesitated to shoot it, still not knowing what it was. Had I known, it would have made no difference. How could I have shot such a proud, defiant little bundle of feathers, such a spirited ball of contemptuous daring? And so I hurled some stones at it, very close. It didn’t shuffle an inch. Seeing the sharpness of the stones, I left my first Black Hawk to raid as he pleases and pushed away through the pale green tussock.

On the way to the Big Smoke Clara continued down Flea Bottom. Bowls o’brown, yes! And away to that noble man Archbishop Alois Rösler. Eating as the sun went down in Flea Bottom, he was held up, clap after clap. They just wouldn’t let him — the restless continue at night to thank him for his generosity, and the rest, now full to the bone, beckoned for the gates to be shut firmly.

Afterwards Clara, annoyed, tackled the Friar: “In the villages we’re being fed most generously by the Lord when lacking.”

“Why the maxtopia did the Earl not feed the poor, the hungry, the factory workers and farmhands here? Most annoying to all concerned.”

The Friar hung his head.

“Because he is the Earl, wee lass.”

Posts · by **Yohannes** » Mon Oct 01, 2018 9:15 pm

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7. City Whing’er
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A prosperous Royal Lindblum tourist rose early on the magnificent Aerbs Hills, went out of his little country hotel, strolled down the garden path and made use of the little house down the bottom of the path. Coming back furiously to the host, he said, livid, “In all my travels round the continent… I came down early this morning, down to the little house down the back and it was full of butterbeer bottles. The air was thick with these flies. Disgraceful, I say! Never before have I seen such a shocking sight. Surely you can rectify it!”

“Certainly”, said the Aerbic publican, beaming. “Do what we all do, city whing’er. Go down there for your visit when it’s breakfast time. They’re all in the kitchen then.”

Günter Neuhäuser, politician of Crescent, with a splendid Free and Frauenmundigen background and sense of humour, overheard the conversation. “Say, good sir… an electrical engineer I see!” He told the tourist about the regent in Lindblum addressing his Alexandrian king in parliament. He was talking about the guaranteed price, tossing endless figures in millions and fractions into the dreadnought: the all-big-guns, the barbettes and belt, the steam turbines pushing so hard you will not believe when you hear about it. The stories of man and his new-found industry reaching even this hinterland town.

“This”, he told parliament, “brings the figure to 1,780,331 Reichsducats and three Quertz russling”, and so forth and so on. The whinger was spellbound and absolutely staggered by the deft bombardment of it all.

“And finally”, as the great climax, the publican heard, never to forget, Günter Neuhäuser, this Christian Democratic gnome of industry, come to the following stupendous conclusion: “We have set up a commission of ten to look into it. Eight of them and two of us.”

“Why?” said the tourist, aghast.

“Old chap, they don’t need your kind round here.”

Posts · by **Yohannes** » Tue Oct 02, 2018 4:37 am

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8. Raider’s Clock
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The Black Hawk fell in love with the adjustable mechanical alarm clock in Waldemar Rädler’s foresters’ hut, Cochem an der Neuhäuser.

“No good will come of that raider”, said the younger forester forebodingly. “You might as well take the gun out and shoot the thing.”

The elder forester filled his pipe deliberately before answering. “I reckon it’s doing no harm”, he said finally. “We’ll just leave it be.”

And that is what they did, King’s forester Waldemar Rädler and his man-at-arms brother, bushwhacking at Cochem an der Neuhäuser — southernmost tip of the Land of Always Winter. They first noticed the Black Hawk when they came home from work early to grind their axes. It was sitting in the setting sun at the back of the hut. It flew off as they approached. The elder raked up embers from the banked-up fire and hung the billy on the wire hook. They would have a wee cuppa before they started on the waterwheel. They always did.

“Reckon it raided for the scraps”, said the younger. The other didn’t answer. There was no need. Of course it raided for the scraps. Why else would they raid this region?

As they sipped their scalding tea there was a rush of wings and the mighty Black Hawk raided again at the back of the hut and hopped over to the exact position it was in when they arrived; its shadow clearly outlined upon the outer calico of the hut.

“By His Majesty’s Grace in Alexandria, must be warm there”, said King’s forester Rädler.

