Her name is
Esther; she is a war correspondent who has just returned from Iraq because of
the imminent invasion of that country; she is thirty years old, married,
without children. He is an unidentified male, between twenty-three and
twenty-five years old, with dark, Mongolian features. The two were last seen in
a café on the Rue du Faubourg St-Honoré.
The police
were told that they had met before, although no one knew how often: Esther had
always said that the man—who concealed his true identity behind the name Mikhail—was
someone very important, although she had never explained whether he was
important for her career as a journalist or for her as a woman.
The police
began a formal investigation. Various theories were put forward—kidnapping, blackmail,
a kidnapping that had ended in murder—none of which were beyond the bounds of
possibility given that, in her search for information, her work brought her
into frequent contact with people who had links with terrorist cells. They
discovered that, in the weeks prior to her disappearance, regular sums of money
had been withdrawn from her bank account: those in charge of the investigation
felt that these could have been payments made for information. She had taken no
change of clothes with her, but, oddly enough, her passport was nowhere to be
found.
He is a
stranger, very young, with no police record, with no clue as to his identity.
She is
Esther, thirty years old, the winner of two international prizes for
journalism, and married.
My wife.
(the above fragment is from the first chapter of The Zahir by Paulo Coelho)
(the above fragment is from the first chapter of The Zahir by Paulo Coelho)
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| Cover `The Zahir´ |
Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,
Welcome at a new month of Carpe Diem Haiku Kai in which we will read The Zahir by Paulo Coelho, while traveling through the wonderful nature around the Altai Mountains. Above you have read a fragment from The Zahir a story of obsession and trying to become free ...
The Zahir is a wonderful novel and for sure worth reading and it fits our theme very good. As you maybe can remember back in 2014 we made a trip by train straight through the former USSR and we read Aleph also a novel by Paulo Coelho.
This month we will return to part of that journey, The Altai Mountains, for a lot of people in Central Asia very sacred, because of the appearance of a rock-carving, a stag beetle.
Today I love to start with a fragile prompt ... frosted grass. During the biggest part of the year the Altai Mountains are clothed in the image of winter. It can be very cold trhough the year and frosted grass is often seen even in the middle of summer.
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| Credits: frosted grass |
frosted grass around the yurt
puffs of breath
© Chèvrefeuille
And another one also inspired on this first prompt of our new Carpe Diem month:
hoarfrost
on the grass
melts in the early sunlight
life passes
© Chèvrefeuille
melts in the early sunlight
life passes
© Chèvrefeuille
This episode is NOW OPEN for your submissions and will remain open until November 3rd at noon (CET). I will try to post our next episode, Yaks, later on. For now .... have fun!
