SAFE HARBOUR by . S. .Nadja Zajdman, vodka,r,

 

                  

                                                             

Into the 1990s my mother Renata became increasingly active in Holocaust Education.  She trained as a docent at Montreal’s Holocaust Center.  She worked as an interviewer and researcher with McGill University’s oral history project Living Testimonies, which was a precursor to film director Steven Spielberg’s Shoah Foundation.   She attended international conferences.  She lectured to students in schools and on group tours, both at home and abroad.  She reunited long-lost relatives and rescued the lost identities of hidden children.  Mum became a wounded healer transforming lives.

          Each spring Mum traveled to Poland, spending an average of three months there.  She became the North American liaison for The Association of Hidden Children in Poland.  In Warsaw Mum roomed with friends, and worked in an office located on the same street where she had lived as a child. 

Some of those in Poland hidden during the war when they were children came late to the recognition of their Jewish roots.  Those who married mostly inter-married, and their children were raised as Catholics. 

At least one became a priest, and several became nuns.  Decades after the war, some were still too frightened to acknowledge their antecedents.  Many lived in poverty.  Mum lobbied for the establishment of pensions for those who were robbed of their parents and inheritance.  The lawyer’s daughter from Warsaw won her case.  She was also integrating her many identities and becoming the Holocaust educator and activist Renata Skotnicka-Zajdman.  

          What she was doing for others, Mum was about to do for herself.  In 1997, during a search to discover the fate of another child hidden in wartime, Mum stumbled on clues suggesting her wartime rescuer Janek Bartczak might be alive. 

During a time of war and a place of horror, friendship flourished between two young men wooing two Jewish sisters.  One of the men was a Polish Catholic; the other, a Polish Jew.  The Catholic youth became a smuggler.  When Warsaw’s Jews were walled into their ghetto, Janek’s business activities allowed him access to the girl he loved.  Unknown even to the members of his immediate family, he had joined the underground resistance movement.

          Janek Bartczak was generally perceived as a dandy.  His brother-in-law, a policeman who patrolled outside the Ghetto gates, dismissed him as a spiritual lightweight.  Janek strutted through the streets of the Ghetto in knee-high black leather boots, a black leather coat, and a Tyrolean-type hat.  His hair was flaxen and his features, Slavic-sharp.  His intimidating appearance made a powerful impression on his Jewish friend’s teen-age sister Renata.  His phantom would swagger through the back alleys of her memory for the next fifty years.  Trying to transmit his image as vividly as she could, Renata came to call her ghost “Richard Widmark,” for the sinister-looking film star.

          During the height of the deportations in the summer of 1942, Janek’s brother-in-law arrested Renata at the Ghetto gates.  The arrest was pre-arranged.  Pawel Golombek used his position to lead to safety the Jews he was supposed to be shutting in.  His apartment became a safe house.  He and his family supported not only themselves, but also the escapees they sheltered, by the smuggling activities of his wife’s two brothers, and by selling moonshine manufactured in their kitchen, as well as his policeman’s salary.  An unquestioned arrest, a child snatched from *Umschlagplatz whom he hid under his coat and delivered to the sanctuary presided over by his wife and mother-in-law—Golombek committed these audacious acts under the noses of the German occupiers and his anti-Semitic neighbours; acts which, had they been discovered, would have led not only to his execution, but to the execution of his entire family. 

         

As of September 1, 1942, there were two Jewish girls sheltered by the Golombeks.  There was the dark-haired, dark-eyed, ten-year-old Isabella whom Golombek’s sister-in-law claimed, to neighbours, to be her illegitimate daughter by a Roma.  There was blue-eyed Renata, whose chestnut-coloured hair had been bleached blonde by her brother.  Three years earlier she’d been setting the table for her mother’s birthday breakfast when the roar of the Luftwaffe, the planes of The Third Reich’s air force, signalled the invasion of Poland.  Since that day she had endured bombardment, homelessness, and refugee-hood.  She witnessed the death of her mother in Soviet-occupied Poland, and was caught in the German invasion of the Soviet Union.  She had slept in ditches and stolen food from fields.  Hiding on a farm, she had been repeatedly raped.  Like any other hunted animal, her throat was cut.  She had been beaten by Polish police,thrown into jail and further beaten in a cell shared with Polish prostitutes.  Preferring to die with family, Renata smuggled her way into the Warsaw Ghetto, to her brother, but her brother, preferring that Renata snatch a chance at life, smuggled her back out.

          On the evening of September 1, the Russians sprang a surprise bombing raid on Warsaw.  To identify their targets, they tossed flares from the sky. The Golombek family, along with Isabella, hastened to the basement of their apartment building.  Renata was instructed to remain upstairs, for fear she’d be recognized as a Jewess and betrayed by neighbours.  Feeling abandoned in the safe house during the bombardment on the anniversary of her dead mother’s birthday, the girl snapped.  She went to the bathroom, found a razor knife and lifted it to her wrist.  On the verge of severing an artery, Renata hesitated.  Instead, she began to scream.   Her uncontrollable cries were so loud they could be heard in the basement, even through the sound of bombardment.  Janek dashed towards the stairs.  “No!”  His sister cautioned.  Janek disregarded his sister’s warning, raced up to the apartment, and barged through the bathroom door.  He was appalled by what he saw.  “No!”  Janek yelled, echoing his sister, and knocked the razor knife out of Renata’s hand before she yielded to despair.  Then he darted to his bedroom, grabbed the blanket from off his bed, pulled Renata out of the bathroom, wrapped her in the blanket and then into his warm, strong arms.  While the flares flashed and the bombs exploded Janek stroked Renata’s trembling head, rocking her and soothing her with visions of survival and a new world at peace and free from humiliation, violence, and pain.  He sang lullabies to the quivering child, who felt like a wounded bird cupped in his hands, until she finally fell asleep. 

 

   In the immediate aftermath of the war, Renata’s brother led her to believe that Janek Bartczak was killed on Warsaw’s barricades during the second uprising in August of 1944.  She mourned him, and in her mind, she buried him.  Over fifty years later, in her capacity as an activist in an international network developing among Jews who survived genocide, my mother Renata decided to find out what happened to the child with whom she shared sanctuary in the Golombek household.  During her search, Mum stumbled upon an old address for one Janek Bartczak.  Like many Poles, it appeared he had gravitated to Chicago.

          My mother considered me her memory keeper, and ran regular spot-checks.  As she got older, the imperative to impart the legacy of her spectres grew increasingly intense.  Deceptively casual, she queried, “Who was Pawel Golombek?’

          Innocently, I answered, “He was a Polish policeman.”

          “Correct,” Mum pronounced, like a schoolteacher who was satisfied, but only for the moment.  “And who was Janek Bartczak?”  The bar was raised higher.  “Ahhh—Richard Widmark?”  Mum smiled.  Close enough.

          “What happened to Bartczak?”  The interrogation was relentless.  I had gotten away with the doppelganger analogy; now I knew I had to get this one right.

           “He was killed in the August ’44 uprising.”

          “Not necessarily.”  Mum was savouring the moment when she could deliver the punch line.  She then called a member of her network in Chicago, a woman for whom she’d been instrumental in re-uniting with a twin brother in Poland.  The woman went to the address the next day.

           “He doesn’t live there anymore.  The neighbours say he retired and moved to Arizona.”

           Within the week Bartczak resurrected, metaphorically enough, in Phoenix.

          “I have to go and see him.”  Mum stated the obvious, and immediately began to plan.  “I’ve got enough flight points on my Visa card to make the trip, but where would I stay?”

