Saimonhyo

The story goes that after Musa Abisheganaden escaped the burning abbey without loot, he retreated to Putorana, and hid in a mountain cave for some years. What he did or thought there is lost to time; if you asked him, he would not say much in reply. Some who heard about him from before would say that he was a changed man, now docile and obedient to the service of the good. I think this assessment to be rather unfair, and based on wishful thinking. When Saul was blinded on the road to Damascus, he was rescued by his enemy, Ananias, and thereafter spent a good time as a hermit in the Syrian desert. Even then, Paul and Saul were made of the same stuff; Paul spread the Gospel with the same bull-headedness with which previously Saul persecuted the Christians. As before, so now: when it became Musa's turn to do so, he went ahead with the ferocity of a brigand.

Whenever I hear anyone who imagines him meek as a lamb, soft hands clasped in prayer, eyes tearfully raised to Heaven, I would retort: you should ask the Chief Shaman of Saimonhyo, what Musa did to him!

For verily, each one of us is made by the master potter himself, and as scriptures say: He saw that it was very good. It said so seven times. It would be unimaginative if one were to think if there was only one way to be good, and that Musa had to be broken into that mold, if he were to hold any hope of redemption.

The first year after Musa returned from the plateau was a year of disaster in Taimiria. For many centuries the river Khatanga had slowly turned from fresh to brackish, then salty, and expanded until it became a wide channel deep enough for small ships to pass through. Farmers who had up to that time lived by channeling water from this channel abandoned the main valley and moved upstream along the tributaries for fresher waters, but the ones leading up the north slopes of the plateau suffered the unpredictable flash floods and droughts caused by the torrid climes of the uplands. Saimonhyo was one such river.

The river Saimonhyo lies in the middle of a sizeable floodplain; the village with the same name is built on an escarpment overlooking it. River flow was unpredictable, and it was impossible to tell when the yearly flood would arrive to flush away any structure build on it. On some years the river dried to a trickle and the flood never came, and on other years the rains and meltwater so torrential that the entire stretch became a sea of foamy rapids which threatened to burst through the banks, engulf the houses, and sweep the entire village away into the sea channel.

They said of the river that the demon Saimonhyo lurked in the river, a demon as tempestuous as the river, who swung between the extremes of drought and wrathful torrent, who held the lives of the townsfolk in its stranglehold. His Chief Shaman is his deputy in the realm of men, a strange man who has held the position for as long as people remembered.

And who is the demon Saimonhyo?

Everyone was afraid to discuss it openly with Musa, but it was possible to derive some signal from the noise, if one bothered to decipher what they told through hushed voices, curt explanations, or innuendo.

Saimonhyo, a dictator, a corrupt petty official who abuses his power to enrich his own; he would skim off the top of his public coffers, and grew fat on this undeserved wealth with his mistresses.

Oh, his desire for the tender flesh of the virgin!

Many a daughter of a poor but virtuous family would come into his snares! He would tempt with his wealth both her and her family, but if they refused, he set the dogs on them. And, like so many unhappy and vengeful souls from yesteryear, souls like his survive his death and dot the landscape, some as trees, others as rocks, others as rivers like Saimonhyo, who swells every year or so with insatiable desire, crying through the voice of his prophet, the Shaman: Wed your daughters to me again, if you desire to live! And the people obeyed him, because they only desired their houses not to be swept away, and because they could hear no other voice above the roar of the river.

This year the two virgins were chosen among the people; picked, as it happened to be done, by drawing lots. It was said that Saimonhyo had an exquisite taste in women, and favoured those of most comely appearance who had just come of age; the Shaman himself assured them this was true. On a few occasion that some could recall, even a married woman was drafted as tribute to the lord of the river. In the ten days leading up to the sacrifice the two fiancées were first brought to a state of stupor by a mix of drink and special herb, moved to the Shaman's quarters for secret rituals for the rest of the duration, and finally led out to the bursting river for the consummation, whereupon the two unfortunate girls are cast into the waves and donated to the river god.

It was said that in the before-times, a holy man named Boniface converted the pagans of Germany by chopping down a sacred oak, where housed the soul of Þór. The pagans believed, with utmost sincerity, that no harm can possibly befall the oak, which was protected. But gentle Boniface felled the Oak and preached the living God from the tree stump, and used the wood to build the first church of the country. For each time the story was told, the bells of the new church chimed placidly, as if through time and space, from the meadows of the Rhine in times long past to the ears of children, and cloaked them in the protective blanket of peace.

