Crematorium for Phoenixes Read Online Free PDF Page A

memories of the past or dreams for
the future haunted them, but at this time before them was a path
worthy of demigods and heroes. They had been elevated to those
heights that lure people, whispering reminders of the time they had
lost their wings.
    The noise of the engine, the clatter of the
transmission, and the rhythmically spinning air propellers had
intoxicated the seven men and given them that sense of freedom that
mankind was destined to experience centuries and centuries later as
pilots in leather jackets, goggles, rubberized adhesives, and silk
scarves.
    This is the existence that we all pray to
the Creator to give us when the chains of our memories have become
too severe. We wish to be turned into birds that are flying beyond
the places that have caused us pain.
    Before the men extended horizons upon
horizons of unseen land connecting one shore to another;
civilizations that cheapened the splendor too magnificent to
describe dotted these areas.
    As if everything was completely natural, no
questions were asked while these men flew in the clouds and as the
Behemoth left Bibal.
    Rampant miles and miles of pathway that
could only be likened to tales from the Orient greeted these
travelers. Those stories chronicled the passage of people who had
traveled great distances at unimaginable speeds, but even so, the
writers of the East with their extravagant flights of fancy would
not have been able to imagine this current journey.
    The controllable balloon flipped over plowed
lands that had been drilled and cut by mechanisms, wheels that drew
water and irrigation channels that looked like veins that stuck out
and throbbed. The sandy hills were planted with pincushions of
palms, under whose shadows tents were pitched here and there. The
bells of cattle herds and the laughter of children echoed from
among the camps.
    The Behemoth moved in the shadows of the
clouds, hiding its shape, but occasionally poking outside of them,
which produced horror and ecstasy in the villages below.
    People were scared of the matte silver
vehicle and regularly offered numerous sacrifices to graven images
under the shady groves. There is nothing like the gods that human
hate, fear, or love more than themselves. This is because the gods
were the ones who came to remind us that the first farmer to pray
did so just for a drop of water, that the shepherd doesn’t know if
tomorrow there will be a pasture for his countless herds, that man
is an animal, always surrounded by death.
    And although they are accustomed to all
sorts of things, men get nervous with all this fuss. Deep in their
hearts they are afraid that they will be held accountable for their
actions.
    The flight harbored in their hearts turmoil,
pain, sorrow, and sighs from seen and unseen lands.
    And the Behemoth was increasingly flying in
a southerly direction.
    The landscape transformed like a nascent
creature—the Bekaa valley with its plantations of emerald cut from
a fragment of graphite-gray hills changed into the mountain of
Lebanon ringed like a necklaces with hills, which then transformed
into rivers and yellowish seas; the settlements changed one after
another.
    The airship flew with the speed of a quiet
breeze, and despite its soundlessness, it was capable of covering
great distances.
    Barely reaching the mountains of the
Galilee, Carmel, and Golan, the Behemoth sank in the west and
entered the sea.
    The zeppelin flew and flew over the Great
Sea that collected and separated continents, which hovering like
seabirds did not go anywhere but nevertheless respected its
route.
    The Behemoth left behind the golden-yellow
lands of Phoenicia and moved more into the sea that resembled
melted wax.
    The men, strange as it may sound, were not
questioning the foreigner about details. Between them a trust had
been formed; it was the same kind borne from people on the road.
These men had become permanently bound, but at some point, the men
needed their leader to reveal a part of himself and his