letter manifesto: the story of the revolutionary 26

8/12/2019 Letter Manifesto: The Story of the Revolutionary 26

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LETTER MANIFESTO: A STORY OF THE REVOLUTIONARY 26

CHAPTER 1: THE ISLAND

It all started with an island, a tiny island, a compact one with the sourceof life, where everything came from, all forms of creatures, plants,animals, organisms, matters, objects, caves, fire, seas, oceans, myths,

anything you can imagine. They were all scattered beneath every singlepiece of sand. The truth was it was not an imaginary island at all. It was areal island. Yes, it was alive. It was an island, surrounded by the AtlanticOcean. One could open the map and point his fingers at it. The closest

piece of land was miles away, hence it was an isolated place. It sat in thesouthern part of the Atlantic Ocean, right in the middle of a territorycalled Bermuda Triangle or you can say the Devils Triangle, far awayfrom England, America and all those big fellas. There were maps drawn,

stories written about it: All those mysterious, hideous stories about planesand ships. And the island was in the middle of those stories. It was at thecenter, at the heart of Bermuda Triangle. It was where we were living. It

meant everything for us: Our homeland.

Us? We? Just like any other person who was born in some part of theworld, we were born on the island. We were from here. We belonged to

this little land mass. We were the islanders. The population of our racewas as compact as of the island itself. It was just 26. Just a singlecommunity living here for some time. Clich. What was not clich was

that we were different from the rest of humanity. We were black. It wasthe characteristic of our skin. Someone made us in this color. Someonewe didnt know, someone we would never know. That specific someonealso created us without genitals. There was no sex in our community. No

males, no females, no genital discourse. Well, we guessed that was justthe nature of the island and that did not really bother us. Sometimes cigar

is just a cigar and thats it. And you know what? We never knew how wewere born on this island. We never had ancestors, mothers or fathers. Our

history was never known to us. We lacked the sense of belonging toanybody. We did not have a family tree. Just in the flick of time, we werehere, already created by some enigmatic force, a force that would be

never known to us, a force that we would never comprehend fully. No, itwasnt God or Jesus or Mohammad or David or Moses. It was neverabout them. They were just parts of some fictitious books. We justaccepted that on this particular island, we suddenly started to live and the

source of it did not really matter so long as we lived. Our hands suddenlytouched the soft sand, our feet walked to the shores of the island and we


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liked it. People would say there was something wrong with our genetics,

but that would not really matter for us as we would not really care whatthey could say. We would not be surprised if they called us negroes.These people liked naming.

What we cared about was the horizon. We could see the perfectcombination of colors. When it was time of sunset, the sky was slowlylanding onto the water touching its blue belly with its smooth reddish

hands. They were silently going to sleep together. At sunrise, they werewaking up together, leaving each other with slow kisses. The hands of thesky were getting yellow as he was leaving the ocean at a slow pace.When the sun was at the top, they were watching each other constantly.

Clouds, storms, grey hospital rooms, tornadoes tried to screw with them.It was as if they were trying to separate the couple. But it really did notmatter at all. Each night they met; each night they slept together. It wasthe most romantic relationship we had seen in our lives. We named them

Miles and Erato.

Beyond those beautiful colors, there was the world. We knew it was

bigger than our island and there were other creatures living in it. Animalsand plants were under the command of people for generations. Not onlydid they occupy the area of others, but they also occupied themselves.Then, they drew maps just to show how much land they occupied. Thats

how the term border was born. Within those borders, they had countries.Each one of those countries had their own names to show that the peopleliving therehad their own identities. The word England stood for defining

the LAND of the ENGLISH. Outside those borders, there were otherlands to occupy. The name Canada for example, was derived from theEnglish will to occupy northern parts of America. The English motto WeCAN invade them was the real reason they called those lands

CANADA. It was almost as much fun as to call the Native Americans asIndians. Those were the people and that was the basic nature of naming.

It was not just indigenous to England. Some were Greeks, some were

Romans, some were Ottomans, and some were Egyptians, Persians. Theyall wrote histories. They all wrote science, geography and maths. They allwrote something. Their ancestors did that as well. They lived in the same

countries, they thought in the same countries, they wrote in the samecountries, they identified themselves with those countries, they ate,fought, slept, named their sons and daughters after themselves in thosecountries and eventually they died in their countries. Everything lived,

their names, their fathers names, names of the inventions, names of theinvasions, names of the treaties which were the results of those invasions,


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their mathematics, their arithmetic, algorithms, formulas of those

algorithms which all became part of their lives, which had effects on theirlives, either directly or indirectly. They all lived somehow, except fortheir flesh and bones. All of them were DEAD, only their textual

existence lived in the graves. A man called Friedrich Wilhelm Nietszchecalled this dilemma The Eternal Recurrence. And then he too died. Thetextual reality did survive, however. Welcome to the island.