But Musa was no Boniface, and did not have his astuteness: he was guided only by an intensely choleric personality. When the reality of the rituals finally came to him, on the day of the sacrifice, a fire burned in him as brightly as the flames in the abbey which had almost burned him into a crisp. He tore through the crowd observing the ceremony, sending people tripping and tumbling over one another, left and right. Then he advanced to the Chief Shaman, looming over his slight frame, which only came up as tall as his chest.

"You send these girls to plead Saimonhyo to hold back his flood, do you not?" he interrogated.

The Shaman was too taken by surprise to call out Musa for his impudence, and only nodded in affirmation. So Musa seized him by his collar and his belt, heaved him over his shoulder, and bellowed for all to hear:

"Then, why don't you go and ask him yourself?"

Without waiting for a reply, he hurled the Shaman bodily into the raging waters, whereupon the small man sank like a rock, and vanished without a trace.

The Shaman's squires protested loudly, denouncing Musa's rash actions. They declared that Musa had incurred total destruction on the village of Saimonhyo by disrespecting his only messenger. Musa ignored them at first. The following two hours felt like an eternity in the tension. When Musa found no change in the water level, he concluded that the Shaman had been tardy, and needed the squires to go and hurry him up. So, just as he sent the Shaman to pacify Saimonhyo, he disposed of the squires likewise, each boy disappearing beneath the waves screaming, squirming, and kicking.

In the following days, it became clear that Saimonhyo's lust was not limited to virgin girls, since the prophet obviously satisfied him as much as did any other sacrifice; the flood had subsided again, as floods tend to do, and the silty riverbed again rose above the surface again, ready for the new crop. The people of Saimonhyo agreed among themselves that some kind of thrall had only just been lifted from their minds; that they were no longer preoccupied with the thought that one day their daughters would be sent to the demon as brides, and, most importantly, that the malevolent presence that had once so haunted them had departed, spirited away by the gallantry of the Chief Shaman and all of his squires. 

To repay the hospitality of the villagers, Musa joined a work detachment to set up floodgates and water-mill upstream. Some men from this group later left Saimonhyo and followed Musa to the Griadines, where they took to calling him Abbé and built the new Abbey next to a lake. One of the two virgin girls who had escaped sacrificed went to the Abbey as well, where, towards the end of her life, she would welcome Sister Ershebet to the community.

Scene from "Ximen Bao Governs the County of Ye"《西門豹治鄴》 [source]

References

1. Galatians 1:17; Genesis 1:4,10,12,18,21,25,31

2. Zhu Shaosun 褚少孫 (Western Han 西漢 Dynasty, 1st Century B.C.): Ximen Bao Governs the County of Ye 《西門豹治鄴》. Addendum to the Records of the Grand Historian / Shiji 《史記》by Sima Qian 司馬遷

3. Aḥmad ibn Faḍlān أحمد بن فضلان (A.D. 922): On the Rus' merchants at Itil [summary video]

4. Pope Benedict XVI (11 March 2009): General Audience: Saint Boniface, the Apostle of the Germans

The Haji's Tall Tales

After helping the Bishop settle in to his temporary lodgings with Abbé Musa, the Haji was no longer obliged to dote on the young man. All the same, he decided to remain with us for a good number of months. Shortly afterwards, he befriended the young sisters Chrysanthi Simoglou and Maya. Chrysanthi had just turned seven the previous year. Maya was one of those war orphans, so we did not know how old she was for certain, but she was clearly younger than Chrysanthi. The former had fallen in love with the poor child when she first laid eyes on her. She had vowed to adopt Maya as her own to protect the young one with her own life. This vow manifests itself in running each other down in endless rounds around the dining hall, pulling each other's hair, and falling fast asleep on each other when they finally run out of energy.

The girls now find ample amusement in tormenting our newcomer, the Haji. The man is obviously advanced in age, but it is impossible to tell how old: on one hand, a lifetime spent on the road gave him a lean, sinewy, almost youthful build, with which he is able to weather the elements; on the other hand, his wizened, beaten face perennially radiates desolation, and his eyes have a distant look in them which say: I have seen enough; I have seen way too much. This amuses Chrysanthi to no end, who loves nothing more than to ask him:
"Mister Haji, when will you finally die?"

And the sad man invariably casts his gaze across the lake, heaves a long drawn-out sigh, and croaks:
"Everyone has a day when they are due... As for me, that day has long passed."

Chrysanthi Simoglou thinks the world of the old man, and never fails to recount her litany of praises for him before the rest of the grown-ups. The Haji has been to everywhere, seen all the places, knew all of the people. He knows stories from when the world was first formed, and when people still lived in the South. He knows answers to her toughest questions about the world, the kind which stumped every other adult. He is physically incapable of dying.