          Instantly I turned to the telephone and called Rabbi Grafstein, whom I’d met when she helped to establish Living Testimonies.  After being rejected by a Canadian congregation because of her gender, Sarah Leah Grafstein applied and was accepted as a prison chaplain in Phoenix, Arizona.  She would marry an American ten years her junior.  Together, the rabbi and her husband adopted a half-black boy. 

          “Your mother will stay with me.”  Rabbi Grafstein responded as I hoped she would.  “Meeting Renata changed my life.” 

          “Janek’s story must be told.”  Mum moved into crusader mode.  “But who can interview him?  Regina says his English is poor.”

          “Are you kidding?”  Incredulous, I stared at the woman who was missing the obvious.  “YOU will!”

          “Me?”  Mum was overwhelmed by the suggestion.

          “You’ll conduct the interview in Polish.  Who could do it better?  Everything you’ve done has led to this.”  As I became aware of the obvious, my breath caught.   “You appear to have been chosen.”

          “Oh my.”  As the import of my words sunk in, Mum shuddered.     “But who would set it up?  We have cameras and a technician in the studio here, but how would we do it in Phoenix?”

          Once more, I called Rabbi Grafstein, who then placed a call to California.  Mum was officially registered as an interviewer for Spielberg’s recently established Shoah Foundation.  Technicians and equipment were expedited to Arizona.

          Mum flew to Phoenix at Easter.  The metaphors were becoming outrageous.

          When Mum and Janek reunited, she fell into his arms.

            “You’re alive, you’re alive.”  She huddled against the older man’s chest, the way she had on the night of the bombardment.  “I still can’t believe it.”

          The elderly gentleman held her close.  “So are you,” he whispered.  “This is even harder to believe.”

          Janek was now in his mid-seventies.  He was still vigorous and strong.  His flaxen-coloured hair had thinned out, and what was left of it was white.

Living in freedom and peace had allowed Janek to shed his tough persona, and his natural sweetness shone through the features of his broad Slavic face. 

As they got their bearings, the rescued and rescuer updated each other on what had turned out to be their lives. 

“My brother and I accepted that you were trapped and killed on the barricades during the ’44 uprising.”  Mum gazed at her wartime rescuer, in wonder.  “How did you manage to escape?”

          “The same way you did, moja kochana.”  Janek gazed tenderly at the woman, now in late middle age, whose fate he had accepted would forever remain a mystery.   “I escaped through the sewers.  Unlike you, however, once I got out, I didn’t have far to go.  When I hauled myself out of a manhole I looked up to see a policeman staring at me.  It was Pawel, my very own brother-in-law!”

          “Muj Boze!”  Mum erupted, unconsciously shifting into her wartime Catholic persona.  “My Lord!”

“Oh yes!”  Janek agreed.  “Can you imagine?   I was starving.  I was stinking, I was wet and I was filthy, and I resurface in downtown Warsaw like a vision out of hell!”

          “What a shock for Pawel,” Mum gasped, “But a happy shock!”

“Oh, I’m not sure he recognized me right away, but I recognized him!  I think the shock for Pawel was discovering that I had joined The Underground and fought in The Uprising.  He didn’t think much of me, until then.”  Janek was obviously proud to have earned the respect of his heroic brother-in-law.

 Continuing to fight in the underground resistance movement, Janek was captured by the Germans and sent to a prisoner-of-war camp in Germany.  He escaped, made his way to Italy and joined the Polish army-in-exile under General Anders’ command.  Janek’s unit was transferred to Britain.  Before war’s end, Polish warriors were shattered by the news that the dream of an independent Poland was lost; betrayed at Yalta by Roosevelt and Churchill.  Like many Polish soldiers and pilots who helped to save the country that ultimately betrayed them, Janek felt he couldn’t go home.  While still in power, Churchill offered British citizenship to displaced Polish servicemen and women.  After he was ousted from power, the new Labour government tried to scare displaced Polish military personnel into leaving.  Like thousands of Polish refugee servicemen and women, Janek decided his future lay elsewhere.  He immigrated to South America.  Only in 1947 was he able to notify his family in now-Communist Poland that he was alive.

 In time, Janek married an Argentinian woman.  His wife was now serving coffee and cake.  In awe, she watched the woman who had risen like a phoenix from the ashes.  So did their son, Antonio, with his Jewish wife and their two young boys.  Their grandfather had never told them of his wartime exploits.  True heroes are silent, or dead.

          Unlike most subjects interviewed for Holocaust oral history projects, Janek was relaxed.  He told his tale as if holding a long-overdue conversation.  He was almost gleeful as he recounted how often and well he outwitted both the German occupiers and his treacherous Polish neighbours.  When Mum asked why he behaved as he had, Janek responded by placing his hand over his heart.  His testimony was a gift to both of them.  The woman whom he rescued as a child was now a rescuer of Memory. 

When Mum returned home, she made it her mission to have Janek officially recognized and honoured by the Israeli government as a member of an elite category known as Righteous Among The Nations.  Israeli law stipulates that at least two living witnesses submit depositions in order to validate the nomination of a candidate.  Having yet to locate the hidden child Isabella (though they would), Mum’s network launched a search for Janek’s wartime Jewish lover.  She was traced to New York City.  In the intervening fifty years Ada had been twice divorced and recently widowed. 

“You’ve got to do this,” Mum commanded.

“Of course I will.”  Ada was in a daze, reeling from the news that her wartime lover was alive.  Ada and Janek reunited over a telephone line, but they would never set eyes on each other, again.

*The central train platform where Ghetto Jews were collected and carted off for mass murder, 

 

           Before leaving for her annual stay in Poland, Mum called Janek to say good-bye.  He was a widower, now. 

 Three days after Mum’s departure, Antonio called me.

 “Oh gosh!  I’m so sorry.  I’m so very very sorry.”

          “Will you tell your mother?’

          “Of course I will.”

          Calculating the time change between North America and Europe, I estimated that I could reach Mum in her Warsaw office.

          “Sweetheart!  This isn’t our usual time to talk.  Is something going on?  What’s up?”

          My silence sent Mum into alert.  “Something is wrong.  What is it?”

          Sadly, I told her.  Janek Bartczak suffered a stroke and died a second and final time.  He was seventy-nine years old.

          “No!  Oh no!  I’d only just found him and now I’ve lost him again!”  Mum was grief-stricken.

          “No Mum.”  My voice was soft with sorrow.  “You haven’t lost him.  Antonio told me his father died at peace because he finally found out what happened to you and to the other child sheltered in his home.  Who he was and what he did won’t be lost because you recorded it.  The Shoah Foundation will keep Janek’s story and memory safe.  He’s safe now, Mum.  He’s safe.  Janek will never be lost again.”

          Mum was in tears, and I was near tears.  Yet, despite her grief, my mother recognized the truth of my words.  Not only had she taken the time to say good-bye but Renata, a wild orphan of war, also found a way of saying Thank You. 

 

Since Janek wasn’t in a position to receive it, a notice was sent to Antonio, summoning him to an Israeli consulate.  In a desert city in the American Southwest, in a ceremony witnessed by his Jewish wife and their two sons, Janek’s son was presented with a certificate and medal for his father’s part in providing a safe harbour during a violent storm, and for his magnificent, and now-stilled heart. 

 

 Abou the author.

. Nadja Zajdman is a Canadian author.  In 2022 she published the story collection The Memory Keeper, as well as the memoir I Want You To Be Free, the story of her late mother, the pioneering Holocaust educator and activist Renata Skotnicka-Zajdman.  In 2023 Zajdman followed up with a second memoir, Daddy’s Remains.  In 2024 Bridgehouse brought out Zajdman’s essay collection, Between Worlds.

         

           

Did you enjoy the story? Would you like to shout us a coffee?. Half of what you pay goes to the author the oher half goes to expense se.g. Maintaining hthe web site and setting up The Best of Café Lit book each year.