So the world was all about the other side and the island, and the horizonwas just an amazing setting in between, a border dividing the reality of

people and the textual reality of the island. Each sunset and sunrise, itassured us that Miles and Erato were going to same bed every night. They

were spirits filling our lungs with happiness. They looked like fictitiousdivinities smiling at us with their omnipresence, assuring us each day thatthis island, this realm was the true source of life. We did not know whatthat meant for the people. Miles and Erato were different from peoples

Gods for us. They felt real. We felt different with their presence when welooked at the horizon; we felt the whole existence of the island wascomplete with their eternal love, with that unshrinking bond that repeated

itself each day and each night.

We were different from people and it was okay for us to be different. Wewere created in a different way and it was okay for us to be created

different. Our skins were ink black and it was okay for us to be black.They whispered it to our ears each time that we could take pride with ourdifference. We were one with Miles and Erato. The undying passion in

their love was in our hearts. Freedom and difference tinged with love.There was one other reason why they were at the center of our existentialcause. They blessed us with the most venerable duty in the world; theduty to grow letters out of ground. Below the island, there were

thousands, even millions of letters. Our kids. Our sons and daughters, ourkindred.

This process of digging had been going on for pages. We were digging

the ground for some time until we could reach the letter at the bottom ofthe ground where the sand slowly became mud, which was the meeting

point of the island and the ocean. The kids were blossoming from beneath

the sand where it was humid, muddy and suitable for them to grow uphealthy. We then took them onto the surface of the island slowly. Theletters, when taken to the surface for the first time usually cried likenewborns. We tenderly embraced them and waited for them to be silent.

After a tiresome digging process, we stood up from the ground with theletters in our arms, smiled at them kind heartedly as if we had been


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parenting them for a long while and released them in the air and watched

thousands of letters fly towards the horizon. The view you could seewould probably be a huge cloud of birds filling up the space, migratingfrom one part of the world to another. They were our little birds, our kids

meeting with their freedom. Then we would start digging again, it was acontinuous process. It was painfully heavy, but still it was the mostprecious duty in the universe as we could see their infancy, that innocentstage, that preparation for life, that short embrace assuring us that we

were tending them to pursue their freedom. It was these motherly feelingsthat formed the eternal bond between us and them. They looked so pureand free when they disappeared through the horizon. Each followed adifferent path, a different direction. They scattered throughout the world.

Some of them, early in the 8 BC, made their way to western parts ofAnatolia. After a long time of migration, they settled themselves aroundthe suburbs of a place named Smyrna. It was there where they first

encountered a fellow named Homer and began swirling around his headlike a tornado. Some others went to Avon, England and perched at theroof of the house where Shakespeare lived. And some met John Fowles at

one of the hospital beds when he was suffering from amnesia. These werejust a couple of stories that could set an example for their constantmovement. We dug; they flew and got written in every part of the world.They met people. They became algebra, literature and geography. They

became immortal. They started to settle in the books. They becamenames. They became the formulas for the medicines. They became thehistory itself. They became wars and treaties, they became countries.

They were people. They were names. They were ideas. They were thenames of the diseases. They were the Cancer. They were the science.

What was science really? Oh, let us tell you what science was. Science

was just a combination of the kids S, C, I, E, N, C, E. Cancer? Cancer iswhats happening in here right now, right at this moment, hands of some

guy are playing with the kids and the words start to grow uncontrollablyin textual reality of the humankind, as soon as they complete this process

it will be all silent. But before that, there was one specific story, a storythat was different; a story that concerned the nature of humanity; a storythat rose against the power of the omnipotence. A story which was in the

middle of Bermuda Triangle, a story which had a huge hole inside it:story of the blacks.