One evening, in a regular evening gathering after dinner, the Abbé himself invited the Haji to speak, and asked, "We have heard from some wise men that the Earth is flat as a disc, and from others that the Earth is a giant ball. Which of these stories is the right one?"

The Haji replied, "The Earth is a disc, but sits atop a sphere, which is bigger and grander than any world we have ever imagined." And everyone was amazed at his reply.

The Haji responds only to his title; if he had gone by any other name, then he no longer remembered it, and quite likely forgot it on purpose. By tradition the title of Haji was granted to men who had made a pilgrimage to Mecca, if they were Muslim, or to Jerusalem, if they were Jew or Christian. Once or twice someone voiced the objection that both of these places lie far to the South and are now unreachable, and there could have been no Haji for many centuries, but no one has been able to explain how the old man had earned this title.

One day, the Haji told us the story of a country which was created by God on the eighth day, after even he had gone to rest; as if he had unknowingly left out forming an entire landmass during the first day, and rose again to complete the job haphazardly.

The Haji set the stage at the the place where the Little Ocean joined the Great Ocean, at the very edge of the world where the waters from the little disc drains into the great sphere, between Tunu of the Skrælingjar and Norway. Beneath this oceanic passage here lived two gigantic sea-monsters, Eurasia and America, who were husband and wife. Their relationship, however, was so poisoned by jealousy that the two monsters fought constantly. During one particularly violent altercation they opened the Gates of Hell itself, and dragged out from the chasm huge half-molten boulders to heave at one another.

"And then what happened!" yelped little Maya, who turned out to be following the story very attentively.

And then the fight got so intense that the rest of the world could not be in peace anymore, and so God intervened. He trapped both sea-dragons under a huge pile of the boulders they had dug out so they could no longer fight, and that pile of rock was so massive that it rose above the waters, and became what we now call Iceland. The End.

As an afterthought, the Haji added that when the island was first formed it was devoid of a landscape, like a barren desert, and our Creator Dear took extra pleasure in this opportunity to repeat the act of his Creation in Iceland, sprinkling in the beautiful mountains and valleys as chef sprinkles condiments into a pot of stew. For an amusing side project, he extruded the coastline out west and made it into a dense network of headlands and fjords which were so numerous that they were uncountable. These are what we now know to be the Westfjords. Þormóður (the viking who hunted for his sworn brother up and down the far west, from Kiev in the Ukraine to Nuuk in Greenland) grew up in this strange land, but that would be a story for another day again.

The Bishop knew the Westfjords. "When I was working with the Mitropol at Archangel, we always met traders who were from there." This was a real place and known throughout the Barentines for its fine dried meats and ivory. Nonetheless, we concluded that the story of the sea-dragons was deemed far too fantastic to be for anything beyond keeping the children happy.

Young Nikos, Chrysanthi's brother, was always anxious to steer the conversation to the real problems of the present day, namely the ongoing war between the north and south of Taimiria. He pitched this question to the storyteller: "Haji, you are always talking about things that happened long ago. What can you say about now? Does the North really stand a chance against the princes, who have been ordained by Christ?"

And the Haji drew a long sigh and replied: "In Ancient Armenia, the noble families sought to bolster their stature by claiming the most illustrious lineage that they could, even on the flimsiest evidence. The Bagratids claimed to be sons of King David, the Ardzrouni drew their family tree back to the Emperors of Assyria, and the Mamikonian spun the tale that they were the remnants of the great Han Dynasty of China. What is different now that the Prince of Toyogarov claims to be the saviour of Christianity? He is no more a Christian than the Mamikonians were Chinese."

"There is nothing that the man has not seen before!" exclaimed the people of Amatodate, and everyone was finally convinced of the Haji's sagacity.

Statue of St. Vartan Mamikonian in Yerevan, Armenia (Vladimer Shioshvili/Wikimedia Commons)

Notes
1) The geological history of Iceland (link to a quick overview) is re-told in the Haji's sea-monster story.
2) The story of Þormóður Kolbrúnarskáld Bessason of the Fóstbrœðra Saga, also recounted by Halldór Laxness in Wayward Heroes (1952), is the Haji's "story for another day".
3) Characters Chrysanthi and Nikos Simoglou were first introduced in Parmiakert.
4) The link between the Mamikonian family and the Chinese is explored in this article: Robert Bedrosian, China and the Chinese according to 5-13th Century Classical Armenian Sources. Armenian Review Vol. 34 No.1-133 (1981) pp. 17-24.
5) I have quietly decided that the Haji does not go by any given name, apart from his title.

