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A feeling you can’t deny

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Love may be the prize or just the price.
Something you find at the end of the road,
or something you need to sacrifice to catch another ride.
So love may be the aim or just an escapade.
Yet, love is never that unperceived guest.
It comes and makes you forget how to live without it,
It walks in to flip everything upside down.
to make you unable to grasp what hit you for a while:
Your mind will get twisted as if you had just finished a whole bottle of wine
Everything will look like a disastrous scene after a hurricane,
Nothing in order, nothing in place…

When the hurricane shifts to make landfall
When the waves get high and the water gets rough
and it keeps raining incessantly while everything is falling apart,
You can either resist and hold on to stay on the shore
or let go and get driven away by the flow.
Then you will either die or be reborn,
get a new start or just meet your doom.
You can never know what’s waiting on the other side unless you jump.
But what will make someone so reckless to jump in such a pitfall?
Is it just curiosity, vanity or can life be so unbearable
that death can no longer make one fearful?

To my mind, what’s scarier than death itself,
is dying on your own.
No one wants to die alone, after all,
It’s just that not anyone can push that sickening feeling of loneliness away.
It takes someone that makes you feel special and loves you unconditionally.
Someone who will never let you down,
who will love you at all costs, at your best and your worst.
Someone who can make you laugh at your lowest
and pushes you till you reach your limits.
Someone you can’t help but think about them all the time
whose sight makes your eyes shine like a million burning stars.
Someone that will make you so happy like you’ve never been before,
even in the midst of a raging storm…

Love has always been the happy ending of every fairytale,
a beautiful far-off daydream that’s hard to reach in the everyday grind.
Yet it may simply be an illusion, a source of confusion,
a fantasy that’s being commercially capitalized and used to poison our minds.
Love, is it that sweet guest that comes and changes everything for the best?
We all want to be somebody to someone else
as the only happiness is to love and be loved.
But how far will one go for the sake of this quest for love?
Maybe will it cost more than one can ever afford
As you might lose yourself in the pursuit of it….

However, once you lose yourself, no one else will ever succeed at making you feel whole or found or home.
We all crave love at times, when this epic world wonders, which we all ponder.
How can something be so breath-taking and reviving at once!

Love makes you wish upon every falling star,
it makes you believe that flying is possible and that the sky can’t be the limit
Love is that indescribable muse you can never define,
However, when in its blissful abyss, you can tell.

Sometimes, you can love so fiercely that you lose yourself.
Try so hard to please someone that you can no longer recognize yourself.
Love isn’t meant to be painful,
it isn’t about doing your hardest
it isn’t about following someone else’s path…
True love is about putting someone above you only because you know they’d do the same too.
True love is an evasion from the world’s brutality,
it shouldn’t be ruth itself.
Instead, lose yourself in art, in the haze of new horizons,
in the stories, and the lessons, it has to teach you.
But never lose yourself in the pursuit of love.
Never lose yourself to gain someone else.

As long as the sun burns in the sky
And the moon casts its light in the dark of the night
Never lose hope…
Life may be cruel
But don’t close your heart
Miracles happen in the least expected times.
Beware but don’t keep your guards too high
As guards won’t keep you from getting hurt, but from living your life.

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weekly stories

Chapter 3 : Odysseus, The Fever of war.

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The heavy wooden door slowly opened to a vast candlelit hall. My gaze slowly adjusted to the dancing lights as they shimmered and burned on the tall onyx walls. The lack of a throne and the absence of courtsmen were the only things that shifted the thought of it being a room of royalty, yet everything else pointed to such. The hall seemed to go on for miles and nothing indicated an end to it, and what seemed to be a hundred tapestries hung down on either side of me. Their presence was mighty, as the colours of every tapestry were highlighted by the flame of the massive sconces that adorned the walls. They radiated life and I half thought they could speak, until they did.

