Cheetah's Worth Words

They’ve been fighting for as long as anyone recalls. The matter in question isn’t known to anyone anymore. The books are different, the motives are similar. They wear traditional outfits on both sides. They have the same belief: that them only are allowed to stay there, to worship in those walls. Jerusalem is still the center of attraction. Like in the Crusades, pilgrims and soldiers are walking to the ancient city to pray, live, build houses of God. They say their God is the one, supreme and omnipotent. They prepare the land, they build colonies, moving the locals out by force. The others try to respond, use every way they know of. Violence is one of them. Suicide bombings, stone throwing, kidnapping and ransoming. Power is in the balance like religion is in their hearts. They think they’re doing the greater good, whatever damages it may costs.

Jews and Muslims are fighting over a piece of desert. Some have always been hunted and despised through history, the other ones have had a strong hand on the entire region for dozens of centuries. One day the most powerful countries decided it was enough and gave Jews a piece of land next to the Mediterranean Sea. Jerusalem was to stay open and free to everyone to settle. But people started thinking that the land was too small, that colonies were necessary outside Israel. Thus began the colonisation of Arab soil. And the anger on each side grew more intense with every construction site, every brick and every wall. But Israel had help from the US, Europe, Russia. Palestinians on the other hand had the whole Arab world with them. For more than sixty years now it’s been like a second cold war all over again, with kids dying, entire families bombed off in their living-rooms, tanks quashing entire neighbourhoods. People are dying on both sides. Media is covering the wreckage of the Middle-East but other countries try not to get involved, interests on each side being tense and complicated. Arabs own most of the world’s oil, Israelis have contacts in almost any major city of the globe. History would dictate us to support the cause of the Jews, but on the other hand look at how they treat Palestinians that are just trying to protect land they’ve inherited from their forefathers. Seeing the big rich houses move towards them, crushing their vineyards or olive fields. Young people throw rocks at the construction workers, weak ones get enrolled and end up making themselves martyr of a religion they don’t totally understand. Fanatism preaches on both sides, religion once again spoiling what could have been a beautiful country, a haven for the forsaken and the lost.

Jerusalem, city of three religions, now torn down to shreds by the stubbornness of  violent religious groups, being the Hamas or Hezbollah. One day maybe these people will sit down and manage to come to a final rendition, the end of violence. These countries have suffered enough. It’s time for them to understand that to live in peace they have to live together, with tolerance and open-mindedness in their hearts. One God, only one, the Torah and the Koran are but two views of the same values, the same beliefs. “Love your neighbour and he’ll love you back”. One day maybe our children might witness such miracle in Jerusalem.

It is a common belief to think that elephants participate in pilgrimages in what is now referred to as an Elephant Cemetery. Time to ruin every one’s wild imagination: there are no such things.

The explanation is quite simple, it lies in the very being of elephants. They are born with four sets of six molar teeth, lodged at the back of each half-jaw. Growing up, they chew on these molars and they grind out, leaving a smooth surface that falls out and is then replaced by a new teeth. When they get to seventy (for the lucky ones not butchered), they run out of working teeth and wander around, looking for spots with tender grasses and weeds. Eventually, they end up in marshes or swamps or riverbeds to die there of hunger when their rotten teeth cannot chew anything, even the most tender of aquatic plants. After decades, all the elders have ended up in those kind of places. Their bodies get scavenged by wultures, lions, jackals and hyaenas and such opportunists. Their bones licked dry, their tusks taken away by park rangers to be stored somewhere in case the ivory market reopens.

Those huge white skeletons attract inevitably elephants passing nearby while looking for food. They, in hierarchical order, approach and touch the ancestors, remembering a friend, a passing stranger, a relative. Their smell is nothing compared to their memory (thsi part is no myth), and they can tell the difference between a total stranger’s carcass and some elephants they knew. Scientists have even watched  elephants covering dead relatives with branches, pulling out whole bushes from the damp ground. Some kind of early belief in an after life or just a sign of respect towards death. Who knows.