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CHAPTER 2: MESSING UP WITH THE WHITE MANs BURDENFOR FREEDOM

There he was standing in the middle, looking at our faces, devouring oureyes. It was his gaze: A gaze that was sucking our bones, numbing ourskin. Darkness. Abyss prevailed. He was checking us, weighing ourmuscle power, our toes and our hands. We felt he was making some

theoretical calculations. He started to count our heads. It was weird thatwe could not do anything except watching him. For no particular reason,we could not move anywhere unless he told us to move. We could notcomprehend what paralyzed us. Was that the gaze? Was that his politics?

Was that his white skin? Was that him and his armed men swarming theisland; or was that his overwhelming power on letters, our beloved kinthat laid us mutilated? We really did not know. We felt different when hecame to the island. It was as if some kind of powerful device beyond our

reach was playing with us, testing our capacity to decide how far he couldcolonize us, our movements, our race, our beloved letters who had beenflying up in the air for a long while since we first dug them up on the

surface of the island pages ago, or ages ago. Were they captured? Welooked at the horizon to catch a sight; we could not see any of them. Wedid not see Miles and Erato either. We felt alone.

The tense is forcefully sliding itself back to 1726 when they came to theisland. We were about to reach to the bottom of the ground to take thenewborns out when we saw some shape on the horizon, it looked like atiny spot at the beginning. But it was growing bigger as it came closer. It

was sailing towards the island. It was a ship! People were approaching tothe island. We continued digging. Letters had to be taken out from thesand and freed. The digging process was much more important than

humans or their ships, and their stories as all their existence depended onour beloveds. So what we did was to take the newborns out of the sand.After they cried in our arms for a while we let them go up in the air. Wedid not panic. We did not hide them or put them back in the sand. We had

to let them go so they could find their own ways, read themselves in someparts of the world. It did not really matter for us if it was Homer, orShakespeare, or Nietzsche or Marx, or Gabriel Garcia Marquez or Homi

Bhabha or Abraham Lincoln or Napoleon Bonaparte, Jacques Derrida,John Fowles, Angela Carter. That would be cruel to them. Then we woulduse them for our purposes; then, we would keep them here, they would

be stuck in the sand and get drowned at the bottom of the ocean.


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Once taken out, they had to go up in the space. We would cheat ourselves

if we did not let them. Otherwise, we would be killers of our ownkindred. Those were our kids. They were everything for us. We held themin our arms thousands of times, we watched them cry, hushed them

tenderly. They were so sinless, you see? Even though it took us secondsto prepare them for their flight, we saw them in our arms, passing theirinfancy, getting ready for their long journey in the space. We smiled attheir innocence. Every day we loved them. It was no different than the

day before, or the day after. Every single day, who knows, for how longwe caressed. And this made them part of us. Some specific sense of

parenthood grew inside us, no matter how humane this sounds. It wastrue. We had feelings towards these kids. We held onto life because of

their sole existence, as their sense of freedom is ours; their arms, ours;their shapes, ours; no matter how different they looked, they were part ofus; our kids.

They were floating through the sky as usual. It had always been a

pleasure to watch them fly towards their freedom. But at that time, inMay 26th 1726, when the weather was open as a blank page, when therewas actually no specific reason for the kids to gather around that ship,

unless someone enticed them or fooled them into his own text, theystarted to form a circle and fell over the ship, one by one. Some twistedtheir ankles; some broke their legs and some others their necks. His

handwriting was not good at all.

We could hear the loud shrieks of the kids, as the ship drew closer to theshores of the island. They were imprisoned. The ship anchored right bythe beach at the eastern side of the island. Thousands of British soldierslanded, all armed, looking straight, they formed a circle and waited for

the invader to get off the ship. There he was, looking at us. He had a penand six pages in his hands. He walked down to the beach in slowsynchronic steps. We could hear the sands crushing down under his feet.

He patiently walked to the middle of the circle. As soon as he took hisplace, the circle started to move towards us with loud steps. They were alllooking at us hungrily as if they were all going to devour us. The soldiersin the front line divided into two and started walking around our group.

They formed a ring around all 26 of us. If it could be observed from thetop, the shape of their circle would probably look like:


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HIM

S

S OR us L

E DI

We could not see anything except for their presence and we felt likesomeone was choking us. We did not have too much space. The sand, allof a sudden, started to feel funny below, our hands, our feet, our body

started to lose their power. We slowly sat down on the sand; we then laidour bodies on it. We could not move at all. Since our heads were on thesand, we could hear the cries of the kids still buried under the island.