Satrurday Sample,L Lancadshire Authors of today: Lancaster Black

 

Foreword 

As an actress and singer, I’ve spent many years searching for the human condition within and beneath the words on the page. Reading a powerful paragraph of prose or a heart-breaking stanza of poetry allows the reader to be transported intellectually, emotionally and oftentimes spiritually to the rich world of our imagination.

What is so wondrous is that everyone has their own interpretation of a piece of writing because we each live and experience the world in our own unique way.

I’ve always loved getting lost inside a great story and admire those who are compelled to put pen to paper or indeed finger tips to keyboards.

It is a privilege to be asked to write this foreword for the Lancashire Authors Association Anthology 2025 and have deep respect and admiration for the commitment and dedication it takes to maintain the excellent work this organisation does to reach out and engage with artists all over Lancashire.

Our roots run deep and so does our artistry.

This anthology is a collection of just some of the many writers who found themselves with something to say this year and we do hope you enjoy reading them all.

 

 

Mina Anwar

Actress, singer and Director and proud Accringtonian

Find your copy here  

 

The Scarab Ankh byFlorentina Caliman– a shot of ouzo

 

On that sunny day, my eyes lingered on the page, trying to unravel the mystery within. More than once, I halted mid-sentence, staring blankly while my lips whispered the title - Dayan.... Dayan - as if its mere repetition might have helped me understand what was hidden between the lines. Then, I read on: “I was only aware of the ultimate equation. I did not know the solution that could have protected me from the consequences of discovering it. God gifted me with mathematical genius, but not with true creative vision - not with poetic genius…Had I possessed poetic genius, perhaps I would have uncovered the solution myself.”

se

Despite my fascination with Mircea Eliade’s fantasy fiction, on that afternoon, I struggled to stay engrossed in the story. My spirit no longer wanted to remain inside the book. The life beyond the window murmured with a force that the printed page, for all its magic, could not match. I closed the book, giving in to the temptation of a stroll through the sun-drenched streets, eager to listen to the world more closely.  

Once I reached the street, I slipped into the Thessaloniki’s rhythm and colour. Peace, warmth, and sun - a Greek city in its typical mood. The sun cast its light over the city with youthful vigour. Here and there, a few wispy, ghost-like clouds drifted across the sky, adding a faint touch of melancholy to the scene.

Roaming the city, a little shop appeared before me - though I’m not sure it even deserved such a name - tucked into a corner, closed, with only a handful of unpriced goods inside.

Three Egyptian cross pendants glowed subtly in the window, against the dusty background, appearing to bear the imprint of another place, another time. Something about them felt half-remembered, but I couldn’t grasp what it was. I perceived only the silent torment of my soul wanting to find out.

I’d promised myself I’d come back the next day to buy one of them. Yet when I returned, the little shop was still closed, and it stayed that way far longer than I’d expected. Day after day, week after week, I returned, drawn to that pane of glass where I would peer in as if waiting long enough might somehow change something inside. Still, the pendants remained undisturbed.

Time passed in its usual rhythm, marking the approaching end of the academic year and my time studying abroad. As my return home drew closer, I felt a growing anxiety about leaving without the much-coveted Egyptian cross.

Then, one day, the door, which had been stubbornly shut for so long, finally swung open. I stepped in.

“Excuse me,” I asked a young brunette with long, curly hair, “how much are the pendants in the window?”

Behind the counter, she stared absentmindedly past me, leaving my question unanswered.

A young man’s voice broke the silence. “No idea. I’m not the owner. I don’t even work here.”

I hadn’t heard him approach; he might as well have stepped out of the air like a phantom.

“Why are you here, then?” I asked, puzzled.

He shrugged.

The air hung with the lingering scent of old wood and dust. My gaze drifted from the aged wooden floor to a faded oriental dancer’s dress draped above a peeling showcase, then to a hookah resting on a timeworn desk.

A deep feeling of detachment unexpectedly came over me, as if an invisible membrane had wrapped itself around my body, setting me apart from everything else. The young man spoke to the woman, and she replied, their lips moving in a silent exchange that didn’t reach my ears. No sound seemed to penetrate that membrane. It was like watching a silent movie.

“I’ll call the owner to find out the price,” the young man’s voice suddenly broke through, crisp and real, as if it had pierced the membrane from the outside.

I remained rooted to the spot in the room, gripped by the sensation that time had also come to a standstill.

I hadn’t even realised the young man had left until he reappeared, stepping back into the room as though emerging from another dimension, and announced, “Fifty is the price.”

“Which one is fifty?” I inquired. “They are different sizes.”

He paused, seeming to look back into his memory for the answer, then replied: “They all cost the same.”

“In that case,” I decided, “I’ll take the largest cross; the one with the scarab in the ankh’s circle.”

I left the shop feeling the joy bubbling inside me so intense I feared it might crack my skin and spill out. This elation soon faded as a few fuzzy details began nagging me: Were those young people Arabs or Greeks? What language had they spoken to each other? Had they actually spoken to each other?

Alone in my room, I reflected upon the day’s events, which reminded me, for reasons unclear, of a passage from Eliade’s novella 19 Roses: “We all had one of those incomprehensible experiences where it felt as if we were in a strange space, living in an abolished time.”

Soon, I drifted off to sleep and had a strange dream where…

A city lay in ruins, silent and deserted for ages. The moonlight, like powdered silver, fell onto colossal stones, scattered as though a divine being had hurled them in a fit of rage.

A lone stone block stood in the heart of the city’s central square. The moonlight bathed one of its sides with a snow-like luminescence, contrasting with the coal-dark shadows on the other. Upon the moonlit surface, peculiar carvings emerged, depicting figures with oversized heads, converging from a boundless horizon. Rugged mountains encircled a city, a mirror image of this one, now destroyed. Egyptian-like figures knelt, hands outstretched in supplication. As the moon slid across the sky, it illuminated a new facet of the stone, revealing the oddly shaped-headed strangers’ departure. They appeared to ascend to the heavens, issuing orders to the Egyptians below.

As if on cue, a star gracefully glided along a ray of light. Its gentle, bluish gleam cast a theatrical atmosphere, much like a spotlight on a stage, heralding the start of an uncanny performance.

The image rippled for a moment, like water disturbed by a stone. Then I saw a woman facing judgement. Her dark hair held a sheen, like water in a stone fountain, reflecting the sky in its depths. Her eyes flickered like the tremor of a full moon on a lake at the edge of a dark forest. A scarab-decorated ankh shone around her neck.

There was a mysterious tension floating around, the source of which I couldn’t identify. Unexpectedly, a thought raced through my mind, providing a response to an unspoken query: This goddess has to face the consequences of her wrongdoing.

Under the cover of night, the judge’s presence was barely discernible, but his words boomed powerfully through the air. “What crime has she committed?”

The language was unfamiliar, yet the meaning sank into my mind as if poured directly into my thoughts.

The accuser stepped forward, his voice, like thunder, mirroring his cold, implacable aura.

“This goddess broke a divine law by defying the elders’ decrees. She shared forbidden healing knowledge and even cured individuals condemned to death by the gods, besides teaching mortals about astronomy, moon movements, and celestial navigation.”

His tone hardened. “However, her gravest betrayal was love. She tied herself to a mortal and revealed to him secrets meant only for the gods: the art of bending time and of crossing the thresholds between life and death. She brought mortals closer to the gods, forcing the old gods to erase their civilization.”

The judge’s voice rose again, this time addressing the condemned woman. “Do you have anything to say in your defence?”

The goddess looked skyward and began to speak with a voice that carried a mysterious melody.

