Tales and Stories

Chapter 20 - Gypsies and Nomads

To conclude his tale Kifkef pulled out from a cloth sling around his shoulder a bamboo ney, about the length of his fore arm and the weight of a scarf. He set the flute to his mouth, blowing sideways into the end of the bamboo so that his cheeks were drawn in as if chewing a piece of lemon. The murmuring notes that began to drift out gave a soul to the breeze that stirred around them.

They followed the melody as it took them on a journey through deserts that were as beautiful as they were dangerous, like the domain of love itself. Then lilting up to lonely eyries in the mountains, sharing the view of vultures and regarding great things as small from such lofty heights. Then the inevitable descent into unforgiving lands, enduring indignities and hardships with the need to survive. And always the recurrent theme that the single flame is all too easily extinguished by the merciless expanse. That only with arms linked with others can one prosper, only in a caravan can one hope to cross the desert.

He completed his performance on an unresolved minor note that faded with longing into the night. It was as though a spell had been cast on the listeners and he took advantage of their trance to refill their glasses and spoon hummous onto their plates before they might object.

“Beautiful.” Gypsy Lou murmured. “The culture of my people is awash with influence from uncounted sources - from our Indian origins in the deserts of Rajasthan, through the cut-throat lands of Eastern Europe but not least infused with the spirit of North Africa and the nomads of the Muslim world.”

“Indeed,” her host agreed, “My father was born a Bedouin and I believe that though my mother tied him down in Fez - Quite literally on occasions, I might add - Yet I have inherited his lust for new horizons.”

“I despise those zombies who are rooted to one place on the Earth.” Lou spat, “They are the fools who cling to their possession and petty ambitions to their very death beds. Their ideas rattle like bad nuts in the pidgeon holes of their minds, turning their faces yellow and jaundiced, and their breath turns rancid with greed and craven envy.

A tale is told in Gypsy circles of such a town of miserable simpletons, living in the limbo of suburbia - Although some of these people were made to wake up to the gift of life whether they liked it or not.

The Story of the Flat Landers