They wanted to get out of the ground. We could not help them as we laidthere motionlessly. We did not have the power to dig. We were in a

prison, where we could not move a muscle. We did nothing but put our

heads on the sand, lying there almost dead. We started to hear the kidscries as they were smashed by his steps. Sound of his steps was gettinglouder and louder. Thump. Thump. Thump. It was like a heartbeat ofsome living thing, something we could not yet name. Something that wasgetting louder and louder. Something that was synchronic with his steps.

He was walking towards us. He was imprisoning us. We were struck byhis omnipotence.

There he was now, in the middle of the circle, looking at us observantly,done with his calculations and counting our heads, taking down somenotes on the paper. There are 26 of them, he said to his soldiers. Bringone of them into my presence. As you command sir! Whatever he said

could be done. Everything, including us, this island and the kids lyingbeneath his steps like a red carpet before his great power. He had thepower to name us on those pages he was holding. People would read ournames throughout the world, trade us, sell us, kill us; they would yell our

names, SLAVES! Thats how they would know us. They would never

care whether we had kids buried under the ground. Our kids, who werewaiting for their freedom; who would die out of hunger buried in the


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ground unless they were taken into the surface. They needed our parental

attention. They were crying, shrieking below us and we could hear it sowell. We could not let any of them die. But he was simply not letting us,that general, the boss, dictator, invader, villain, colonizer, whatever he

was, he was not letting us. He had the power to manipulate us, name us,present us to the world as slaves. He had that recklessness to change ourfate and historicize our existence, our pure, honest purpose of growing upletters, parenting them. Here they cried under the ground once more.

They were still alive and breathing. But his loud steps were making itharder for them to breathe. The oxygen they were inhaling was gettingless and less as they remained buried underground. If they were not free,they were no different than dead. We knew our kids. He doomed them; he

doomed us with his power. That bastard could see through everything.Him and his omnipotence. We could not stand it. Now he was juststanding there and ordering his soldiers to fetch one of us for furtherexamination of our bodies. He would put our muscle power into test to

comprehend whether we were fit enough to work in his plantations inAmerica.

Two soldiers came as he commanded. They grabbed me and started to

haul me from my arms towards him. They made me stand up by holdingmy arms tightly from both sides. If they did not hold me from my arms, Iwould not stand up myself as my body was literally paralyzed as a result

of his omnipotent power over us. He started to walk towards me. He heldmy head up, to see how I looked like. He saw my eyes, felt my cheeksand my neck with his fingers. All look like the characteristics of anegro, he murmured. He moved his head forward closer to my cheeks.He started to lick me. I was surprised in the first place because it was

really hard to find out the reason why any person would lick anotherones cheeks. It was either because of recklessness or desire. I could nottell at that time. But according to the Slave Trade books published in

Europe, which defined how to pick up a strong slave, licking his sweat

was supposed to determine his health. The taste of the salt in the sweat ofa slave determined whether he had a tropical disease or not. So basically,thats what he was doing to me. Licking me for scientific purposes. At

least, thats what I assumed at that time.

He then looked at my face, opened my mouth and started to count myteeth. 26 of them, he said. He looked a little perplexed. According to

the autopsies performed in Europe, humankind was known to have 32teeth. Probably he was considering us as a different being, either animalor some kind of an alien creature. He kept his determined gaze on us,

though he looked a little bit confused. He was trying to classify us andapparently something was very wrong. He ordered his soldiers to sit me


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down with the others and checked everyones teeth one by one. Either

there was something wrong with science or we were not humans. All ofus had 26 teeth. Terrified, he took three more pages out of his pocket andstarted to write down:

Interesting island. The negroes we were going to ship to America turnedout to be a different kind. They bear the characteristics of usual Negroes.They are ink black. However, it is a mystery that all these creatures have26 teeth. At first look, it is so hard to tell if they are men or women. They

havent spoken yet. I dont know what language they speak. They dontseem responsive. They all look as if they are paralyzed. I did not feel anycontagious diseases when I tasted their sweat. However I have serious

doubts whether they should be shipped directly to America to work inplantations. They might carry some kind of specific disease we have notnamed yet which would harm our cause, the process of colonization. Ifear thousands of other negroes in the plantations might get infected by

this troublesome sickness. In my personal opinion, they should first besent to Europe to be physically examined further. These creatures andtheir possible sickness have to be classified first. Then we can use them in

our advances throughout the world. Under these circumstances, Iconclude that they should immediately be shipped to Bristol harbor to be

further inspected by a team of scientists by my permission and personalescort.

