A Traveller At The Gates of Wisdom

by John Boyne

I had a curious sense that these ideas would one day manifest themselves in the real world and that my destiny was not to remain isolated in our small town but to spend my days among tribes and cultures alien to my own.

Who could have predicted such things, even a generation ago? Someday, we may build towers taller than the eye can see, fly through the sky on wings, even live among the stars. But I know this much; the things that surround us may change, but our emotions will always remain the same. A man who lost his beloved wife a thousand years ago suffered the same grief that I felt when I lost mine, no more and no less.

Love does not change, anger never varies. Hope, desperation, fear, longing, desire, lust, anxiety, confusion and joy; you and I endure these emotions just as men and women always have or ever will. We are a small people in an ever-changing universe. The world around us might be in a state of constant flux, but the universe within?’ I shook my head,

Since my father’s time, there had been much talk of fine people who arrived on ships with decorated masts and sails, landing on shores that were not their own but laying claim to them nevertheless, as if these places did not already have tribes of their own whose blood was interred with the soil. They claimed that they were bringing ‘civilisation’ to us, but all they brought was bloodshed and domination. They called themselves ‘explorers’ but the name was as false as a devil’s promise. My people had explored our land thoroughly across many generations and were familiar with every cave and every tree. It would take him and his kind a thousand years to know it as well as we did. It did not need any further discovery. No, these were nothing more than thieves

occasionally, I found myself writing poems about places that came to me in my dreams, people and situations that I had never known or visited. And while these often proved to be among my most original work, I sometimes wondered from where these strange imaginings had come. When I read them to Niko, he told me that I must have lived other lives in other lands, but I dismissed this idea as fantastical.

‘There have been some people of late writing letters to the literary pages complaining of authors who do not share the same experiences with their characters.’ I considered this. ‘If they did,’ I said, ‘would that not be an autobiography?’