The strongest moment I ever witnessed related with elephants when we spotted a young female who had given birth the a couple of days before was staggering to stay with the group. At the back of the march, she was waiting for her almost newborn calf to catch up. The matriarch, knowing food was near and hearing us from far, had kept walking. We thought the mother and her baby would get lost (she was quite young and probably didn’t know her way to that particular waterhole yet). But then three young females from the group emerged from the nearing treeline: sisters, cousins… who cares. They helped the young elephant to walk straight, one one each side, holding him with their bellies. The last one stepped behind him and pushed him/her gently with her trunk. It helped, the five of them got back to the rest of the family and arrived together at the waterhole. Elephants. Emotion, family, solidarity. An example some could follow.

Drove to work early. That’s half past four in the morning. Clear sky. Stars and such. Absent traffic.

Looked out the building around eight. Pure snow. Cotton air. No visibility. Till eleven, like damp smoke out there. Must have been a hell of a drive for people out thee I thought. I didn’t really care. Summer is over, that’s now official. Wet and white mist, thick as a mountain of cocaine. Strange shadows on the sidewalk. Like Chinese shades over a pot of boiling water. Kept working. Glanced out once in a while. No evolution. Cars’ and trucks’ lights dimming in the fog, like aliens’ eyes in the ‘whiteness’.

Left work a 1 pm. Clear blue sky. Sunny and hot. Summer is not so far behind us it seems after all.

He was born with three eyes. Two regular ones on each side of his nose like everyone else. One on the back of his head. Thus a peripheric vision. Laughed at as a child, he then took self-confidence classes, martial arts training and became expert in the art of fighting. He grew up a shy teen, hiding his abnormality with long hair, they were the Cobain years anyway so no one really cared about his looks. When he joined the NYPD, his third eye became a huge advantage. he could spot people all around him without turning his head. He had a vision like a chameleon’s almost, more than three-dimensioned. Anticipating actions and his enemies moves saved his life more than once, and he helped many fellow officers escape dangerous situations.

But one day he made the biggest mistake of his life. He went there once every two month. The man was an old friend of his father, the place not too far on foot. This time it was someone else. The man had died the previous week of lung cancer. Replacement looked fine, a young guy in his late twenties, clean hands and professional tools like any of his profession. He sat in the chair, looked at himself in the mirror. In two months it had grown quite long, hiding his back eye. One could only guess by the slight bulge under the hair.

The man took his scisors and started trimming. Fast and efficient, our friend didn’t even think something could happen. The hand slipped, the blade ripped on a soft surface and the man stopped immediately: not understanding what had just happened. He lost his third eye that day. He lost his accuracy and work value. He lost his job a couple months after that, having built his whole career on his special ability. But his body was one of a normal man now, he could shave his head, go out, meet girls, his scar will disappear, he’ll make up a  story. No one has to know. No monster.

The bush is hot and dry. Most of the wildlife is asleep. Not all. A strange creature crosses the empty river-bed. Tail in the air, chasing flies and indicating direction to the younger ones, the mother of three runs accross the sand, always watching out for predators, may the come from the sky or the riverbanks.

She looks proud, like a prom queen on the big night, her head tilted high and her hairy chin showing the way. Her tiny tusks springing from her lower jac gives her a ferocious look. Tiny for us but lethal to most predators. Only the males really get big, the females are about the size of a piglet. Single-lined, the four cousins of our pigs run for cover, the fresh shadow of the green northern bank of the river. There the grass is tender – or at least their mother told them so.

They do stink sometimes from all the mud-bathing and feces spreading. They are curious and excited animals, always running from point A to point B for no apparent reason. A line of orange or light-brown hair following the back-spine, a bony tail with a ridiculous tuft of hair, hooves that almost leave no trace on their paths, and those terrifying tusks that seem so big for such small animals. The young ones are taught how to behave like they were kings of this world, head high, muscles out and tail chasing the clouds, pacing fast, going around their kingdom with that look of grandeur in the eyes.

Farting it goes, the warthog, not caring about others. We might see an ugly and stinky animal but, confident in their superiority, they’ve kept running through the African wilderness for thousands of years of evolution and have remained the same : never dominated – “Hogs Hogs Hogs!”

Can’t you see it?

I might appear young and fearless, adventurous and hazardous in my choices sometimes. But I can see it now, clearly as the sun setting over the city’s high buildings. A child is coming, it will change everything. The big picture. A family, friends and relatives still around, tightening the bond. Family SUV, house in the suburbs, a dog in the yard, a steady job somewhere waiting for me to join. A loving wife and wonderful children to come. A flat-screen television, a brand new computer every couple of years, a bank account and some savings here and there. A lawn-mower and gardening tools, a fully equiped kitchen and modern bathroom with bath-tub and shower. All these things that may appear unreal today will come. The big picture.

