chapter 1 (continued)

Hassan was a man; that was the least that could be said about him, and something that cannot be said about many of the gender but not of character, walking around on this planet at the same point in time and space. He was a man of his and other people’s word, some one who had never had to work, by choice or by compulsion. He wasn’t in habit of whimpering for everything he wanted or desired, even though most of what he wanted he could have, at least the material wished could easily be fulfilled with what his family had. There was a time when he fell in love with the Alps, wanted them to be available to him in his city, which was half a planet across. Of course such foolish wishes are not readily granted. He could have had it, provided he shifted there himself, but he didn’t, he wanted the alps to be in his back yard and no one could take the right to wish away from him.
He wasn’t deliberately eager to please other people, he was just that way, and he was an earnest person who went whichever way you wanted him to. Maybe because at times he never had a direction in his own mind to go in, he was the kind of guy who would blindly go where no man or woman would go before him.
For thousands of years man has evolved; born, grown, failed and succeeded, built pyramids which are effectively the most elaborate houses of the dead and nothing more but mere graves. Awe inspiring to some but nothing more than mere graves, signifying only one fatal reality; death. To Hassan that was pretty much a decent thought and I agreed, but I still thought that the pyramids if not a wonder were very well constructed buildings. You could make them palaces or shelter homes, but we humans are so intent of preservation of the past that we seem to forget the present. Every year millions are spent on rejuvenation of pre-historic artifacts but it is never thought that while we preserve our history we lose a bit of humanity, as it exists now. None of us ever stop to think why the pyramids effectively glorious graves stand yet we struggle to find the remains of the magnificent palaces that existed with them. Why has time preserved tombs instead of glorious palaces, why do we persist on calling the houses of the dead the glory of the past yet fail to see that the glory is past, and does not exist anymore than the dead lying in the graves they built for themselves.
Something to do with cherishing what is past or could not transpire, same with the first love of everyone’s life, whether you get it or not, whether you lose or gain from it, thoughts of it follow you even through darkness, through places where your shadow leaves your wake.