He had that skill to manipulate every situation for his own cause. If therewas something wrong in the process of colonization, if there wassomething strange going on, if we had 26 teeth instead of 32, if Europeanscience failed somehow to define something at any single parcel in the

world, it had to be explained, otherwise, they would not proceed,otherwise they would stop thinking and start running away from it,otherwise it would be fiction for them and when fiction became reality,

they would go mad, stunned, paralyzed. They would watch it take over alltheir values, beliefs, sanities. Fiction was a monster eating them secretlydeep inside their brains. They would not stand it. They would deny it.Fiction was the other, it was the adopted kid, and fiction was eating their

science, geography and algebra. It was eating weapons, irons, clothes,societies, countries, men, women and their set of values. Fiction wasghosts and invisible curses echoing in their ears, fiction was the deepest

parts of their brains. It was an unstoppable enigma that was forcing to

come out and bring an end to the order of the people. Fiction was

catharsis itself. They feared from it, they pitied it, without realizing theywere a part of it. Fiction was their unwanted dreams. Fiction was lying


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under the ground right here, beneath the sand. We could hear it; it desired

to come out like a giant who could destroy thousands of armies. Fictionwas hidden beneath his feet. It shrieks, cries, roars. Fiction itself was ourkids waiting for us to dig, help them get into the surface. It was bigger

than him, his name, his politics, and his manipulations. It was bigger thanhis society and its members. FICTION was bigger than people. It wasbigger than his army, which came a long way to discover this island andpack us to work in the plantations. Fiction was bigger than the colonies. It

was what we were going to become, if we didnt dig. We still could hearthe kids cry. If they tried to take us away from the island; if we weregoing to be shipped to England, or America, they would die. Fictionwould die; this story would just end in here with a full stop. We would be

sold to people to work in the fields. We would be named as slaves. Theremust have been something to do to break the chains. The kids were still

breathing.

It was this last hope that made our last stand. It was kids breathing and

whispering to our ears that gave a shockwave to our muscles. We had tostand up to him and his overbearing omnipotence. We had to make a holein this text, a huge gap for the kids to breathe some air, a way for them to

come out. We had to challenge his will to occupy and domineer thisisland. We stood up against his pen and his perversive manner of usinghis pages. We stood up against his indifference towards the fact that we,

too, had a life, a community which had been settled here for so long. Asociety that was different from his, which had a different set of values,

beliefs, sense of freedom which was strange to him. We stood up becausehe wanted to delete it; our existence. He simply ignored it and invadedhere by force with bunch of soldiers and iron weapons. We had to stand

up against his overbearing means to colonize this island. Above all, itmight have been any group of black, any African tribe, living on thisisland, living in huts, growing vegetables from the ground, collecting

coconuts from the trees, who could have lived happily without his

interference.

Lets say their numbers were more than 26. Lets say they had 32 teethinstead of 26. Lets say they were perfectly normal Africans. They had

kids who were running along the shores of the island free and laughing.They were catching fish from the shores where the ship was thenanchored. They were running back to their parents to show how many

fish they caught. Imagine all the members of the family enjoying eachothers company with good mythical stories after a fine dinner. Would notthat hurt those people to be chained and stacked in the ships to work in

plantations, never to return to their homeland? They would be tossed intoa world where there was nothing similar to their home where mama could


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not cook the fish the kids caught, where they could lose each other

because they were transported by different ships. They would come to aplace where they had to seek refuge in a different language, a differentculture, and a different religion. They would slowly start to forget who

they were, where they came from, and would begin to behave like master,Him, as the master always had the power to feed them, or punish them.They would start losing their identity. They would forget the taste ofcoconut. The kids would see their fathers getting whipped by the master

when their old bodies failed after a hard days work. They would beswallowed by the big world and its illogical demands. They would nottake it when people call them animals, slaves, or negroes. They would nottake it when they were beaten to death because of the color of their skin.

They would grow up in misery. They would wish to see their homelandone last time before they closed their eyes for eternity, for the empty

pages to come next centuries which would name them slaves. We stoodup for them, as their freedom was no different than ours, as their kids

happiness was no different than our kids happiness. We had commonfate. We were on the same page.

Fiction was kicking from below, Africans were suffering from slavery,

kids were crying. It was time for us to make a huge hole in the history.