“In the ancient texts of our elders, there is an oath that shaped my purpose. ‘We pledge to you, mighty Sun God, our unwavering commitment to bring solace to those afflicted by illness and sorrow, as Horus and Isis once guarded and comforted Osiris. Let us, united, offer the suffering not only our love, but the strength of knowledge, O radiant Sun God.’”

Her gaze swept over the shadows surrounding her: judges, accusers, silent watchers hidden in the dark.

“If healing is forbidden, if teaching is condemned, and if love is the greatest sin,” she uttered with the solemnity of a caged bird of prey, “then let judgment fall upon me. I will bear it all, but I will never repent.”

In the flickering light of the star, a cell emerged from the darkness as though an unseen veil had been drawn aside. A man sat within, his posture weighed down by a pain that seemed too heavy for a mortal to bear. His hands, trembling with a desperate yearning for one last hug, reached through the iron bars towards the woman he loved.

The goddess met his gaze. Her frozen eyes bloomed for a moment. When she spoke, her voice softened into something meant only for him.

“Immortality and true love are said to be inseparable. While I cannot stop death from taking you, I take comfort in knowing our love reaches beyond its power. You’ll live forever within my heart.”

She had barely finished speaking when a focused, unnatural burst of light ripped through the cell with the speed and violence of a lightning bolt. The flash was blinding. When the brilliance faded, the man was gone, leaving only a thin wisp of smoke curling upward where his body had been. Tears wove a delicate, almost invisible spiderweb in the goddess’s eyes. She lifted her chin with dignity and turned toward the judge, listening in silence as he pronounced her sentence.

“For a thousand years, you will wander this deserted city, alone, burdened by the weight of your sins. When that time ends, you will be reborn as a mortal, stripped of your divinity and consumed by sorrow. Across countless lifetimes, shifting between the roles of woman and man, you will repeatedly encounter your soulmate, yet never recognise them. Only when you finally understand the full measure of your wrongdoing will your memories return, and your punishment end.”

When the pale dawn light seeped into the room, I awoke in a haze of confusion, my mind still replaying the night’s images and impressions. I couldn’t shake the thought: Was my subconscious guarding a truth I wasn’t ready to face?

Still mulling over the previous day’s unresolved questions, I half-heartedly worked on my university assignments. When evening fell, I went to the seaside, a place that has always offered me mental clarity, hoping to find the answer to all the questions swirling in my mind.

Near Aristotle Square, the sound of waves mingled with the distant tourist chatter. Adrift in my thoughts, I stared at the distant view, my fingers absently fiddling with the Egyptian cross on my chest, when a voice spoke beside me. “I like the symbol on your necklace.”

I turned to see an old man with a grey, long beard.

“Me too,” I replied. “That’s why I bought this pendant.”

For a beat, he was quiet, his gaze wandering back to the Aegean, tracing the glistening sea. When he spoke again, a shadow of sadness clouded his words.

“I used to make similar pendants back in Crete when I was younger. Life got tough there, so a few years ago, I moved to the mainland. But I’m old now, my hands shake, and it’s hard to keep up with the crafting.”

A sense of familiarity stirred in me, unexplainable. “Have we ever met before?”

As I walked away, his reply drifted after me, threading itself into the sound of the waves. “Who knows? Perhaps we’ve known each other for ages.”

I ended the day by returning to my favourite story, Dayan, reflecting on a few pivotal passages: “If my intuition is correct… I will unravel the enigma… that time can be compressed in both directions. Then anything becomes possible, and man, to his own misfortune, may take on the role of God.”

Soon, my eyelids grew heavy, and…

My first vision was of a room brimming with floor-to-ceiling shelves packed with leather-bound books, many so old and brittle they seemed on the verge of disintegration. A moonlit spiderweb glistened in the corner of the windowpane, adding a gentle peace to the scene.

A man sat hunched over an old wooden table, writing in a notebook. His scribbling betrayed the feverish impatience of a child about to unearth a treasure. He paused for a moment, sharing his metaphysical musings with a small spider spinning its web - his only companion in the silent night. Is the human soul the only realm where time and space exist? Could I plumb the soul’s depths, unlock its secrets, and travel through time, on Earth or among the stars, shaping events to my will? Could I return to the boundless realm of my soul to the moment, the place, and the life where I met her, the goddess from my dreams?

Back at his notebook, his pen scratched furiously across the page, a torrent of symbols and numbers pouring from his mind. Excitement pulsed through his overwrought brain as he filled page after page until exhaustion overwhelmed him. Even then, jaw clenched and eyes bloodshot, he pressed on. Each discovery only deepened his despair, fuelling more frantic scribbling. He kept writing, ignoring the sharp pains in his joints, until the complex equations began to move as images before his eyes, morphing into writhing snakes that gathered further in a circle dance of goddesses.

A voice screamed in his head, as if unseen, angry eyes were upon him. “Stop! You’ll go crazy!”

Pale and trembling, he yelled back, “I can’t! I’m on the verge of a discovery that will change the world forever.”

A second scream echoed, “The secret of the gods is forbidden to mortals.”

“I’ll discover it! I’ll be like the ancient Egyptian sages!” he shouted.

The man wrote on until a searing pain, like iron claws, tore through his brain, causing him to clasp his temples. “It must be late,” was his last thought before fainting and falling on the floor.

As was often the case, the dream sequences swirled together, chaotic and nonsensical. My perspective shifted. I became a point of light, a disembodied consciousness that was aware it was dreaming.

A huge screen, with countless mathematical formulas and geometrical figures sparkling like gold, hung in the sky. A chilling dread seized me. What do they mean? What if I can’t decipher their meaning? But the fear loosened, and understanding rose within me like an old, lost memory. They described the hidden order of the universe, the primordial forces that shaped the world, writing the times. Then, what had briefly seemed clear to me became muddled and vanished, as if it had never been, like any hidden truth.

My attention returned to the man. He lay in the hospital bed, lips parched, forehead glistening with sweat, his head heavy. Strapped down, he could barely move. His mouth contorted as if he wanted to cry out, “Get me out of here! You’re hurting me!” but his lips remained sealed.

Beside the bed, a man in a white robe watched him with sorrowful eyes. His prominent forehead and dreamy eyes made him seem more like a philosopher than a psychiatrist.

The hospital room door swung open, and he quickly stepped forward to greet the newcomer. “Welcome, Father! I’ve been expecting you.”

The priest stepped forward, a large wooden crucifix resting on his chest, suspended by a thick hemp cord. “May God be with you, son. How can I help you?”

“I called you here to pray for this poor soul. Perhaps your prayers will ease his suffering.”

With an old Bible in hand, the priest approached the patient's bedside. “What happened to him?”

“This brilliant mind has reached the apex of madness, claiming the imminent discovery of a world-altering equation.”

As if facing the devil himself, the priest made a sweeping sign of the cross.

“No wonder he ended up in an asylum,” he muttered. “Playing God only leads to madness.”

The doctor continued as though he hadn’t heard. “He might have found what he sought, but was terrified by what it meant. Or he failed and was left disillusioned. Perhaps pure math alone wasn’t enough.”

He paused, then leaned forward slightly. “What if the fusion of poetry and science unveiled a divine logic? Imagine standing at the threshold of godhood, but still missing the final, essential element: poetic genius. What would that be like?”

The priest shook his head in disbelief. “God has punished the sinner for his arrogance. Let us pray for this lost soul.”

As his voice rose in solemn prayer, the air before the dying man fractured, a crack forming and swiftly widening. A beam of light burst forth, engulfing everything in its radiance. The light shimmered, shifting through every shade of the rainbow before settling into a brilliant white. From its heart, a luminous figure emerged, holding an ankh, the symbol of eternal life, in her hand and beckoning him into the celestial realm. He smiled, holding no fear, only a divine peace.