Adventures in Condensed Matter Physics - Literature Review

An average publication in the venerable field of condensed matter physics:

Introduction
This physical phenomenon is very useful. It has been used in many applications [refs. 1-25] and studied in many recent research [refs. 26-50].

Results and Discussion
Here are some numbers.

Conclusion
Yes. Very good indeed.

Me: *checks affiliation" What is this, University of Neanderthals?

The Flight of the Palace Women

Young Irannika learned that after a short few days when she felt an intense sense of novelty about the outside, the mysterious place of wonder which she had been told the most horrible things about, to keep her in, that the novelty had worn off — that each place had begun to look very similar to the last, even though Hutanonoyong always seemed confident telling apart one place from the other. She envied the elder woman, who was an expert in making herself at home, and to make Irannika her guest. How far has it been, since Irannika, in her palace, her courtesans, and her shimmering jewelery, was the host, and Olivia Hutanonoyong her humble serf?

It was said of the fabled country of Finland, far to the west, even more so than Archangel, where it was said was as far as you can reach before falling off the edge of the world, to the Void, to Hades, or to America, whichever the case might be — that it was called the land of a thousand lakes, that the lake Saimaa snaked across the landscape and made it more water than land, so that the city of Savonlinna, with no space left to expand, was forced to be built across it, and such a thing was heard of nowhere else in the ancient world. Here in Taimiria, from Toyogarovsk to the big lake in the north, the two passed gullies and spotted lakes, small enough to be called puddles but so numerous as to be mind-numbing, that at times Irannika suspected that they only keep going back to the same place, all over and over again.

The serf Hutanonoyong sensed her disengagement, and decided to change her approach. If she still had an inclination to shield the princess from the surrounding universe, she made sure to get rid of it. The flight of the palace women slowly developed into a trot, then a stroll, so that in a sea of undifferentiated green trees and shrubs details begin to spring to life before Irannika's eyes, a myriad of details, each with its own name.

A stream bursts its banks in a gully after a night of heavy rain, and the serf points at it, and spake thus: tashkin

A mother-fox crosses their path, and nearby a den of her young: chirigani

A hare which was spotted swimming across a swamp, which the women caught and ate, after much difficulty: tavshan

And Irannika beamed, because the Aunt had loved to entertain her with stories of the patron saint of pranksters, Tavshantachi, Brother Rabbit, whose adventures with Bear and Fox she enjoyed to no end. "It's just a pity now we have to eat him," Olivia said to her. Fortunately, he tasted good.

A bright, open meadow was the first place where Irannika saw her first olmanat. Irannika was raptured and assaulted with a jumble of emotions upon encountering the apple under the tree. Was this not what Jaromil had said to woo her with: that her face was as bright and supple as an apple? Such was a customary gift of compliment, a venerable tradition of genteel folk, but the girl had not stopped to think or wonder about what an olmanat actually looked like, found in the wild, whole and unpeeled!

She held it in her hand, perusing it intensely. As she pondered her marriage she began to look a little forlorn, as the apple stared, facelessly and innocently, back at her. After a while which seemed a little too long to Olivia, the princess budged at last, and solemnly took a bite out of OLMANAT, with the firm conviction that she was eating, in some way, a part of her own identity. And she wondered, as the aroma and the sourness began to hit her senses, if all these were just something else about herself, that she had not yet discovered?

Oh, wonderful thing, that you exist; that I feel you and taste you: that you are not only an idea carried to me upon the words of men!

And it came the dream of young Irannika, the image of a gully, like the ones they have passed innumerable times during their journey. Down by the creek a wheelchair lay on its side, abandoned, like the one that Aunt used, when she was dying of cancer. As in the nature of dreams, one sees with their mind's eye an image, and an entire lore stretches out behind it, plain and self-evident: Lady Ershebet fell into the gully, on her way to expire in Amatodate, whereupon the waters of the creek washed over her, and she was no longer dying, but had five years added to her life. After she came to she was amazed how well it fit in with her Aunt's actual story, and went on her way to the monastery with renewed vigour, following in her servant's lead.

Doan Brook, April 16, 2020

References

The Essential Chesterton, David W. Fagerberg, 2000

Br'er Rabbit, traditional Akan/Southern U.S. folk takes in various compilations

Trips with friends to Lohja and Nuuksio, Summer 2012
Map of Savonlinna

Batukhan

It was spring in the Griadines, in late May, when the harsh mistress of Winter finally beat her retreat, loosening her grip on nature and on people. This year the sky was exceptionally clear and the blossoms of the cherry tree more radiant than the usual, and birdsong re-emerged from hibernation in step with the new leaves. What was absent, however, were the people. Only Batukhan and his brothers in arms can be seen, resting under one such cherry tree. Thin wisps of smoke could be seen in the distance, behind one hill or another. These came from villages which they had set to flame.

