the sea and wandering in dunes not unlike those around the Hotel Atlantic. By fault of angels, who missed him in the pea-soup fog, Carter miraculously survived into a technicolour so intense, the first technicolour of British cinema, that the sofa became colourless and the wintry sky outside, which was prismatic when they sat down, cloudless, with wisps of orange, turned to gruel.
In Francis Bacon’s work New Atlantis there is a description of perspective-houses:
where we make demonstrations of all lights and radiations; and of all colours: and out of things uncoloured and transparent, we can represent unto you all several colours; not in rainbows (as it is ingems and prisms), but of themselves single. We represent also all multiplications of light, which we carry to great distance, and make so sharp as to discern small points and lines. Also of colourations of light; all delusions and deceits of the sight, in figures, magnitudes, motions, colours all demonstrations of shadows. We find also divers means, yet unknown to you, of producing of light originally from divers bodies. We procure means of seeing objects afar off; as in heaven and remote places; and represent things near as afar off; and things afar off as near; making feigned distances. We have also help for the sight, far above spectacles and glasses in use. We have also glasses and means to see small and minute bodies perfectly and distinctly; as the shapes and colours of small flies and worms, grains and flaws in gems, which cannot otherwise be seen.
It is common knowledge that Osama bin Laden was born into a rich Saudi family. It is less known that the family fortune was invested in Western banks in contravention of Islamic law. If Osama had been born a poor Saudi, things might have been different. So would they be if he was born into a rich family in another country. If he had been an Italian industrialist’s son, for example, he might have exercised his religious feeling by becoming a priest in the Order of Daniel Comboni, whose motto is Africa or Death!
It would not have been possible for that alternate Osama, Father Giacomo Ladini, to stray so far from the sanctity of life.
He had lain down beside the trench and had a dream so lifelike he could not believe it was his alone. It was a Lenten carnival. A Christ-like figureon a float was leading a crowd of young people in a dance. The music was techno. The street was narrow. Bodies were pressed up against old buildings. There were shouts in German and French. It might have been the pharmaceutical town of Basel. The Christ spelled out a message in hand movements like the hand movements of the flagellants who marched through Rhineland towns during the Black Death spelling out I am a liar, a thief, an adulterer , except that these hand movements were not confessional: the Christ and the crowd repeated over and over with their hands a thousand years of love, a thousand years of peace.
The faces were diverse. They were moved by a common happiness. Then there was a pop of a suicide bomber’s vest, a drawing in of air, and an exhaling, so that the carnival float, the Christ, and many in the crowd were reduced to shreds.
They carried him from the sea to a whitewashed mosque separated from the beach by a wall of coral and lava stone. It was an old mosque; the first believers in Kismayo were buried in a shrine in the courtyard. The doors and window frames were intricately carved from planks of mango wood.
They put him on a cement floor in a smoke-blackened room at the back of the mosque. He was nauseous. There was ringing in his ears. A pile of mobile phones on a carpet vibrated, stirring motes of fecal dust and frankincense in light that slanted down from windows which were barred but held no glass. His vision blurred. When he came to a lantern cast the same room more richly, so at first sight the faces of the commander and the fighters were like those in a Netherlandish painting.
The commander was sitting
In Francis Bacon’s work New Atlantis there is a description of perspective-houses:
where we make demonstrations of all lights and radiations; and of all colours: and out of things uncoloured and transparent, we can represent unto you all several colours; not in rainbows (as it is ingems and prisms), but of themselves single. We represent also all multiplications of light, which we carry to great distance, and make so sharp as to discern small points and lines. Also of colourations of light; all delusions and deceits of the sight, in figures, magnitudes, motions, colours all demonstrations of shadows. We find also divers means, yet unknown to you, of producing of light originally from divers bodies. We procure means of seeing objects afar off; as in heaven and remote places; and represent things near as afar off; and things afar off as near; making feigned distances. We have also help for the sight, far above spectacles and glasses in use. We have also glasses and means to see small and minute bodies perfectly and distinctly; as the shapes and colours of small flies and worms, grains and flaws in gems, which cannot otherwise be seen.
It is common knowledge that Osama bin Laden was born into a rich Saudi family. It is less known that the family fortune was invested in Western banks in contravention of Islamic law. If Osama had been born a poor Saudi, things might have been different. So would they be if he was born into a rich family in another country. If he had been an Italian industrialist’s son, for example, he might have exercised his religious feeling by becoming a priest in the Order of Daniel Comboni, whose motto is Africa or Death!
It would not have been possible for that alternate Osama, Father Giacomo Ladini, to stray so far from the sanctity of life.
He had lain down beside the trench and had a dream so lifelike he could not believe it was his alone. It was a Lenten carnival. A Christ-like figureon a float was leading a crowd of young people in a dance. The music was techno. The street was narrow. Bodies were pressed up against old buildings. There were shouts in German and French. It might have been the pharmaceutical town of Basel. The Christ spelled out a message in hand movements like the hand movements of the flagellants who marched through Rhineland towns during the Black Death spelling out I am a liar, a thief, an adulterer , except that these hand movements were not confessional: the Christ and the crowd repeated over and over with their hands a thousand years of love, a thousand years of peace.
The faces were diverse. They were moved by a common happiness. Then there was a pop of a suicide bomber’s vest, a drawing in of air, and an exhaling, so that the carnival float, the Christ, and many in the crowd were reduced to shreds.
They carried him from the sea to a whitewashed mosque separated from the beach by a wall of coral and lava stone. It was an old mosque; the first believers in Kismayo were buried in a shrine in the courtyard. The doors and window frames were intricately carved from planks of mango wood.
They put him on a cement floor in a smoke-blackened room at the back of the mosque. He was nauseous. There was ringing in his ears. A pile of mobile phones on a carpet vibrated, stirring motes of fecal dust and frankincense in light that slanted down from windows which were barred but held no glass. His vision blurred. When he came to a lantern cast the same room more richly, so at first sight the faces of the commander and the fighters were like those in a Netherlandish painting.
The commander was sitting
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