The farmers and fishermen on lands and waters both near and far knew that something very serious had occurred. They heard the bad news from the bees, wasps, and birds that took flight and vanished over the horizon, and from the worms that burrowed several feet underground, leaving the fishermen without bait and the chickens without food.
A couple of decades later, a tsunami struck South Asia and gigantic waves swallowed another multitude.
As the tragedy was brewing, when the earth had barely begun to move deep under the sea, elephants raised their trunks and blared desperate laments. No one understood when the beasts broke their chains and stampeded into the jungle.
Flamingos, leopards, tigers, boars, deer, water buffalo, monkeys, and snakes also fled before the disaster.
The only ones to die were the humans and the turtles.
ARNO
Nature had not yet been committed to the insane asylum, but it already suffered from periodic nervous breakdowns that warned of things to come.
At the end of 1966, the Arno River’s dream of having a flood all its own came true, and the city of Florence faced the worst inundation in its entire history. In a single day, Florence lost more than it had in all the bombings of the Second World War.
Soon after, Florentines knee-deep in mud set to rescuing whatever might have survived the shipwreck. There they were, men and women, dripping wet, working, cursing the Arno and all its relatives, when a long truck came barreling past.
The truck carried an enormous body mortally wounded by the flood: the head bounced along over the rear wheels and a broken arm hung over the side.
As the wooden giant passed, men and women put aside their shovels and pails, uncovered their heads, crossed themselves. And in silence they watched it disappear from view.
He too was a son of the city of Florence.
This Jesus crucified, Jesus broken, had been born here seven centuries ago from the hand of Giovanni Cimabue, teacher of Giotto.
GANGES
The great river of India used to bathe not the earth, but the heavens above and beyond. The gods refused to give up the river that brought them water and cool air.
And thus it was until the Ganges decided to move. It moved to India, where it now flows from the Himalayas to the sea, so the living can purify themselves in its waters, and the ashes of the dead may find their destiny.
The sacred river, which took pity on the earthborn, never imagined that it would receive offerings of garbage and poison that would make its life in the world impossible.
THE RIVER AND THE FISH
An old proverb has it that teaching fishing is better than handing out fish.
Bishop Pedro Casaldáliga, who lives in the Amazon, says yes, that is correct, a very good thought. But suppose someone buys the river that had belonged to all and outlaws fishing? Or suppose toxic waste pollutes the river and poisons the fish? In other words, suppose what happens is what is happening now?
THE RIVER AND THE DEER
The oldest book on education was written by a woman.
Dhouda of Gascony wrote Liber Manualis, a manual for her son, in Latin at the beginning of the ninth century.
She did not impose a thing. She suggested, she advised, she showed. One of the pages invites us to learn from deer that “ford wide rivers swimming in single file, one after the other, with the head and shoulders of each resting on the rump of the deer ahead; they support one another and thus are able to cross the river more easily. And they are so intelligent and clever that when they realize the one in the very front is tiring, they send him to the end of the line and another takes the lead.”
THE HANDS OF THE TRAIN
Mumbai’s trains, which transport six million passengers a day, break the laws of physics: more passengers enter them than fit.
Suketu Mehta, who knows about these impossible voyages, says when every jam-packed train pulls out, people run after it. Whoever misses the train, loses his job.
Then the cars sprout hands out of windows or from roofs, and they help the ones left behind clamber aboard. And these train hands do not ask the one running up if he is foreign or native-born, nor do they ask what language he speaks, or if he believes in Brahma or in Allah, in Buddha or in Jesus, nor do they ask which caste he belongs to, if he is from a cursed caste or no caste at all.
DANGER IN THE JUNGLE
Savitri left.
The savage who had heard her call trampled the fence, knocked over the guards, and entered the tent. Savitri broke free of her chains and the two of them disappeared, together, into the jungle.
The owner of the Olympic Circus calculated the loss at about nine thousand dollars and said, to make matters worse, Savitiri’s friend Gayatri was very depressed and refused to work.
At the end of 2007, the fugitive couple was located at the edge of a lake, 150 miles from Calcutta.
The pursuers dared not approach. The male and female elephants had intertwined their trunks.
DANGER AT THE TAP
According to Revelation 21:6, God will create a new world and say:
“I will give unto him that is athirst of the fountain of water of life freely.”
Freely? Meaning the new world won’t make room for the World Bank or the private companies that ply the noble trade in water?
So it seems. Meanwhile, in the old world where we all still live, sources of water are as coveted as oil reserves, and are becoming battlegrounds.
In Latin America, the first water war was the invasion of Mexico by Hernán Cortés. More recently, combat over the blue gold took place in Bolivia and Uruguay. In Bolivia, the people took to the streets and won back their lost water. In Uruguay, the people voted in a plebiscite and kept their water from being lost.
