It’s 6:30 Arabia Standard Time (AST) and the sun has just set.
Sayed, my seat mate, has dozed off after a stressful business week in Athens. He’s an accountant with a small oil company based in Manama, Bahrain, his hometown.
In less than an hour we’ll touch down
and his wife and three young children will greet him.
Sayed is well versed on the ways of the modern world, situated as he is at the crossroads between east and west.
We talked earlier about China and the impact its one child policy is having on the global economy. About the fact that there is no money, just virtual digits somehow knitting us all together. And about the decline of Western Europe - the chaos there and in America.
He’d liked to visit New York City. “The chaos of that place would be nice for a week or two,” he says, which leads to a conversation about family. “There’s no dating in Bahrain. When you meet a girl you like, you meet her family soon after to talk about marriage.”
He showed us a scar above his left eyebrow. “I was nineteen, secretly having coffee with a girl I liked in a neighborhood far from ours. One of her uncles saw us. An hour later I was being pummeled by the uncle and three others. My family was angry for the longest time. I’d been taught never to break the rules.”
As Sayed slept, Pa and I recalled our conversation with Kogkas just before departing Athens. The day manager at the Palladian, Kogkas has a Masters in International Economics and taught us quite a bit in a short time about Greece, its politics, and its place in the modern world.
Our conversation turned to antiquity and the accomplishments of the ancient Greeks, accomplishments often not possible without the use of slave labor.
He told us about Delos, an island in the Aegean Sea,
long the center of slave trade for the Mediterranean world. Greeks and Romans both relied upon them, the Romans most, purchasing thousands to assist with its massive building projects - and to work in the homes of the privileged.
The Colosseum used slaves in its construction,
and for 350 years after to provide spectacle, along with gladiators, convicts, and prisoners. Historians believe as many as 400,000 died in the service of entertainment.
Venice relied on slaves,
as did Havana.
I mentioned to Kogkas that a few years back I’d visited Machu Pichu
where slave labor was instrumental in its construction. He lit up as he’ll be visiting there this spring.
I suggested in preparation, that he read Pablo Neruda’s epic poem.
Therein, I told him, Neruda lays out the dilemma,
that oftentimes beauty
I stare at the clothes and hands,
the carvings of water in a sonorous hollow,
the wall rubbed smooth by the touch of a face
that with my eyes gazed at the earthly lights,
that with my hands oiled the vanished
planks: because everything, clothes, skin, dishes . .
is made possible only by the sweat and blood of others.
And tell me everything, tell chain by chain,
and link by link, and step by step;
sharpen the knives you kept hidden away,
thrust them into my breast, into my hands,
like a torrent of sunbursts,
an Amazon of buried jaguars,
and leave me cry: hours, days and years,
blind ages, stellar centuries.
On the drive to the airport, we couldn’t help but think of America’s use of slave labor - of its great sin.
The White House
The Capital
Harvard
The Smithsonian
Wall Street,
in so many ways.
Pa and I wondered, as did Neruda,
at what cost?
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