Mirrors (85 page)

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