DANGER ON THE LAND
One afternoon in 1996, nineteen landless peasants were shot in cold blood by members of the military police of Pará state in the Brazilian Amazon.
In Pará and in much of Brazil, the lords of the land reign over empty vastnesses, thanks to the right to inheritance or the right to thievery. These property rights give them the right to impunity. Ten years after the massacre, no one is in jail. Not the lords, not their thugs.
But the tragedy did not frighten or discourage the landless farmers. The membership of their organization mushroomed, and so did their will to work the land, even though that is a capital offense and an act of incomprehensible madness.
DANGER IN THE SKY
In the year 2003, a tsunami of people washed away the government of Bolivia.
The poor were sick and tired. Everything had been privatized, even the rainwater. A “for sale” sign had been hung on Bolivia, and they were going to sell it, Bolivians and all.
The uprising shook El Alto, perched above the incredibly high city of La Paz, where the poorest of the poor work throughout their lives, day after day, chewing on their troubles. They are so high up they push the clouds when they walk, and every house has a door to heaven.
Heaven was where those who died in the rebellion went. It was a lot closer than earth. Now they are shaking up paradise.
DANGER IN THE CLOUDS
According to incontrovertible testimony that has reached the Vatican, Antoni Gaudí merits sainthood for his numerous miracles.
The artist who founded Catalan modernism died in 1926, and since then he has cured many who were incurable, found many who were unfindable, and sprinkled jobs and housing everywhere.
The beatification process is under way.
Heaven’s architecture had better watch out, for this chaste puritan who never missed a procession had a pagan hand, evident in the carnal labyrinths he designed for homes and parks.
What will he do with the cloud he is given? Will he not invite us to stroll through Adam and Eve’s innards on the night of the first sin?
INVENTORY OF THE WORLD
Arthur Bispo do Rosario was black and poor, a sailor, a boxer, and, on God’s account, an artist.
He lived in the Rio de Janeiro
insane asylum.
There, seven blue angels delivered an order from the divine: God wants an inventory taken of the world.
The mission was monumental. Arthur worked day and night, every day, every night, until the winter of 1989 when, still immersed in the task, death took him by the hair and carried him off.
The inventory, incomplete, consisted of scrap metal,
broken glass,
bald brooms,
walked-through sneakers,
emptied bottles,
slept-in sheets,
road-weary wheels,
sea-worn sails,
defeated flags,
well-thumbed letters,
forgotten words, and
fallen rain.
Arthur worked with garbage, because all garbage is life lived and from garbage comes everything the world is or has ever been. Nothing intact deserved a listing. Things intact die without ever being born. Life only pulsates in what bears scars.
THE ROAD GOES ON
When someone dies, when his time is up, what happens to the wanderings, desirings, and speakings that were called by his name?
Among the Indians of the upper Orinoco, he who dies loses his name. His ashes are stirred into plantain soup or corn wine and everybody eats. After the ceremony no one ever names the dead person again: the dead one, now living in other bodies, called by other names, wanders, desires, and speaks.
DANGER IN THE NIGHT
Sleeping, she saw us.
Helena dreamed we were waiting in line at an airport.
A long line where every passenger had under the arm the pillow on which he or she had slept the night before.
The pillows were sent through a dream-reading machine.
The machine detected any dangerous dreams that threatened to disturb the peace.
LOST AND FOUND
The twentieth century, which was born proclaiming peace and justice, died bathed in blood. It passed on a world much more unjust than the one it inherited.
The twenty-first century, which also arrived heralding peace and justice, is following in its predecessor’s footsteps.
In my childhood, I was convinced that everything that went astray on earth ended up on the moon.
If not on the moon, where might they be?
Perhaps they were never misplaced.
Perhaps they are in hiding here on earth. Waiting.
