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What would that world be, a world without war? It would be the real world. Peace was the true life, the life of working and learning and bringing up children to work and learn. War, which devoured work, learning, and children, was the denial of reality. But my people, she thought, know only how to deny.
Born in the dark shadow of power misused, we set peace outside our world, a guiding and unattainable light. All we know to do is fight. Any peace one of us can make in our life is only a denial that the war is going on, a shadow of the shadow, a doubled unbelief.
What a fool, she thought, starting slowly home on the causeway path, what a fool I was to think I could ever drink water and be silent! I’ll never, never be able to let anything go, anything at all. I’ll never be free, never be worthy of freedom. Even old age can’t make me let go.
The rare, soft west wind blew. A perfect day. The beauty of the world, the beauty of the world! A sword in my hand, turned against me. Why do you make beauty to kill us, my Lord?
“Those men. Those shopkeepers. They have the souls of owners. They won’t kill. But they won’t share. If it’s property, they won’t let go. Never.”
That’s how a chief walks, she thought wryly, as she went on. Big, wide, taking up space, stamping the earth down. And this, this is how an old woman walks, narrowly, narrowly.
“His araha is already dead.” Araha is enjoyment; honor; the particular quality of one’s gender, manhood or womanhood; generosity; the savor of good food or wine.