When I opened my eyes, the sun had already barged into the room through the open window. In the silence that spun its web across the room, my thoughts began searching for meaning. Was everything merely a dream shaped by Eliade’s fiction, or a memory echoing from another time? The truth hasn’t revealed itself.

I wore that ankh as a talisman for long time. Then one morning, glancing in the mirror, I noticed the chain was bare. I don’t know when or where I lost it. I only know that, with its disappearance, the strange visions that had haunted my sleep faded away.

It's been twenty years, and I still ponder if the tiny shop in Thessaloniki, open for just one day, still stands. And I often ponder whether one of the two remaining pendants might still be waiting for me.

 

sentence, staring blankly while my lips whispered the title - Dayan.... Dayan - as if its mere repetition might have helped me understand what was hidden between the lines. Then, I read on: “I was only aware of the ultimate equation. I did not know the solution that could have protected me from the consequences of discovering it. God gifted me with mathematical genius, but not with true creative vision - not with poetic genius…Had I possessed poetic genius, perhaps I would have uncovered the solution myself.”

Despite my fascination with Mircea Eliade’s fantasy fiction, on that afternoon, I struggled to stay engrossed in the story. My spirit no longer wanted to remain inside the book. The life beyond the window murmured with a force that the printed page, for all its magic, could not match. I closed the book, giving in to the temptation of a stroll through the sun-drenched streets, eager to listen to the world more closely.  

Once I reached the street, I slipped into the Thessaloniki’s rhythm and colour. Peace, warmth, and sun - a Greek city in its typical mood. The sun cast its light over the city with youthful vigour. Here and there, a few wispy, ghost-like clouds drifted across the sky, adding a faint touch of melancholy to the scene.

Roaming the city, a little shop appeared before me - though I’m not sure it even deserved such a name - tucked into a corner, closed, with only a handful of unpriced goods inside.

Three Egyptian cross pendants glowed subtly in the window, against the dusty background, appearing to bear the imprint of another place, another time. Something about them felt half-remembered, but I couldn’t grasp what it was. I perceived only the silent torment of my soul wanting to find out.

I’d promised myself I’d come back the next day to buy one of them. Yet when I returned, the little shop was still closed, and it stayed that way far longer than I’d expected. Day after day, week after week, I returned, drawn to that pane of glass where I would peer in as if waiting long enough might somehow change something inside. Still, the pendants remained undisturbed.

Time passed in its usual rhythm, marking the approaching end of the academic year and my time studying abroad. As my return home drew closer, I felt a growing anxiety about leaving without the much-coveted Egyptian cross.

Then, one day, the door, which had been stubbornly shut for so long, finally swung open. I stepped in.

“Excuse me,” I asked a young brunette with long, curly hair, “how much are the pendants in the window?”

Behind the counter, she stared absentmindedly past me, leaving my question unanswered.

A young man’s voice broke the silence. “No idea. I’m not the owner. I don’t even work here.”

I hadn’t heard him approach; he might as well have stepped out of the air like a phantom.

“Why are you here, then?” I asked, puzzled.

He shrugged.

The air hung with the lingering scent of old wood and dust. My gaze drifted from the aged wooden floor to a faded oriental dancer’s dress draped above a peeling showcase, then to a hookah resting on a timeworn desk.

A deep feeling of detachment unexpectedly came over me, as if an invisible membrane had wrapped itself around my body, setting me apart from everything else. The young man spoke to the woman, and she replied, their lips moving in a silent exchange that didn’t reach my ears. No sound seemed to penetrate that membrane. It was like watching a silent movie.

“I’ll call the owner to find out the price,” the young man’s voice suddenly broke through, crisp and real, as if it had pierced the membrane from the outside.

I remained rooted to the spot in the room, gripped by the sensation that time had also come to a standstill.

I hadn’t even realised the young man had left until he reappeared, stepping back into the room as though emerging from another dimension, and announced, “Fifty is the price.”

“Which one is fifty?” I inquired. “They are different sizes.”

He paused, seeming to look back into his memory for the answer, then replied: “They all cost the same.”

“In that case,” I decided, “I’ll take the largest cross; the one with the scarab in the ankh’s circle.”

I left the shop feeling the joy bubbling inside me so intense I feared it might crack my skin and spill out. This elation soon faded as a few fuzzy details began nagging me: Were those young people Arabs or Greeks? What language had they spoken to each other? Had they actually spoken to each other?

Alone in my room, I reflected upon the day’s events, which reminded me, for reasons unclear, of a passage from Eliade’s novella 19 Roses: “We all had one of those incomprehensible experiences where it felt as if we were in a strange space, living in an abolished time.”

Soon, I drifted off to sleep and had a strange dream where…

A city lay in ruins, silent and deserted for ages. The moonlight, like powdered silver, fell onto colossal stones, scattered as though a divine being had hurled them in a fit of rage.

A lone stone block stood in the heart of the city’s central square. The moonlight bathed one of its sides with a snow-like luminescence, contrasting with the coal-dark shadows on the other. Upon the moonlit surface, peculiar carvings emerged, depicting figures with oversized heads, converging from a boundless horizon. Rugged mountains encircled a city, a mirror image of this one, now destroyed. Egyptian-like figures knelt, hands outstretched in supplication. As the moon slid across the sky, it illuminated a new facet of the stone, revealing the oddly shaped-headed strangers’ departure. They appeared to ascend to the heavens, issuing orders to the Egyptians below.

As if on cue, a star gracefully glided along a ray of light. Its gentle, bluish gleam cast a theatrical atmosphere, much like a spotlight on a stage, heralding the start of an uncanny performance.

The image rippled for a moment, like water disturbed by a stone. Then I saw a woman facing judgement. Her dark hair held a sheen, like water in a stone fountain, reflecting the sky in its depths. Her eyes flickered like the tremor of a full moon on a lake at the edge of a dark forest. A scarab-decorated ankh shone around her neck.

There was a mysterious tension floating around, the source of which I couldn’t identify. Unexpectedly, a thought raced through my mind, providing a response to an unspoken query: This goddess has to face the consequences of her wrongdoing.

Under the cover of night, the judge’s presence was barely discernible, but his words boomed powerfully through the air. “What crime has she committed?”

The language was unfamiliar, yet the meaning sank into my mind as if poured directly into my thoughts.

The accuser stepped forward, his voice, like thunder, mirroring his cold, implacable aura.

“This goddess broke a divine law by defying the elders’ decrees. She shared forbidden healing knowledge and even cured individuals condemned to death by the gods, besides teaching mortals about astronomy, moon movements, and celestial navigation.”

His tone hardened. “However, her gravest betrayal was love. She tied herself to a mortal and revealed to him secrets meant only for the gods: the art of bending time and of crossing the thresholds between life and death. She brought mortals closer to the gods, forcing the old gods to erase their civilization.”

The judge’s voice rose again, this time addressing the condemned woman. “Do you have anything to say in your defence?”

The goddess looked skyward and began to speak with a voice that carried a mysterious melody.

“In the ancient texts of our elders, there is an oath that shaped my purpose. ‘We pledge to you, mighty Sun God, our unwavering commitment to bring solace to those afflicted by illness and sorrow, as Horus and Isis once guarded and comforted Osiris. Let us, united, offer the suffering not only our love, but the strength of knowledge, O radiant Sun God.’”

Her gaze swept over the shadows surrounding her: judges, accusers, silent watchers hidden in the dark.

“If healing is forbidden, if teaching is condemned, and if love is the greatest sin,” she uttered with the solemnity of a caged bird of prey, “then let judgment fall upon me. I will bear it all, but I will never repent.”