To his surprise, we rose from the ground, cleared out the sands on our

shoulders. We looked at the circle fiercely, every single one of them wereterrified by this unexpected behavior of us. We could see fear in their

eyes, we looked like the monsters haunting their dreams, moaning,screaming, and yelling for the freedom of the island. We were a threat totheir circle, we were the anarchists. Had one of us opened our mouth,they feared it would swallow them all. He looked terrified, panicked. He

yelled. Arms up!All the soldiers took to their weapons. That bastardwas peeing his pants, we could feel it. All we could hear was the insecuremurmurs raising from the circle. We started digging with every single

muscle cell in our bodies, in front of his gaze, in front of his army. Thatwas a mutiny, that was a riot. That was a Textual Revolution. Each one ofus worked on one big hole in the sand, to reach all the kids at the sametime. The faster we drilled the ground, the larger the hole got. We were

coming for the kids, without fear, without the sense of imprisonment. Wewere bending his gaze. We were setting his luxurious mansion on fire. Wewere stealing what he stole from us. Freedom of narration. He yelled,

Aim! The soldiers pointed their weapons at us while the hole wasgetting bigger. He did not seem to yield so easily, he was going to shootus. But we did not really care; we were already at the point of no return.

We were going down and the hole was getting deeper and bigger. Nosigns of the kids yet. We wanted to face what was expecting us down on


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the ground. The kids were either dead or not. We had to see it ourselves.

We faced the risk of extinction as thousands of soldiers were aiming at 26of us. But it did not really matter, whatever was buried deep in the groundhad to be brought to the surface. He yelled, Shoot! There w s de dly

silence for two or three seconds. We were still digging in ecst sy. One ofthe bullets shot me in my tooth, I dropped it on the ground It w s too l teto look for it. I still h d to dig bec use I still h d 25 teeth nd the kids might

be dying. The hope w s not lost. Lets go on! While they were refilling

their guns, we he rd th t the ground shook. It sounded like huge erthquake. Did we drill too deep? Did we m ke too much hole in the story?Where were the kids then? It w s not enough! We kept on drilling, left,right, left, right, left, right. Once more the ground shook. He ordered his

soldiers to re dy their we pons one more time. The hole w s getting biggerand deeper. We could re d the fe r in his eyes. fter they relo ded the we

pons, they shot us once more. We wounded and bleeding p rts ofbodies. They shot more, and once more. no bottom of

the bodies . We the hole the biggestno kids There bloodshed everywhere we didnot give up. something str nge, hole,

We fell down They fell down into the byss. Drkness.

CHAPTER 3: GOOD OLD SOCRATES AND ION

There is only black. The blackness of the hole. I can still remember thesaint essence of the silence which was constantly spoiled by His and hissoldiers desperate shrieks when we all fell down. I dont know for howlong we fell, but after some time, the sense of falling down disappeared.

First, gravity abandoned the story; then, the shrieks died down. I think Heand the soldiers were imprisoned somewhere in the hole. Then, the pasttense left its place for timelessness.

There is only light, lightness of being. Stars start to appear all around and

the hole gets brighter. As the stars scatter through a wider space in thehole, I realize that it is not just a small, dark pit where the kids originate

before we take them to the surface of the island. It is an enormous space

covered with the shining stars. Wait a second this is not a hole! I am inthe middle of a Galaxy!

The density of the air starts to change. I feel like I am in a differentdimension which is beyond the atmosphere; I can smell the change. I do

not feel any pain. I have no missing tooth. I am not bleeding. I am alive.


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My friends Team 26 are all safe and alive as well. I can see star fields

scattered around the galaxy, all bright and shiny. I can feel the bloodcirculating through my veins; it is freedom and the unbearable lightnessof being. Ink is everywhere, black ink; black as Africans. I can see them

all. They are among the fields of stars, looking at me; there is a smile ontheir faces. Some are women, some are men. But the important thing isthat they smile all the same. They all wear their traditional clothes, theyall believe in their own gods. They have their own fears and happiness.

They are not interfered by any different society. They are original. Theyare 26. No, they are more than 26. They are millions. They are starsthemselves. They shine upon us. They whisper to us in their own nativelanguage. Its quite the harmony of millions of different voices. This must

be heaven. This is such a beautiful hole, this space, the galaxy.

They start to move towards us. They dont walk, they fly. It is so magicalto see them getting closer to us in that bright galactic cloud with theirshining faces. Their faces are getting closer and becoming one with ours.

