Who am I: Number IX
Homily: A person leaves home and searches the world over, in order to find what he needs .. only to return home and find it.
There is a wonderful version of this scenario in the Arabian Nights.
A man, in Cairo, disillusioned with life, dreams of fabulous riches ... eventually he dreams that these riches really do await him .. in a far city .. in Baghdad. Despite the pleas and anxiety of his family and friends the man makes up his mind to travel to Baghdad. This is a journey beset with peril.
After a terrible and life threatening journey the man arrives in Baghdad, alone, and now penniless. He finds it is a cold, friendless and hostile city. Unable to find shelter, hungry, at last he lays down in an alley and falls asleep. The police patrol find him, chain him, and drag him off to their commander, a cruel and heartless man. By way of introductory interrogation he is beaten ruthlessly with a bastinado. (a type of cane, used to thrash the soles of the feet. causes incredible pain)
Under this harsh treatment, his will collapses and he confesses to his foolishness in following a dream to Baghdad. The Commander is derisory, mocking, scathing, and calls the man a 1000 types of fool. He himself, the commander, also has these foolish dreams, everyone does, but he is not so simple minded as to pursue them. Why, one of his dreams is of a particular tree, in a particular place, in a particular street, in a particular town, and buried beneath this tree is the riches that would make 100 merchants happy. But they are dreams and only fools pursue them, the commander is not a fool.
The man is told by the commander that he must leave Baghdad within 24 hours or he will be arrested again and executed.
The man does not wait 24 hours but leaves immediately, and he goes by day and night, and he does not stop going until he reaches Egypt, reaches Cairo, and back to his own home. His family are overjoyed to see him as they thought they would never see him again. But he does not waste time with the frivolities of greetings, brushes his family off, and passes thru the house, picks up an axe and marches out into his backyard where that Tree the Commander described, has been growing there since time immemorial. He chops the tree down and digs up the treasure and lives happily ever after.
There's no place like home ... or so our 'collective cognitive dissonance' seems to tell us ... Haaaa
Who am I:
I am a young woman. I may be a fictional character. I leave home and find myself in an unfamiliar land and, arriving in difficulty, I kill the first person I come across, another woman. Friendless, and feeling outcast, I team up with three no-hopers, outcasts from this society. We form a gang and kill again.
I live in this place for a considerable time. I learn greatly from my experiences and eventually return home to enjoy and appreciate the things that previously I had taken for granted as just part of humdrum life.
Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home.
(Google iz allowed)
