Part one
There was a small land, stuck somewhere on the bottom of the bottom of Europe – or on the top of the top of Africa if you refer to the times of the great, mythical state of Atlantis. Now this small land wasn’t mountainous, with snow capped Alpine peaks rising into the clouds. It wasn’t jungle, with great troupes of howling monkeys hurtling through languorous treetops in pursuit of their own tails. Neither did it have the restless dry of the sand ocean known as Ar Rab’al Khali, whose dunes flow across the earth’s surface for a thousand miles.
This small land had plenty of rock, but no mountains. It had plenty of rabbits, but no monkeys and it had plenty of water, but nothing to drink. So when the first people arrived they were unimpressed. They climbed the great rock and looked out over the sea. They caught some rabbits, which were cooked at a great feast on the beach. Then they splashed around in the shallow sea and wondered where to go next.
A great rainstorm rolled in from the West. They probably didn’t know that was west, because the concept of compass points wasn’t part of their Neanderthal thought process, but they did know they were cold and wet. Near the beach but well above the stormy waves were some deep caves. The tribe retreated into the caves to keep dry and found them to be very good caves. When the storm was over, they returned to the beach and found it strewn with shellfish, washed up by the storm. So they stayed for quite a while, living in the caves and drinking rainwater caught in clefts in the rock. They dined on shellfish, which were easy to find and rabbits, which were harder to catch. But they didn’t build anything.
Many tens of thousands of years later, things had changed. The first people had gone. So had the second people, the third people and probably many other tribes and groups. But plenty had stayed and there were now plenty of monkeys too. One of the arriving groups had brought the monkeys, though nobody could remember who or when and certainly not why.
There were now far more people than monkeys living in the small rocky land. More than could be sustained by shellfish and rabbits, so for centuries they had lived by trade and by being an important stopping point for passing ships. Various arrivals had built many things. There were dockyards and palaces, garages and clinics, apartments and barracks. Not to mention markets and hotels, shops and restaurants, a museum and a concert hall, though they hadn’t really built this, it was in the biggest, most voluminous of the caves. They had even built a desalination plant and reservoir to solve their fresh water problem.
The people had built so many things that the small land was full, apart from the most rocky areas which were too steep for the purpose and anyway belonged to the monkeys. The only spare land was on the sandy area next to the border and they had built their airport there. So the people were pushing out into the sea, reclaiming land, creating flatter, rock free areas for more buildings. They certainly didn’t want to live in the caves.
The monkeys didn’t live in the caves either. They lived on the top of the greatest rock and were admired by all the tourists who arrived in the cruise ships, or who crossed the nearby border to visit the great rock with its famous apes. The fact that the apes weren’t actually apes didn’t seem to matter and the monkeys certainly didn’t care what people called them. They were safe, provided with fresh water and fed daily, by their government. They watched 22 great red towers being built on the reclaimed land below. They didn’t find the spectacle hugely interesting. They certainly didn’t care that the towers were for the people to live in, although they would have understood the idea of living high up, where you could see your enemy coming.
Unfortunately the enemies which attacked the 22 red towers were not very obvious. Although these enemies didn’t attack with aeroplanes, or fire guns or explode bombs, everybody knew they were there. They just didn’t realise they were enemies.
*
No comments:
Post a Comment