In the flickering light of the star, a cell emerged from the darkness as though an unseen veil had been drawn aside. A man sat within, his posture weighed down by a pain that seemed too heavy for a mortal to bear. His hands, trembling with a desperate yearning for one last hug, reached through the iron bars towards the woman he loved.

The goddess met his gaze. Her frozen eyes bloomed for a moment. When she spoke, her voice softened into something meant only for him.

“Immortality and true love are said to be inseparable. While I cannot stop death from taking you, I take comfort in knowing our love reaches beyond its power. You’ll live forever within my heart.”

She had barely finished speaking when a focused, unnatural burst of light ripped through the cell with the speed and violence of a lightning bolt. The flash was blinding. When the brilliance faded, the man was gone, leaving only a thin wisp of smoke curling upward where his body had been. Tears wove a delicate, almost invisible spiderweb in the goddess’s eyes. She lifted her chin with dignity and turned toward the judge, listening in silence as he pronounced her sentence.

“For a thousand years, you will wander this deserted city, alone, burdened by the weight of your sins. When that time ends, you will be reborn as a mortal, stripped of your divinity and consumed by sorrow. Across countless lifetimes, shifting between the roles of woman and man, you will repeatedly encounter your soulmate, yet never recognise them. Only when you finally understand the full measure of your wrongdoing will your memories return, and your punishment end.”

When the pale dawn light seeped into the room, I awoke in a haze of confusion, my mind still replaying the night’s images and impressions. I couldn’t shake the thought: Was my subconscious guarding a truth I wasn’t ready to face?

Still mulling over the previous day’s unresolved questions, I half-heartedly worked on my university assignments. When evening fell, I went to the seaside, a place that has always offered me mental clarity, hoping to find the answer to all the questions swirling in my mind.

Near Aristotle Square, the sound of waves mingled with the distant tourist chatter. Adrift in my thoughts, I stared at the distant view, my fingers absently fiddling with the Egyptian cross on my chest, when a voice spoke beside me. “I like the symbol on your necklace.”

I turned to see an old man with a grey, long beard.

“Me too,” I replied. “That’s why I bought this pendant.”

For a beat, he was quiet, his gaze wandering back to the Aegean, tracing the glistening sea. When he spoke again, a shadow of sadness clouded his words.

“I used to make similar pendants back in Crete when I was younger. Life got tough there, so a few years ago, I moved to the mainland. But I’m old now, my hands shake, and it’s hard to keep up with the crafting.”

A sense of familiarity stirred in me, unexplainable. “Have we ever met before?”

As I walked away, his reply drifted after me, threading itself into the sound of the waves. “Who knows? Perhaps we’ve known each other for ages.”

I ended the day by returning to my favourite story, Dayan, reflecting on a few pivotal passages: “If my intuition is correct… I will unravel the enigma… that time can be compressed in both directions. Then anything becomes possible, and man, to his own misfortune, may take on the role of God.”

Soon, my eyelids grew heavy, and…

My first vision was of a room brimming with floor-to-ceiling shelves packed with leather-bound books, many so old and brittle they seemed on the verge of disintegration. A moonlit spiderweb glistened in the corner of the windowpane, adding a gentle peace to the scene.

A man sat hunched over an old wooden table, writing in a notebook. His scribbling betrayed the feverish impatience of a child about to unearth a treasure. He paused for a moment, sharing his metaphysical musings with a small spider spinning its web - his only companion in the silent night. Is the human soul the only realm where time and space exist? Could I plumb the soul’s depths, unlock its secrets, and travel through time, on Earth or among the stars, shaping events to my will? Could I return to the boundless realm of my soul to the moment, the place, and the life where I met her, the goddess from my dreams?

Back at his notebook, his pen scratched furiously across the page, a torrent of symbols and numbers pouring from his mind. Excitement pulsed through his overwrought brain as he filled page after page until exhaustion overwhelmed him. Even then, jaw clenched and eyes bloodshot, he pressed on. Each discovery only deepened his despair, fuelling more frantic scribbling. He kept writing, ignoring the sharp pains in his joints, until the complex equations began to move as images before his eyes, morphing into writhing snakes that gathered further in a circle dance of goddesses.

A voice screamed in his head, as if unseen, angry eyes were upon him. “Stop! You’ll go crazy!”

Pale and trembling, he yelled back, “I can’t! I’m on the verge of a discovery that will change the world forever.”

A second scream echoed, “The secret of the gods is forbidden to mortals.”

“I’ll discover it! I’ll be like the ancient Egyptian sages!” he shouted.

The man wrote on until a searing pain, like iron claws, tore through his brain, causing him to clasp his temples. “It must be late,” was his last thought before fainting and falling on the floor.

As was often the case, the dream sequences swirled together, chaotic and nonsensical. My perspective shifted. I became a point of light, a disembodied consciousness that was aware it was dreaming.

A huge screen, with countless mathematical formulas and geometrical figures sparkling like gold, hung in the sky. A chilling dread seized me. What do they mean? What if I can’t decipher their meaning? But the fear loosened, and understanding rose within me like an old, lost memory. They described the hidden order of the universe, the primordial forces that shaped the world, writing the times. Then, what had briefly seemed clear to me became muddled and vanished, as if it had never been, like any hidden truth.

My attention returned to the man. He lay in the hospital bed, lips parched, forehead glistening with sweat, his head heavy. Strapped down, he could barely move. His mouth contorted as if he wanted to cry out, “Get me out of here! You’re hurting me!” but his lips remained sealed.

Beside the bed, a man in a white robe watched him with sorrowful eyes. His prominent forehead and dreamy eyes made him seem more like a philosopher than a psychiatrist.

The hospital room door swung open, and he quickly stepped forward to greet the newcomer. “Welcome, Father! I’ve been expecting you.”

The priest stepped forward, a large wooden crucifix resting on his chest, suspended by a thick hemp cord. “May God be with you, son. How can I help you?”

“I called you here to pray for this poor soul. Perhaps your prayers will ease his suffering.”

With an old Bible in hand, the priest approached the patient's bedside. “What happened to him?”

“This brilliant mind has reached the apex of madness, claiming the imminent discovery of a world-altering equation.”

As if facing the devil himself, the priest made a sweeping sign of the cross.

“No wonder he ended up in an asylum,” he muttered. “Playing God only leads to madness.”

The doctor continued as though he hadn’t heard. “He might have found what he sought, but was terrified by what it meant. Or he failed and was left disillusioned. Perhaps pure math alone wasn’t enough.”

He paused, then leaned forward slightly. “What if the fusion of poetry and science unveiled a divine logic? Imagine standing at the threshold of godhood, but still missing the final, essential element: poetic genius. What would that be like?”

The priest shook his head in disbelief. “God has punished the sinner for his arrogance. Let us pray for this lost soul.”

As his voice rose in solemn prayer, the air before the dying man fractured, a crack forming and swiftly widening. A beam of light burst forth, engulfing everything in its radiance. The light shimmered, shifting through every shade of the rainbow before settling into a brilliant white. From its heart, a luminous figure emerged, holding an ankh, the symbol of eternal life, in her hand and beckoning him into the celestial realm. He smiled, holding no fear, only a divine peace.

When I opened my eyes, the sun had already barged into the room through the open window. In the silence that spun its web across the room, my thoughts began searching for meaning. Was everything merely a dream shaped by Eliade’s fiction, or a memory echoing from another time? The truth hasn’t revealed itself.

I wore that ankh as a talisman for long time. Then one morning, glancing in the mirror, I noticed the chain was bare. I don’t know when or where I lost it. I only know that, with its disappearance, the strange visions that had haunted my sleep faded away.

