(…) – The world of trees leaves me perplexed, Your Highness. It is full of fear and mystery, of ghosts and demons. You can’t look forward, you feel surrounded. It’s dark. The sun’s rays are lost in the twilight of the trunks, and in the twilight everything appears unreal. No, I don’t like trees. The shadow of the woods oppresses me, and the rustle of the branches saddens me. I love simple things: wind, sand and stones. The desert is as simple as the stripping of a sword, while the forest is as complicated as the Gordian knot. In the woods I feel lost, His Highness.
Dadiani looked at me with a thoughtful air. – You have the soul of a desert man – concluded. – Perhaps this is the only real division that exists between human beings: men of the forest and men of the desert. The arid intoxication of the East comes from the desert, where the warm wind and burning sand inebriate men, where the world is simple and without problems. The woods are full of questions. Only the desert does not ask, does not give and does not promise. But the fire of the soul comes from the forest.
The man of the desert, I realize, has only one face, he knows only one truth, and this truth satisfies him. Instead, the man of the forest has many faces. The fanatic comes from the desert, the creator from the woods.
Perhaps this is the essential difference between East and West – (…)
by ‘Alì e Nina’ | Kurban Said