INDEX OF NAMES
Abbeville
Abdallah, Susan
Abdullah
Abdullah, Sarhan
Abdullah, Yasmin
ABC
Acapulco
Achaemenes
Acheson, Dean
Achilles
Acosta, Josep de
Acuña, Cristóbal de
Adam
Adams, John
Aegisthus
Aeneas
Aeschylus
Afghanistan
Africa
Agamemnon
Agrippina
Aguilera, Griselda
Akkra
Al Qaeda
Alabama
Aleijadinho the Cripple, see Lisboa, Antonio Francisco
Alexander, Alfonso
Alexander VI
Alexander the Great
Alexandria
Algeria
Alhambra
Ali, Imam
Ali, Muhammad
Al-Khwarizmi, Muhammed
Al-Kamil, Sultan
Allende, Salvador
Al-Ma’arri, Abu Ali
Almagro, Diego de
Alps
Al-Sukkar
Aluzinnu
Alvarado, Pedro de
Álvarez Argüelles, Father Antonio
Alwar, Maharaja of
Ama, José Feliciano
Amazon
Amazons
Ambrose, Saint
Amecameca
American Colonization Society
Americas
Amherst
Amherst, Lord Jeffrey
Amset
Amsterdam
Anaxagoras
Andalusia
Anderson, John Henry
Andes
Andrade, José Leandro
Anenecuilco
Angela of Foligno, Saint
Anti-Imperialist League
Antilles
Antiochus
Apaza, Gregoria
Aphrodite
Apollo
Apollonius, Saint
Aponte, Carlos
Arabia
Ararat, Mount
Archimedes
Arcimboldo, Giuseppe
Ardila Gómez, Rubén
Arenal, Concepción
Argentina
Argos
Arias-Salgado, Gabriel
Aristophanes
Aristotle
Arizona
Arkah
Arles
Armstrong, Louis
Arnaud-Amaury, Archbishop
Arno River
Artemis
Artigas, José
Asera
Asia
Aspasia
d’Aspremont Lynden, Harold
Assisi
Assumar, Count of
Assyria
Astiz, Alfredo
Asturias
Atahualpa
Athena
Athens
Atlanta
Atlantis
Atreus
Augustine, Saint
Augustus
Auschwitz
Austin
Austin, Stephen
Australia
Austria
Averroes
Avicenna
Ayesha
Babel, Isaac
Babylon
Bacchus
Bachelet, Michelle
Baden-Powell, Colonel Robert
Baghdad
Baker, Josephine
Baku
Bakunin, Mikhail
Balestrino, Esther
Balkans
Bangladesh
Barcelona
Barnard, Christian
Baroda, Maharaja of
Bartola
BASF
Basra
Bassa, Ferrer
Bastidas, Micaela
Bastidas, Rodrigo de
Battle, José
Baudelaire, Charles
Bayer
Bayley, George
Beethoven, Ludvig von
Behmai
Beijing
Belgium
Bell, hermanos, see Brontë, sisters
Benedict XVI
Bengal
Berger, John
Berlin
Bernard, Saint
Bernardo de Tolosa
Bernhardt, Sarah
Bertelsmann
Betances, Ramón
Bethlehem
Beveridge, Albert
Bezerra, João
Béziers
Bharatpur, Mahraja of
Bhopal
Bierce, Ambrose
Bingen
Bioho, Domingo
Bismarck
Black Hills
Black Panthers
Black Sea
Blumenbach, Johann Friedrich
Boccaccio
Boeotia
Bogotá
Bolden, Buddy
Bolivia
Bolívar, Simón
Bologna
Bombay
Bonaparte, Napoleon
Bonhoeffer, Dietrich
Borges, Jorge Luis
Borgia, Rodrigo, see Alexander VI Born, Bertrand de
Borromeo, Carlo
Bosch
Bosch, Hieronymus
Bosporus
Boss, Hugo
Boston
Botticelli, Sandro
Bouzid, Saâl
Bowring, John
Bragança y Bourbon, Pedro de Alcântara Francisco Antônio João Carlos Xavier de Paula Miguel Rafael Joaquim José Gonzaga Pascoal Cipriano Serafim de, see Pedro I
Brandenburg, Archbishop of
Brazil
Brecht, Bertolt
Brillat-Savarin, Jean Anthelme
British Museum
Brontë sisters
Brooklyn
Brunete
Bruno, Giordano
Brussels
Brutus, Marcus
Büchner, Georg
Buckingham, Duke of
Buenos Aires
Buffalo Bill
Bukharin, Nikolai
Bull of Heaven
Bülow, Chancellor von
Burkina Faso
Bush, George
Bush, George W.
Bush, Prescott
Byron, Ada
Byron, Lord
Byzantium
Cádiz
Caeiro, Alberto
Cairo
Calcutta
California
Callender, James
Callixtus III
Calvin, John
Cambodia
Campaoré, Blaise
Campos, Álvaro de
Cancuc
Cang Jie
Cangas
Canning, George
Capetown
Capua
Carabanchel Prison
Caribbean
Carlos, John
Caron, George
Carrera, José Miguel
Cartagena de Indias
Carter, Robert
Carvallo, Luis Alfonso de
Casaldáliga, Pedro
Casasola, Augustín Víctor
Cascais
Cascia
Caspian Sea
Cassandra
Castañega, Father Martín de
Castelli, Juan José
Castile
Castro, Fidel
Catamarca