After "Danger" [26 October 2006 1400]: if we had not heeded the warning from the young man and continued on that road. – ‘Why shouldn’t they beat us up or kill us if they want to?’, I remembered the thought that had been put to me. After the warning, this spilling over the edge of the frame. – ‘Why shouldn’t anybody beat or kill somebody if they want to?’, I argued out loud. ak resisted, a look of near disgust on his face.
– ‘I mean if they had a reason to. Good reason. Say, because they are poor. The people in that part of the city are probably poor’. I remembered the washing hung on the wild fig tree growing outside the city wall, thin cotton towells and underclothes. ‘Like gypsies. People who live outside the law’.
– ‘There are always consequences in the end’, ak said.
– ‘But if they killed us and hid our bodies’, I presisted. But although we had found a road leading down to where this happened to be, walking on the pavement beside the straight road leading back to Agia Sophia, it was already becoming hard to imagine. Conscience. The unspoken word had arisen simultaneosly, and the shining road leading down beyond the gateway of the old city walls had become invisible again.
mmj