Then as they watched they noticed there was something queer about the bird. Its shoulders were humped and its wing-tips pointed straight down. And all the time its head moved from side to side and its feet stomped in curious regular rhythm. Both the king’s men were nonplussed. Although they had lived all their lives close to nature neither had seen anything like it.

They racked their brains for a reason.

“Saint Francis’ folly?” suggested the man-at-arms.

The forester thought deeply upon it. “Couldn’t fly straight”, he replied.

They finished their tea in silence. Then suddenly the forester’s face lit up. “The clock!” he said. “The blasted thing is listening to the clock.”

The younger was doubtful. “We’ll soon see”, he said.

The man-at-arms moved quietly over and shifted the industrial invention to the other side of the hut — and sure enough the shadow followed and resumed its rhythmic tramping. And so there it was: nature and man’s invention. They had a region’s raider that jived to the music of an adjustable mechanical alarm clock.

They didn’t tell anybody. There was nobody to tell. They wouldn’t see the Customs Union officer from the border until the end of the week — by which time the job would be cut out and they would leave the hut and take their gear in on the packhorse he would bring with him. So every morning they went to duty and every night the Black Hawk homed in for his session with the clock. They grew quite attached to the raider and never forgot to leave some pieces of native meat out for his midnight supper. Finally, when the season was finished, they left the hut to set up camp elsewhere and packed their gear in readiness for the packhorse. They thought of the raider.

The man-at-arms concluded: “Pity we couldn’t have taught him to wind back the clock — we could have left it with him.”

Posts · by **Yohannes** » Thu Oct 04, 2018 12:22 am

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9. Ackerland’s Women
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The majestic steam railcar stops in king’s country, furious stunted maple somewhere near Ackerland, a wilderness. A woman gets off to be followed by a sullen lad, wordless, expressionless, to ride after her on a bicycle. She trudges behind, about 50, old grey hunched coat, faded dress, shoulders bent, face slumped with wrinkles — she’d done, had it, she’d been beaten — but hang on a minute, not quite.

As she trudges away, suddenly I glimpse something and change my mind. I see her shoes, new shoes, black shoes — brave shoes. The last touch of defiance. No. She’s not done — yet.

Oh yes, she had a wee job — at least it was a job anyhow, on a pig farm, and regularly, or I think it was daily, she had to see to a barrow-load of pig manure, wheel it to the place they dumped it, whereupon a loathsome curtain of disturbed rats never failed to shin up the wall and briefly vanish. They seemed impervious to poisons and traps. Reasonably enough, all this was beginning to get her down.

Salvation, came in the farm’s horizon setting in this Realm of fiords and mountain, for, like a saviour searchlight, into her mind came: the psalm, “I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from which cometh my help.” After that, she reckoned, around the tipping time, she’d look up “and it was okay.”

Beside her, this lass was simpering and whimpering after reading some romantic tale; she was aching for orchids. The woman, overhearing the whimpering, advised: “Dear, please realise, you are a Teuton of the Aryan race! We’re Yohannesians. You’ll be damned lucky if ever you land up with a bunch of silverbeet!”

“Bewilderment, mother!”, replied the lass, and so up the block to the dairy farm she ran, awaiting further instruction. The lad on the bicycle arriving finally, a factory worker from Halsten, interrupted her to say he was going to board for the week to help round the farm with permission from mother. She asked what he would be having for tea tonight.

“Hawk sandwiches”, replied the city misfit cheerfully. She was horrified.

Growing perplexity, until she probed further, to be told: “Why yes, Black Hawk and boil-up sandwiches — your dear mother’s recipe for us all tonight.”

Posts · by **Yohannes** » Thu Oct 04, 2018 5:52 pm

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10. Die Frau im Reich
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Translated “The Woman in the Realm” for the World Assembly’s Universal Library Coalition, Die Frau im Reich was adopted as the official Realm anthem of the Office of the Yohannesian Emperor in 1871 (melody: link).

On a clear night such as this

she would stand forever,

staring the colourless air

until all in between dissolved

and in her mind’s eye

there would be,

as long ago,

the sharp-toothed, cracked Yohannesian continent

green I flashed with flawless blue,

riding the ice-green sea

the woman in the Realm.