They are holding our hands now. They turn their faces and smile at us.Millions of them, pure and innocent as stars... Their happiness multiply

by the whole existence of the galaxy. This wholeness inside me, this

completion of freedom and existential reality of us and them start to pullme towards the huge galactic cloud. Some might call it the Milky Way,

but for me and us,itsthe definition of textual beauty. The reality in the

hole, the fiction itself which wakes up from its sleep, a dream that neverends, brotherhood, sisterhood, parenthood, freedom, perfect union of thelanguages, harmonic sounds of the black tribes which are free, flying upin the space, smiling. They all pull me towards the center of the brightgalaxy. No sense of speed, no definition of time. We are floating nice and

smooth, all together, a perfect union of eidos, going to the center of thatcloudy mass. It is getting blindingly shiny and I like it. As we get closerto the center, it is getting white. We are reaching to the perfection of a

blank page. I can feel that, we can feel that. It is light and white, and we

are going at the center of it, holding each others hands. It is millions ofus, so different from each other, yet so perfectly combined. We are oneand whole, we are different and millions, we are the combination of

everything, which cannot be defined by scientific formulas. It is thatmagnetic union of us, that pure beauty of the hole, that sweetness of thesand we dug, which is pulling us towards the center of the galaxy; I can

figure it out, in the middle. There it is, there it is I see it. There is arectangular sign. It is made up of bright stars. The sign says: PLATOsCINEMA. They are pulling me towards there, to that climatic point,where the fate of the heroes are decided, where the end of the story

tantalizes, where you decide to hold your breath and start to read the


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words attentively. I am getting there, my hands are bright, all my 26 teeth

intact, I, us, we are pulled by the beautiful hands of stars.

We all stop under the sign. They are looking at us in the eyes, pointingthe entrance of the cinema, and smiling at us, applauding their voices offreedom, they will speak their own language, and they will never ever

become slaves. Here they go, flying slowly, going backwards and stillsmiling at us. Their faces are slowly fading away. The further they go, the

better we can see their bright and black shapes of freedom.

It looks like there is no door around the sign; rather, down by it, there is a

cave-like entrance, made up of galactic stones which are connected to thecinema with the stairs. We start to walk towards it and one we reach it, westart to go down the stairs. There is still some brightness behind us, the

reflections of the galactic cloud, however, as we follow the walkway andgo down, the light gets weaker. And the density of the air starts to change.We feel lighter and smoke spreads all over the place. It smells funny, likea Cuban cigar. To be honest, I cannot complain about it. It has its own

way of attracting people to itself. Its pulling us down towards the bottomof the stairs. As we go down, the smoke gets more intense. After two orthree sentences, we come across a door on the left side of the walkway.

Smoke comes from the room behind it. We can see that it makes its wayup the stairs from the bottom of the door. On the door, there is a sign:

Employees Only! We open it as smell of the cigar attracts us. It canbarely be called a room. As we get in, we figure out that it is a rather high

platform which is built for a movie reflector. There are two men. One isstanding behind the reflector. He controls it and makes sure the movie

plays without a cut. The other one is a chain smoker. He stands at theback of the reflector guy. He smokes his Cuban cigar and when finished,

he brings out a new one from his pocket and lights it up. The fire on thecigar never dies out and it burns constantly. The platform is full of smoke

because of this chain smoker. But he looks like he doesnt care. For him,

whats important is that the fire doesnt die out and the taste of the Cubancigar is so sweet anyway.

We walk up front to see the how the lower part of the platform looks like.You can see a big screen and thousands of seats. The reflector works

perfectly fine. It reflects the movie onto the big screen. The quality of theimage looks really nice. One can say that the movie is almost as real aslife itself. The seats are made up of human bones. They dont lookcomfortable from here. The audience watches the movie attentively.

There are thousands of people sitting in thousands of seats. And

interestingly, they look familiar to us. We have seen them before. Not along time ago. Its Him and his soldiers!


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They dont look uneasy in those seats which are made of human

skeletons. It does not bother them at all. And they are laughing constantly.But whats on the screen looks like a horror movie, as I can figure outthere are brutal scenes, where people kill each other relentlessly. And they

are laughing as if they are in ecstasy.

At that exact moment, the chain-smoker starts a conversation with thereflector guy.

Soc. Hows the movie going, Ion of Epidaurus?