 

All tapestries were knit with a scene of a heroic story, and as the door closed behind me, the eyes on every character of each story shifted towards me. The silence of the hall broke as they all started to whisper in unison. I must return to Ithaca, shrieked a man on every tapestry that seemed to be a part of all of them. The scene made me jolt with shock, but eventually my ears were accustomed to the murmur of the pictures and I made myself walk to see what secrets they hold.

 

The first tapestry on my right depicted a young man in his early twenties standing beneath a tall olive tree. His long auburn hair draped broad muscular shoulders that portrayed a life of labour and his beard framed a distinctive square jaw. His crimson tunic was tied to his waist with a golden belt and his black hooded cape brushed the hill he stood on as he looked down on a great field filled with cattle.On his back hung a mighty oaken bow with gilded tips and a quiver full of arrows. His eyes flamed with a sense of wits and cunning, and as locked his eyes with mine, he seemed to read into my soul. He smiled amicably as he started to speak.

“Greetings, friend. Do you require guidance?”

“Guidance is the only thing I require. But first, may I ask you who you are? I must admit your appearance is quite puzzling.” I answered, looking forward to his response.

“My apologies.” laughed the man, “I am not the shepherd you might think I am, if only that were true. I am Odysseus, Son of Laertes and Prince of Ithaca.”

“And why does someone of royalty need to tend to goats and sheep?” I asked as my intrigue grew.

“If you spoke to a prince of Mycenae in this manner, they would have your tongue in pieces before the end of your sentence.” replied Odysseus smiling, “But this is not Mycenae. My father taught me to know my land in order for me to rule it. Besides, I grew fond of these fields, the peace helps me think.”

“And what trouble do you have on your mind?” I asked.

“The war, my dear friend. A great war is coming and I am to be asked to hold a vow I took nigh on ten years ago. To be truthful, I am not keen on fighting. I am accustomed to the dull life of Ithaca and I do not wish to die only for bards to sing about me to kings I do not know. Heroic deeds are for the foolish and the mad.” sighed the prince as he answered.

 

But you are dead, I thought as I smiled sadly to the young hopeful soul of Odysseus. I decided not to broach the subject and I started walking down the hall to see the rest of the tapestries. The whispers grew louder as I slowly strolled and looked at the marvels of Odysseus’ life. One portrayed the prince wrestling with a boar that had his tusk thrusted deep into his leg. His first taste of battle, I thought bitterly. Another showed Odysseus with his great bow in his arms and an arrow piercing the eye of a wolf sixty yards away. Quite a man, I remarked and my eyes darted to a tapestry showing two men that looked like nothing but the highest of kings, puzzled at the look of Odysseus as he seemed to feign madness. What war can be so dreadful to make a prince act like a fool? I pondered, then I saw the one right next to it, with the picture of the prince ending his charade as he looked at his young children standing in front of a running carriage.

 

And so Odysseus took up arms and armour and sailed to war. My heart broke bit by bit as I saw the once Shepherd Prince of Ithaca grow wearier and warier as the years turned. His auburn hair started to whiten little by little as new scars marked his body on every new tapestry, each with its own story, and the whispers grew into screams with every step of my walk. I saw him wrestling heroes thrice his size and locked in arms with a dozen warriors. He appeared calm when other kings were in fits of rage and he looked stern when disciplining his men. As the war made other kings into heroes, it made Odysseus into a soldier.

 

I walked further down, witnessing the atrocities of a war that never seemed to end. Visions of dismembered bodies and rotten flesh made my skin crawl as I saw what the gods have inflicted upon the greek. I saw plagues turn kings into hollow corpses and bring the youth to their deathbeds before they saw the world. Dreams shattered and hopes crumbled and Odysseus stood vigil, and slowly his soul kept on fading. 

 

Then I stood staring at the mighty Trojan Horse, standing high on the ruins of Troy. the city burned and Odysseus’ eyes burned with it. The Best of the Greeks, he was named after the death of Achilles, and he wore the title like a badge of honour. The war went on for ten bitter years and what would become of the Shepherd Prince was a matter I was aching to discover.