And she grew old,

grew old

bridging the aching distance with a

yearning gaze

until on a day that froze her blood,

the marrow and her very bones

it was so cold,

she turned the rhyme

and through the knife-sharp

glass-exploding haze,

looked up

and with a sudden and surprising final smile

stood to embrace

her long sought wintertime.

Erwin Löffler

Posts · by **Yohannes** » Sun Oct 14, 2018 11:16 pm

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11. Nature’s Creation
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We raided for The Black Hawk once, Jörg Pöppelbaum of Grand Ducal Dali remembers. It had been trapped and taken to an industrial hundred as a novel pet for lads and lasses staring at it for a week, then forgot it. We were staying next door and it worried us to see such a mighty raider in an ordinary native cage. Its eyes haunted us. They didn’t look at anyone or anything but always at far-off, remembered places.

At regional owl-time we slunk into the orchard and raided for The Black hawk, native cage and all.

Then, on returning west to The Lands of Always Winter, the deepest day of days for her. We opened the window and stood back. The Black Hawk looked suspicious. She remained at the back of the native cage and stared up to a high shingle hilltop. Then she grew excited and danced about until she almost fell out of the window.

She lifted her wings but didn’t fly. She stood for a few minutes. She was thinking. She turned a tone over and wiped her golden beak on a native plant, then she hopped up on to a rock and preened her feathers. She seemed to feel that the cage was still about her but that the view had improved.

Several times she raised her wings and dropped them. Perhaps they’d grown weak. I offered a grape on the end of a stick and she took it in an absent-minded way. We decided to leave her and started to scramble down over the rock. She hopped down and followed. “Hey!” I said. “You’re a wild bird, remember?”

My Quertz russling dropped and The Black Hawk made a cloddish dash and grabbed it and went up and away. “Decent of her to wave goodbye, I say”, said my fellow thief, and we watched until the daring little bundle of feathers was lost against the rising smoke. Beyond, the factories and nature’s creation. The scene, the immaculate, bubbling emotion of mankind’s creation, high above the factories of the hundred, and there butcher-packer Speer, beside him a beautiful dark budgie enjoying a stroll with his master, watching.

“Why did she fly away, lad?” A wry twist of a lip from him. “This one clipped his wings a wee while ago. You’ve got yourself a lucky one there.”

A friend returned the native cage secretly, as imperialists always do. May it never hold another raider.

Posts · by **Yohannes** » Wed Oct 17, 2018 4:32 pm

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12. The Lumberjack
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Excitedly, the lad opened the door of the theatre agent, and slapped down a small box with an oath. “I detest it. Could be of some interest to you”, he said with a scowl, opening the box, and there, to the astonishment of the agent, at a miniature piano sat a tiny man who at once boldly struck into The Song of the Realm of Yohannes.

“Colossal! A nationwide sensation I say. Our fortunes are made”, enthused the agent, reaching for agreements and forms in curiosity and delight. “How in the blue blazes did you come to find such a thing?”

The visitor in annoyance slapped down the lid.

The music vanished, to resume again with the little man as active as ever the moment the lid rose. “The heck with him”, said the lad, “a bitter disappointment. You see I was going through the woods. A poor old crone tottering with a great bundle of faggots was making her way towards her hovel. I offered to carry the faggots to her doorstep, and throwing the sticks down there, judge my flabbergasted state when in a cloud of light she turned into an old fairy!”

“‘Kind mortal’, said she, ‘for your act, any wish of yours will be instantly granted.’”

“Aye-aye!” growled the lad, anger renewed, “Just my luck. The old so-and-so must have been deaf. I land up with a nine-inch pianist, who said: ‘I’m a celebrity... get me out of here!’”

“So the first thing every morning and lastly every night, round the way here went the dear old fairy, bending most graciously, hands held together, smiling her blessing and saying to me — and did it lift my spirits — saying to me: ‘Things are f—ing grim.’”

The agent, dumbstruck, inquired as to the status of his occupation before this story. “A bushman from the heartland”, said the lad, “indisputably the home of the empire’s greatest forest workers, who had applied for a position at Forest Yohannes and was asked for my credentials.”

The agent, skeptical of its plausibility, asked: “And what are your credentials?”

“I was a hard-working lumberjack in the hot desert of Hatay”

“But a hot desert has no trees?”

“Correct. Not now.”