How vain we are to think that we are capable of destroying things - either by our actions or inactions - what has taken millennia to build. Egypt, for one; our own country for another; the world. How self-important! Mere ants on an anthill.
Dresden was bombed to smithereens, and today it is the thriving metropolis it was always destined to be. Hiroshima was laid waste by the atom bomb and today it glitters like a rare jewel at night.
Egypt too has existed forever it seems. Recent upheavals will be but a footnote in texts tracing Egypt’s eternal history a hundred years from now. In all that time, swallows will continue to escape the unforgiving winters in the north and migrate to the land of the Pharaohs, alighting on the pyramids, ‘flying up and down the Nile, and talking to the large lotus-flowers… they will go to sleep in the tomb of the great King. The King is there himself in his painted coffin. He is wrapped in yellow linen, and embalmed with spices. Round his neck is a chain of pale green jade, and his hands are like withered leaves.”
The peasants will continue to scratch some semblance of livelihood from the dry desert sands. And all will be as it ever was after the sirocco of news print has passed and the dust has settled.
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Italics from Oscar Wilde’s ‘The Happy Prince’.
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