 

My feet began to pick up pace as I made my way down the hall. I must return to Ithaca, rang like bells in my head, half driving me to madness, and the fires started to dim as Odysseus set sail and embarked on his journey home. I could see a thousand dreams in his broad smile and the laughter of his men, but his eyes betrayed a sense of sadness that I could not understand. Unease pushed me closer to the tapestry and words I did not think to say slipped through my lips.

“Congratulations on a war well fought, Prince Odysseus.” I initiated. 

“I haven’t been a prince for ten years.” he replied, smiling, as his eyes locked with mine. “A decade listening to the barking of Menelaus and Agamemnon and you forget you are royalty. But now all is done and soon, if the gods are good, I once again will be the prince of goats and rocks.”

“May the winds be fair to you and your own.” I sincerely wished, as the thrill of his story made me forget my death and his.

“If they are not, my dear wife Penelope would fight Zeus himself for a fast voyage. God I miss her, and little Telemachus would be a grown man by now.” He daydreamed, and as I saw that the tapestries did not end, sadness pushed me from answering and I walked away from the tapestry. 

 

The whispers started to ebb as I watched his journey through seas that did not seem to end. The tapestries put forth a story that was a harsher hell for Odysseus than the underworld could ever be. His men kept on dying one by one as they fought with cannibals and Cyclopes. Hunger withered their strength and the storms of the Mediterranean Sea sealed their fate. They landed on a hundred islands and none of them Ithaca, as the winds disoriented them like they were toys for the gods. They found kindness in witches and slavery in Nymphs. Sleep was scarce, for Odysseus no longer trusted his own soldiers. A soldier who never left the war, I thought sourly. 

 

As I watched Odysseus turn grey with age and hardship, the black walls of the cave seemed to shake with the sound of pounding heartbeats. I felt like the hall almost came to an end, for the fires almost turned to cinders. Near the end, I was met with a tapestry that would have broken my heart to pieces if I had one. The fates made it so Odysseus was to see the Underworld before his own demise. I saw the Prince of Ithaca on the edge of this hideous realm, surrounded by the souls of all the soldiers that fought beside him. He saw Ajax, Achilles, Patroclus and every warrior lost in the battles of Troy, and all looked more alive than Odysseus. The pounding heart thundered mightily and I knew that the Best of the Greeks carried their memory on his shoulders every way he went.

 

The fires died out on my long march down the hall and I knew he reached the end. Feelings of both grief and thrill rose through me, for I desperately wanted to know if the poor soldier returned to his home. The last tapestry hanging down the walls of Odysseus’ shrine was the biggest, and with it the heartbeats sounded like drums of war. The prince that dreamed of being a shepherd was once again standing on the hills of Ithaca. His hair was bleached with the horrors he endured and his back was bent with decades of loss and sorrow. His battle scars were covered in armour and he could not keep still as he paced around with his rusty sword in hand. Tears streamed down my cheeks as I reluctantly approached the King of Ithaca.

I must return to Ithaca!” yelled Odysseus with the harshest of voices.

“But you made it, King Odysseus, you made it to your home.” I replied gravely.

“No, no, no, not this barren island. This is not my home. The hills, they do not feel the same. I cannot find peace beneath these trees and so this must not be Ithaca. Wherever I run, I hear them. A thousand hearts beating like hammers in my head and I cannot stop them. I cannot stay in these lands any longer. Athena has not called upon me in years and I long for her callings. I prayed and I prayed for peace, yet no god has blessed me, why didn’t they? I was the Best of the Greeks and I must return to Ithaca, Ithaca, Ithaca…” there was madness in his words as he spoke, and I knew Odysseus was no longer.

I jumped away from the tapestry, as my mind can no longer handle the cruel stream of thought that haunts Odysseus through every moment of his death. The war ended in Troy but it lived on in Odysseus, and who were unlucky enough to survive it. He was shaped by battle and broken by grief, and I closed my eyes and prayed long for this soldier to finally find his peace.

 

 

Written by : Hachem Saihi.

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