The Griadines were never a populous country, being mountainous; during the centuries of  the Settlement of the North, these parts were eschewed in favour of more conducive plains to its north and south. This was the same for most of the Sultanate, which saw the Griadines neglected as an inaccessible backwater. The consequence of this was that when Musa passed by, clad in sackcloth and with a bale of firewood over his shoulders, he followed a trail slightly less overgrown than the ground to either side, and this trail just happened to pass close by Batukhan's cherry tree.

We are reminded, now, that Musa had been a brigand in times before he found his present vocation. Batukhan knew him intimately as a fierce rival, an enemy that besieged his own people. Musa was undeniably a villain, who relished reaping where he did not sow and eventually to get his way by brutal force. It was exactly this greed and avarice which lured him to the monastery at Amatodate, where he was trapped and almost burned to death by the fire he started himself. Batukhan, who had led his loyal brothers in valiant defense against his onslaughts, was gratified with his downfall when the news of his downfall had reached Shurikoi. Presently he was surprised that Musa was still up and about — he had assumed for some time that the scoundrel had died.

As the lumbering figure with the firewood drew closer, it became undeniable that the sackcloth-draped creature was Musa of Abisheganaden, the skullduggerering family of the Griadas. His build was formidable, to the effect that Batukhan regarded him as swollen and grotesque as a buffalo. His huge dark face was set contemptibly in a perpetual scowl, his eyes set to the distance, unfocused on anything in his immediate surroundings. His lips moved, as if in conversation with an unseen companion, but his words were not audible.

Batukhan and his men emerged from the shade, and spread themselves to block Musa's path. Musa did not respond, only stopped in his tracks, and waited for them to leave. His eyes still had the distant look, and his lips also moved. Batukhan led the verbal assault, jeering at him; for the Shurikoi had prevailed and the Abisheganaden had been vanquished in this feud, and the former now shines with pride, now undeniably the victors. Truly, they have proven to be the true heirs of Qashlik, qualified to trace their illustrious lineages to Manas, who kidnapped all his seventy-two wives, to Yermak, who conquered the entire continent of Russia, and to Mehmet, who stormed the gates of Constantinople and brought the most humiliating deaths upon his foes, men, women, or children, with all their progeny enslaved in perpetuity. What has Musa to show for after all this time?

Musa's lips had stopped moving as he listened to Batukhan's boasts. When Batukhan had finished, Musa's eyes were watching him. The blank scowl he had worn before became sorrowful and downcast, and he replied: "I am now Servant to the Slave."

"Where you, dear Batukhan, are now swelling to a stature of a King, while only just short of being royalty; I have gone to the most wretched swamps of the Griadas. I live on locusts and wild oats, and maggots are my sleeping companions. No riches have I kept in my long life as a bandit; as easily as I tear it off the arms of the weak, I lose them in the span of a moment."

"I coveted the treasures of Amatodate, the magical source of wealth in its crypts, from where the peaceful keepers of that sanctuary took all they needed to live, as soon as they wished it. Only when I killed them all and set their home ablaze, I realized what it was, and it burned me." And he began choking and retching on his own tears. "It burned me and I did not even have a voice to scream with, so much was my anguish."

"I was a murderer; I maimed and I raped and I stole, fearing the wrath of no deity. I have wronged you and many others. I am fearful even to ask for forgiveness."

Batukhan did not seem gratified with this response. He later reflected that he had expected and hoped Musa to hold his own, to respond in kind, to throw an insult in retaliation, or an impotent curse, if just to amuse his company. He was disappointed that the man he once regarded as a formidable enemy has come through as wretched as a mealworm. He felt in some sense that Musa's act had diminished his achievements as leader of his militia. In view of this it made sense that Batukhan's immediate reaction was disgust, and he set his men to rain punches and kicks upon Musa, scattering his firewood, as what they would have done to any unlucky vagrant who dared stray too near to them.

When they came to disrobe him, however, they realized that Musa Abisheganaden's body was riddled with pockmarks and welts, as if four plagues had passed through him from his time serving the poor. At the same time, his bare body released a waft so pungent that the proud men of Shurikoi then decided that it was beneath their gallant duties even to trample this bandit into the ground, and left in haste, leaving him writhing on the ground in pain.

Fr. Damien de Veuster (St. Damien of Molokai)
Arterra Image Library