As I am rereading the first volume of The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night,[1] I come upon the horrid end of Princes Ibrizah, the daughter of King Hardub of Cesarea.[2] First she was drugged and raped by King Umar al-Numan of Baghdad, and then she was killed by one of his black slaves just as she was giving birth to his son. Holding Ibrizah’s limp body, Hardub vows to revenge her. “Arabs have a saying,” one of his closest advisors says, “revenge is still new after forty years.”[3] I put the book down and reach for my laptop at once. I know that revenge is still new after six years, but forty years gives me new wings. Evildoers, beware!

To Slobodan Vugrinec

Addendum (November 24, 2016)

A bit more than two years after this piece was written, I cannot but smile at the old Arab saying. To my joy, I will not be around forty years from now. More to the point, revenge strikes me as already old eight years after Slobodan Vugrinec, the then mayor of Motovun, kicked off my struggle with the crooked Croatian courts. Although the struggle is not yet over, for I am still awaiting the verdict from Strasbourg, I am ready to forgive all of Vugrinec’s wrongdoings. Ever since my liberation earlier this year, I feel like new. Whatever the European Court of Human Rights eventually decides is perfectly fine with me. But revenge is as good as unimaginable to me at this stage of my life. At best, I can feel sorry for my archenemy of yesteryear. Alas, he will have to live with himself till his last breath! I shudder. Come to think of it, perhaps I could send him a copy of my book about yoga as soon as I hear from Strasbourg?!

Footnotes

1. London and New York: Routledge, 1964.

2. “The Tale of King Umar al-Numan and His Two Remarkable Sons, Sharkan and Du al-Makan,” op. cit., pp. 345-475.

3. Op. cit., p. 380.