Mirrors

Dylan's new album is playing in the other room, hope not too loudly, but it's early morning so neighbours should be at work. I don't have hifi in this room, just my laptop, so prefer to play Bob in other room with doors open and listen away as I write. He still writes the best love songs and blues, just no-one there to match him. I sometimes wonder why I bother buying anyone else's music; well almost wonder.

I shall have to write about all the books I've been reading this year some day soon, but meantime thought I should mention Eduardo Galeano's book "Mirrors" which I've been reading on and off for a few months now. It's a book you can pick up anytime and start in the middle or wherever takes your fancy. It's his version of the history of the world told in mini episodes or fragments. He is incredibly  erudite, how he finds the time to read all this stuff and then to write it all is a mystery.

John Pilger  says " he is the enemy of lies, indifference, above all forgetfulness...... his tenderness is devastating, his truthfulness furious". I couldn't have put it better myself John. His best known book is "Open Veins of Latin America", a must read for anyone who cares about the history of that part of the world, and how it's been exploited to ruination by the west. If you are planning to visit that part of the world don't go without first reading Galeano. Or take him with you.

He tells the story of Iqbal, a boy in Pakistan in the 1990s, who was sold by his parents when he was aged four for fifteen dollars. " He was bought by a rug maker. He worked chained to the loom fourteen hours a day. At the age of ten. Iqbal was a hunchback with the lungs of an old man. Then he escaped and became the spokesman for Pakistan's child slaves. In 1995, when he was twelve years old, a fatal bullet knocked him from his bicycle."

When I read this I couldn't help but think of Basilio in Cusco, a boy I met and worked with at La Policia de la Familia. He too had been sold by his father into slavery and escaped to live on the streets of Cusco till the police picked him up and took him to La Policia de la Familia. I've told his story in this blog a few years ago. He ended up in an orphanage and then a few weeks later a police woman and I took him back to his village, a few hours drive from Cusco. But they weren't prepared to take him back, so back to Cusco we had to go, to find his place in the orphanage gone, so back to La Policia he went. I often wonder what became of him. He was a fighter so I'm sure he survived. Maybe some day I will find out.

Anyway Galeano has lots more to tell. Must tell you about the Spanish footballer called Bebel Garcia, socialist, anti fascist, anti Franco, played for Depor, at the age of twenty one, stands before the firing squad, and tells them to hold on a minute, opens his fly, button by button, and facing the firing squad takes a long piss. Then he buttons up and says "go ahead". There's another version online of this story in which he calls the officer over and when he gets close he pisses on his shoes, and is quickly shot. Whichever is true it's an inspiring story. Can you imagine any of today's players in that situation? Well maybe Wayne would do it......

Who were/are the "Early Roman Kings" ?