Ion. Very well Socrates, they are done with First World War scene, they

have been watching it for a long time now, for years, for ages, they justsit in there, laugh and watch at the disastrous moments of life, when

thousands of people died as a result of the abominable wars brought uponthe humanity by sadist, dictatorial leaders who enjoyed the bloodshed.They do not move their heads. They dont try to get out of the cinema;they look like they are enjoying themselves. They dont look terrorized

by human deaths at all. They have been laughing at the bloody scenes of

wars.

Soc. Well, didnt they laugh at the scenes when the white man killedmany black people and threw them into the sea mercilessly from the shipAmistad?

Ion. Very well Socrates, they did.

Soc. Well, Ion, didnt they enjoy themselves during the scenes of theBoston Massacre, when the soldiers of the British Army killed fivecivilian men in Massachusetts Bay?

Ion. Very true Socrates, they did.

Soc. Well, my friend, arent they going to take delight in the Second

World War scene, when German soldiers take the Jews into concentrationcamps, starve them to death, burn them alive in the ovens and make

lamps out of their skins?

Ion. Very true.

Soc. Well then, Ion, my fellow, doesnt that excessive pleasure these

people have in the tragic, painful scenes of the movie mean that thesepeople are themselves insane, sadists, dictators? Arent they staying inthis cinema just to enjoy bloodshed a little bit more?

Ion. Very true Socrates.


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Soc. Do you think, my friend, that in any moment of life, they can stand

up, look back, and get out of the cinema, and figure out that the source oftheir laughter is bitterness and suffering of others who are silenced,repulsed, subjugated by the tyrant? Can they realize that they are not

actually the audiences but the slaves of the cinema, that they are doomedhere and they can never get out. Can they realize it? Is there any sign thatcould show them that the people they enslaved and killed as a result oftheir tyrannical nature are actually up there at the center of the galaxy,

talking their own native languages, living in harmony, without theaudiences invasions and wars? Can they know who the real slaves are?Can they reach emancipation and find the truth up at the exit of thecinema? Is there any language that could show them the way to salvation;

that could show them how the universe is bigger than their countries,their colonies, their wars?

Ion. Look at him Socrates, look at his swollen belly. He has somethingabout to come out of his belly. Its not just one, its many, and its 26! Can

you see it? Maybe the answer is in there. Maybe the answer is in him.Maybe hes got what you are asking for.

They are both looking at me now. I am just bending my head over my

belly, and suddenly waves of shock surround my entire self. My body issee-through; I can see all my organs, my heart, my livers and my belly.

My belly? Its swollen. Its totally diaphanous and I can see whats inside.The kids! They are alive! They have been in there for 16 pages! They

want to be born!

Socrates takes a puff from his cigar, and looks at my belly again and thensmiles. His smile is escorted by the smoke coming out of the cigar.

Soc. You may climb up the stairs my friend, your story, your kids have to

be born up there and tell it to the stars and the galaxy, tell it to all thebright lights that they are alive and roaming free in the space, just like

anyone subjected to tyranny, they are not going to yield to any dictatorialbehavior, they are the stars shining in the space; they are free, the text is

free.

He offers me a cigar and I take it, light it up, and start to smoke. I get outof the room and close the door. I can feel the contractions coming from

my belly. There is a red coat around my shoulders. Its His coat. Hesdead because of a heart attack the reason of which is laughing too much.On my right hand, there is a cigar. I take a puff from it. I have got a huge

bag on the other. Its full of sand. The sand I dug back on the island. Such

a painful process it has been, yet the most precious duty in the world. I


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am climbing up the stairs leaving Socrates and Ion behind me. Ion, such a

guy who answers every question with a good old very well. I hope helives happily with that chain-smoker. The contractions enhance. I amcoming to the exit of the cinema. I look up and see the brightness. I am in

pain. The kids are pushing so hard to come out. There I see it, Miles andErato are waiting for me and the others, free Africans, 26 settlers, theisland, the source of life, where everything came from, all forms ofcreatures, plants, animals, organisms, matters, objects, caves, fire, seas,

oceans, myths, anything you can imagine are there for me at the exit. Ireach it with a pain in my belly. They all hold my hands smiling, assuringme that I am going to have the most precious kids across the universe.The kids are coming out of my stomach, each one of them crying out of

happiness, as they are not dead, they are saved from the voice of thetyranny and they find a life in my belly. They are so happy to be thesound of the universe now. Here they go, fly across the galaxy, free. I candie happy now.

letter manifesto: the story of the revolutionary 26

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