It's been twenty years, and I still ponder if the tiny shop in Thessaloniki, open for just one day, still stands. And I often ponder whether one of the two remaining pendants might still be waiting for me.

 

sentence, staring blankly while my lips whispered the title - Dayan.... Dayan - as if its mere repetition might have helped me understand what was hidden between the lines. Then, I read on: “I was only aware of the ultimate equation. I did not know the solution that could have protected me from the consequences of discovering it. God gifted me with mathematical genius, but not with true creative vision - not with poetic genius…Had I possessed poetic genius, perhaps I would have uncovered the solution myself.”

Despite my fascination with Mircea Eliade’s fantasy fiction, on that afternoon, I struggled to stay engrossed in the story. My spirit no longer wanted to remain inside the book. The life beyond the window murmured with a force that the printed page, for all its magic, could not match. I closed the book, giving in to the temptation of a stroll through the sun-drenched streets, eager to listen to the world more closely.  

Once I reached the street, I slipped into the Thessaloniki’s rhythm and colour. Peace, warmth, and sun - a Greek city in its typical mood. The sun cast its light over the city with youthful vigour. Here and there, a few wispy, ghost-like clouds drifted across the sky, adding a faint touch of melancholy to the scene.

Roaming the city, a little shop appeared before me - though I’m not sure it even deserved such a name - tucked into a corner, closed, with only a handful of unpriced goods inside.

Three Egyptian cross pendants glowed subtly in the window, against the dusty background, appearing to bear the imprint of another place, another time. Something about them felt half-remembered, but I couldn’t grasp what it was. I perceived only the silent torment of my soul wanting to find out.

I’d promised myself I’d come back the next day to buy one of them. Yet when I returned, the little shop was still closed, and it stayed that way far longer than I’d expected. Day after day, week after week, I returned, drawn to that pane of glass where I would peer in as if waiting long enough might somehow change something inside. Still, the pendants remained undisturbed.

Time passed in its usual rhythm, marking the approaching end of the academic year and my time studying abroad. As my return home drew closer, I felt a growing anxiety about leaving without the much-coveted Egyptian cross.

Then, one day, the door, which had been stubbornly shut for so long, finally swung open. I stepped in.

“Excuse me,” I asked a young brunette with long, curly hair, “how much are the pendants in the window?”

Behind the counter, she stared absentmindedly past me, leaving my question unanswered.

A young man’s voice broke the silence. “No idea. I’m not the owner. I don’t even work here.”

I hadn’t heard him approach; he might as well have stepped out of the air like a phantom.

“Why are you here, then?” I asked, puzzled.

He shrugged.

The air hung with the lingering scent of old wood and dust. My gaze drifted from the aged wooden floor to a faded oriental dancer’s dress draped above a peeling showcase, then to a hookah resting on a timeworn desk.

A deep feeling of detachment unexpectedly came over me, as if an invisible membrane had wrapped itself around my body, setting me apart from everything else. The young man spoke to the woman, and she replied, their lips moving in a silent exchange that didn’t reach my ears. No sound seemed to penetrate that membrane. It was like watching a silent movie.

“I’ll call the owner to find out the price,” the young man’s voice suddenly broke through, crisp and real, as if it had pierced the membrane from the outside.

I remained rooted to the spot in the room, gripped by the sensation that time had also come to a standstill.

I hadn’t even realised the young man had left until he reappeared, stepping back into the room as though emerging from another dimension, and announced, “Fifty is the price.”

“Which one is fifty?” I inquired. “They are different sizes.”

He paused, seeming to look back into his memory for the answer, then replied: “They all cost the same.”

“In that case,” I decided, “I’ll take the largest cross; the one with the scarab in the ankh’s circle.”

I left the shop feeling the joy bubbling inside me so intense I feared it might crack my skin and spill out. This elation soon faded as a few fuzzy details began nagging me: Were those young people Arabs or Greeks? What language had they spoken to each other? Had they actually spoken to each other?

Alone in my room, I reflected upon the day’s events, which reminded me, for reasons unclear, of a passage from Eliade’s novella 19 Roses: “We all had one of those incomprehensible experiences where it felt as if we were in a strange space, living in an abolished time.”

Soon, I drifted off to sleep and had a strange dream where…

A city lay in ruins, silent and deserted for ages. The moonlight, like powdered silver, fell onto colossal stones, scattered as though a divine being had hurled them in a fit of rage.

A lone stone block stood in the heart of the city’s central square. The moonlight bathed one of its sides with a snow-like luminescence, contrasting with the coal-dark shadows on the other. Upon the moonlit surface, peculiar carvings emerged, depicting figures with oversized heads, converging from a boundless horizon. Rugged mountains encircled a city, a mirror image of this one, now destroyed. Egyptian-like figures knelt, hands outstretched in supplication. As the moon slid across the sky, it illuminated a new facet of the stone, revealing the oddly shaped-headed strangers’ departure. They appeared to ascend to the heavens, issuing orders to the Egyptians below.

As if on cue, a star gracefully glided along a ray of light. Its gentle, bluish gleam cast a theatrical atmosphere, much like a spotlight on a stage, heralding the start of an uncanny performance.

The image rippled for a moment, like water disturbed by a stone. Then I saw a woman facing judgement. Her dark hair held a sheen, like water in a stone fountain, reflecting the sky in its depths. Her eyes flickered like the tremor of a full moon on a lake at the edge of a dark forest. A scarab-decorated ankh shone around her neck.

There was a mysterious tension floating around, the source of which I couldn’t identify. Unexpectedly, a thought raced through my mind, providing a response to an unspoken query: This goddess has to face the consequences of her wrongdoing.

Under the cover of night, the judge’s presence was barely discernible, but his words boomed powerfully through the air. “What crime has she committed?”

The language was unfamiliar, yet the meaning sank into my mind as if poured directly into my thoughts.

The accuser stepped forward, his voice, like thunder, mirroring his cold, implacable aura.

“This goddess broke a divine law by defying the elders’ decrees. She shared forbidden healing knowledge and even cured individuals condemned to death by the gods, besides teaching mortals about astronomy, moon movements, and celestial navigation.”

His tone hardened. “However, her gravest betrayal was love. She tied herself to a mortal and revealed to him secrets meant only for the gods: the art of bending time and of crossing the thresholds between life and death. She brought mortals closer to the gods, forcing the old gods to erase their civilization.”

The judge’s voice rose again, this time addressing the condemned woman. “Do you have anything to say in your defence?”

The goddess looked skyward and began to speak with a voice that carried a mysterious melody.

“In the ancient texts of our elders, there is an oath that shaped my purpose. ‘We pledge to you, mighty Sun God, our unwavering commitment to bring solace to those afflicted by illness and sorrow, as Horus and Isis once guarded and comforted Osiris. Let us, united, offer the suffering not only our love, but the strength of knowledge, O radiant Sun God.’”

Her gaze swept over the shadows surrounding her: judges, accusers, silent watchers hidden in the dark.

“If healing is forbidden, if teaching is condemned, and if love is the greatest sin,” she uttered with the solemnity of a caged bird of prey, “then let judgment fall upon me. I will bear it all, but I will never repent.”

In the flickering light of the star, a cell emerged from the darkness as though an unseen veil had been drawn aside. A man sat within, his posture weighed down by a pain that seemed too heavy for a mortal to bear. His hands, trembling with a desperate yearning for one last hug, reached through the iron bars towards the woman he loved.

The goddess met his gaze. Her frozen eyes bloomed for a moment. When she spoke, her voice softened into something meant only for him.

“Immortality and true love are said to be inseparable. While I cannot stop death from taking you, I take comfort in knowing our love reaches beyond its power. You’ll live forever within my heart.”

