Diversity

May I paraphrase the wisdom of famous political prisoner and convict John Mitchel, born to the son of a Unitarian Presbyterian minister on the Ulster border, transported to Tasmania, escaped to the U.S.
"Australia has two kinds of people and they are not Christians and Muslim. They are those who profiit by Australia's diversions and those who suffer for them"
Flattened By A Falafel
Tom Keneally

I am Philothei (7)

My mother had been making recel, and I was a little sick from eating so much of it. She used more grapes than most people, and extra sugar, and I’d put a lot of it on to bread, because that day there was new baking, and that’s why I was queasy.

I went outside to breathe away the sickness and it was getting dark, and it was just about to rain so that everyone else had gone indoors and was wondering whether or not it was dark enough to warrant lighting the lamps, and the nightingales were starting to sing, and there were only cats in the street, when suddenly Ibrahim arrived at my side, and I was very surprised, and he said , ‘Quick let me kiss your hand,’ and I said, ‘Its got jam on it,’ and so he looked swiftly to all sides, and the he took my hand and licked the jam from my fingers with his tongue, and afterwards I was trembling and I wasn’t normal for hours, and I couldn’t wash my hands because I couldn’t bear to wash away the traces of his tongue.

chapter 35
Louis de Bernieres
Birds Without Wings

Tonio Treschi's Past

Guido was alone looking at the objects which Tonio had left open for anyone to see.
And Guido examining those things carefully, was filled with such a sense of desolation that he could not speak.

The trunk contained many things.
There was music, mostly the work of Vivaldi, in old volumes bearing Marianna Treschi’s name in a girlish script. And there were books, French fairy tales, and stories of the Greek gods and heroes of the sort one might read to a child.
But those objects which most surely chilled Guido and caused him to feel the keenest misery were the clothing and effects of a small boy.
Here was a white christening gown, most likely Tonio’s, and half a dozen little suits of clothing, all lovingly kept. There were tiny shoes, there were even little gloves.
And finally there were the portraits, enamelled miniatures and one very lifelike painting of the exquisite dark-eyed little boy that Tonio had once been.

As Guido looked at these things, he realized they were all relics of one’s life that are treasured by others, but rarely kept by one’s self.
And they had been cleared out, packaged up, and sent away to Rome in perfect evidence that no one now remained in the house of Treshi who loved this young man who had once lived there. It was as if Tonio and all those who had once shared his life were dead.

Part 6, chapter 4
Anne Rice
Cry To Heaven

A Circassian Mistress

Rustem Bey told no one why he was going. This was not the kind of world where men unveiled their hearts to anyone, and in any case the aga had no one in whom he could confide, but the truth was that Rustem bey was looking for a woman. His brief time with Tamara had provided him with inklings of what might be between a man and a woman, and his heart, his stomach, his loins and his throat yearned for something that he could not articulate even to himself. He needed someone to meld with. He knew himself to be something like a garden where the only flowers were those of potatoes, ragweed and neglected onions, butwhere a true gardener would have been able to drape the trellises with vines, and coax up tulips from the earth. It would be too simple to say that Rustem Bey was looking for romantic love, because in reality he was looking for the missing part of himself, and these are not often the same quest, even though we sometimes think that they are. Rustem bey had conceived the idea that if only he could find himself a Circassian mistress, amusing in demeanour, accomplished in music, red-lipped and fair of skin, excellent and enthusiastic in the techniques of physical love, then his life would be transformed.

chapter 25
Tales from the Journey to Smyrna
Louis de Bernieres
Birds Without Wings