A way to look at things differently, a broader way to open your mind, to embrace with one glance the whole story of your life. To gather up all that you’ve done and find a logical, practical yet melodious harmony in all this. Travels and bankruptcy, shit jobs and rewarding ones, loved ones passed away and new ones being born. Futile equipment bought and tons of unnecessary furniture, empty boxes. The whole package that makes one’s life unique, the entourage that we build – to resist everything or so we hope. People around us, may they be present, caring and sharing. The cars we drive strong and safe and roadworthy, the words we assemble in these pages worth more than peanuts to them, to us. The big picture. An eighty years movie trailer of life, an example to follow (or not) for those who’ll come after us, a model of honesty, tolerance and trust.

The Big Picture. There’s no better view of the future, there’s none other commitment stronger or more lasting than this one. A promise to all and to oneself always to live according to values, codes and ethics. To  life at its core. To love and all that it brings of joy, surprises and discoveries. The Big Picture.

The smell of freshly cut grass or asphalt after a summer rain.

Sunset over baobab trees or sunrise over ocean dunes.

Hot coffee after lunch or first cigarette after breakfast.

No leaves in the trees, a red and orange carpet on the ground.

No sound from it yet, but a bulging belly.

No one in sight for now, but you’re all I long for.

Life beginning, a part of us, Nature’s gift.

The sun is high in the cloudless sky. The heat is killing, shrinking shadows to a mere spot on the dusty ground. No rain for weeks and the elders have called up a meeting. The shade of the baobab is the center of the village and the chosen point for all discussions. Sitting on their ankles African-style, the men start to talk. Some have ideas, some just sit and listen. Most of them are over seventy, with more then one wife and a dozen grown-up sons and daughters, myriads of grand-children. Their salt-and-pepper beards are a sign of wisdom, their shaved head one of devotion. But the gods haven’t been good to them this year. The crops are dying of dehydration and the cows and goats have gone missing or are scarily thin.

Children are running around, sending dust towards the baobab. No one rises to keep them quiet, no voice arises from the crouching assembly. Their mothers are out in the bush collecting what they can find of berries and roots and eatable leaves and twigs. Their fathers have been gone for more than a month with the cattle, trying to find a spot with water and green vegetation. Everything around the huts seems burnt down, as if the fearful hand of God had set fire to this part of earth. The burning sun provides the younger ones with the miracle of mirages. They imagine far away on the horizon an endless sea with flamingos and swimming goats and cows, wading in those waters until their skin wrinkles and shrink.

But the clouds are coming, in vast numbers. That’s what the elders come to as a conclusion of their day under the huge tree. The weather will get better by the end of the month. If not they might have to sacrifice a cow or two but they hope they won’t have to come up to that. They can’t see this far but indeed, far East, from the coast pf the Indian Ocean, huge black clouds are forming, assembling under not a baobab but a clear blue sky. Soon they will enter the land of the elders and pour down their awaited-for water. Wait under the baobab, sitting on your feet, chin tucked in between your knees, salvation is near.

They go round and round, showing off their new bride, their new ride. Flashing their cash at whoever’s watching. “Those huge sunglasses on that nose, won’t cover up for the emptiness inside that head of yours, you know”. You know what they say sometimes: “Giant SUVs are not only for tight-minded people”. Well, they most often are. And he drives around, cruising the town like a lion its pack of lionesses: as a conqueror.

Big guys like things big, you’ll say “easy one!”. Big watch at their wrists, big diamond rings at their girlfriend’s fingers, big house with swimming pool, six-cars garage, jacuzzi, king-size beds and king-size fridge. They would eat as much as a whole village of Ethiopians would eat, drink the same amount of alcohol as a Siberian middle town and smoke not, because smoking is bad for your health. Junk food and booze aren’t, the government didn’t tell them so.

Big guys are quite often small in size but their ego goes out both windows of their ultra-large-wheeled pick-up trucks. Their friends call them Eddy or Bobby or Tony or even Rocky, their girlfriends and wives babe or honey. Their entourage seems to exist for the sole reason of money and profit. Big guys are alone in the end, spread on that king-size mattress, obese, diabetic and dying of liver failure. Who’s the big guy now?