She had barely finished speaking when a focused, unnatural burst of light ripped through the cell with the speed and violence of a lightning bolt. The flash was blinding. When the brilliance faded, the man was gone, leaving only a thin wisp of smoke curling upward where his body had been. Tears wove a delicate, almost invisible spiderweb in the goddess’s eyes. She lifted her chin with dignity and turned toward the judge, listening in silence as he pronounced her sentence.

“For a thousand years, you will wander this deserted city, alone, burdened by the weight of your sins. When that time ends, you will be reborn as a mortal, stripped of your divinity and consumed by sorrow. Across countless lifetimes, shifting between the roles of woman and man, you will repeatedly encounter your soulmate, yet never recognise them. Only when you finally understand the full measure of your wrongdoing will your memories return, and your punishment end.”

When the pale dawn light seeped into the room, I awoke in a haze of confusion, my mind still replaying the night’s images and impressions. I couldn’t shake the thought: Was my subconscious guarding a truth I wasn’t ready to face?

Still mulling over the previous day’s unresolved questions, I half-heartedly worked on my university assignments. When evening fell, I went to the seaside, a place that has always offered me mental clarity, hoping to find the answer to all the questions swirling in my mind.

Near Aristotle Square, the sound of waves mingled with the distant tourist chatter. Adrift in my thoughts, I stared at the distant view, my fingers absently fiddling with the Egyptian cross on my chest, when a voice spoke beside me. “I like the symbol on your necklace.”

I turned to see an old man with a grey, long beard.

“Me too,” I replied. “That’s why I bought this pendant.”

For a beat, he was quiet, his gaze wandering back to the Aegean, tracing the glistening sea. When he spoke again, a shadow of sadness clouded his words.

“I used to make similar pendants back in Crete when I was younger. Life got tough there, so a few years ago, I moved to the mainland. But I’m old now, my hands shake, and it’s hard to keep up with the crafting.”

A sense of familiarity stirred in me, unexplainable. “Have we ever met before?”

As I walked away, his reply drifted after me, threading itself into the sound of the waves. “Who knows? Perhaps we’ve known each other for ages.”

I ended the day by returning to my favourite story, Dayan, reflecting on a few pivotal passages: “If my intuition is correct… I will unravel the enigma… that time can be compressed in both directions. Then anything becomes possible, and man, to his own misfortune, may take on the role of God.”

Soon, my eyelids grew heavy, and…

My first vision was of a room brimming with floor-to-ceiling shelves packed with leather-bound books, many so old and brittle they seemed on the verge of disintegration. A moonlit spiderweb glistened in the corner of the windowpane, adding a gentle peace to the scene.

A man sat hunched over an old wooden table, writing in a notebook. His scribbling betrayed the feverish impatience of a child about to unearth a treasure. He paused for a moment, sharing his metaphysical musings with a small spider spinning its web - his only companion in the silent night. Is the human soul the only realm where time and space exist? Could I plumb the soul’s depths, unlock its secrets, and travel through time, on Earth or among the stars, shaping events to my will? Could I return to the boundless realm of my soul to the moment, the place, and the life where I met her, the goddess from my dreams?

Back at his notebook, his pen scratched furiously across the page, a torrent of symbols and numbers pouring from his mind. Excitement pulsed through his overwrought brain as he filled page after page until exhaustion overwhelmed him. Even then, jaw clenched and eyes bloodshot, he pressed on. Each discovery only deepened his despair, fuelling more frantic scribbling. He kept writing, ignoring the sharp pains in his joints, until the complex equations began to move as images before his eyes, morphing into writhing snakes that gathered further in a circle dance of goddesses.

A voice screamed in his head, as if unseen, angry eyes were upon him. “Stop! You’ll go crazy!”

Pale and trembling, he yelled back, “I can’t! I’m on the verge of a discovery that will change the world forever.”

A second scream echoed, “The secret of the gods is forbidden to mortals.”

“I’ll discover it! I’ll be like the ancient Egyptian sages!” he shouted.

The man wrote on until a searing pain, like iron claws, tore through his brain, causing him to clasp his temples. “It must be late,” was his last thought before fainting and falling on the floor.

As was often the case, the dream sequences swirled together, chaotic and nonsensical. My perspective shifted. I became a point of light, a disembodied consciousness that was aware it was dreaming.

A huge screen, with countless mathematical formulas and geometrical figures sparkling like gold, hung in the sky. A chilling dread seized me. What do they mean? What if I can’t decipher their meaning? But the fear loosened, and understanding rose within me like an old, lost memory. They described the hidden order of the universe, the primordial forces that shaped the world, writing the times. Then, what had briefly seemed clear to me became muddled and vanished, as if it had never been, like any hidden truth.

My attention returned to the man. He lay in the hospital bed, lips parched, forehead glistening with sweat, his head heavy. Strapped down, he could barely move. His mouth contorted as if he wanted to cry out, “Get me out of here! You’re hurting me!” but his lips remained sealed.

Beside the bed, a man in a white robe watched him with sorrowful eyes. His prominent forehead and dreamy eyes made him seem more like a philosopher than a psychiatrist.

The hospital room door swung open, and he quickly stepped forward to greet the newcomer. “Welcome, Father! I’ve been expecting you.”

The priest stepped forward, a large wooden crucifix resting on his chest, suspended by a thick hemp cord. “May God be with you, son. How can I help you?”

“I called you here to pray for this poor soul. Perhaps your prayers will ease his suffering.”

With an old Bible in hand, the priest approached the patient's bedside. “What happened to him?”

“This brilliant mind has reached the apex of madness, claiming the imminent discovery of a world-altering equation.”

As if facing the devil himself, the priest made a sweeping sign of the cross.

“No wonder he ended up in an asylum,” he muttered. “Playing God only leads to madness.”

The doctor continued as though he hadn’t heard. “He might have found what he sought, but was terrified by what it meant. Or he failed and was left disillusioned. Perhaps pure math alone wasn’t enough.”

He paused, then leaned forward slightly. “What if the fusion of poetry and science unveiled a divine logic? Imagine standing at the threshold of godhood, but still missing the final, essential element: poetic genius. What would that be like?”

The priest shook his head in disbelief. “God has punished the sinner for his arrogance. Let us pray for this lost soul.”

As his voice rose in solemn prayer, the air before the dying man fractured, a crack forming and swiftly widening. A beam of light burst forth, engulfing everything in its radiance. The light shimmered, shifting through every shade of the rainbow before settling into a brilliant white. From its heart, a luminous figure emerged, holding an ankh, the symbol of eternal life, in her hand and beckoning him into the celestial realm. He smiled, holding no fear, only a divine peace.

When I opened my eyes, the sun had already barged into the room through the open window. In the silence that spun its web across the room, my thoughts began searching for meaning. Was everything merely a dream shaped by Eliade’s fiction, or a memory echoing from another time? The truth hasn’t revealed itself.

I wore that ankh as a talisman for long time. Then one morning, glancing in the mirror, I noticed the chain was bare. I don’t know when or where I lost it. I only know that, with its disappearance, the strange visions that had haunted my sleep faded away.

It's been twenty years, and I still ponder if the tiny shop in Thessaloniki, open for just one day, still stands. And I often ponder whether one of the two remaining pendants might still be waiting for me.

ABout the author 

 

lorentina Caliman is an engineer who has always been enchanted by fairy tales, ancient history, and mythology. Now, she channels that passion into creative writing, transitioning from scientific writing to storytelling. Did you enjoy the story? Would you like to shout us a coffee?. Half of what you pay goes to the author the oher half goes to expense se.g. Maintaining hthe web site and setting up The Best of Café Lit book each year.