On Multiculturalism
South Pacific, December 1999 To be a Romanian writer (therefore in the minority) in New Zealand! Ibi patria, ubi – wife. In New Zealand, I think about the confluence of our lives. We come from so far apart, we meet unexpectedly, we link our lives, our fates together.
The Couch Grass
Even if this was a long time ago, two of the phrases that remind me of her really bring her back to my mind. When her yard was filled with Gypsies, and – everybody knows this – such a thing happens often enough, because this is the way they go, in gangs, she would chase
Brief Presentation Of The Armenian Community
Excerpts The oldest findings prove the presence of Armenians on the present territory of Romania, more precisely in Moldavia, in an inscription on a tombstone in Cetatea Alba, dated 967 AD. The Hungarian chroniclers Simon Kesay and Thuroczi recorded that, under Duke Geza
The Pillow
Costache is a clerk of consequence, only a few years away from retirement. He visits his daughters from his first marriage rather infrequently, and secretly, too. They did object to his remarriage, but then neither was his second wife too keen on his damsels. They didn't
On Armenian Writers
When I was asked to write these lines, I thought I had got it wrong, or they had gone to the wrong person. Writing about Ştefan Agopian and Bedros Horasangian (I give their names in alphabetical order, but who knows what may come out of it, you're never too sure with
The Art Of War
excerpt1 Day was a-dawning sluggishly on Saints Eusignius, Nona and Fabius, a Saturday as it happened; like unto a blunt blade scraping at the gloom caked all over our bodies did the daybreak appear, and impotent, too. The bells tolled half-heartedly and a thin film of
The Accident
excerptStanding in front of the Corso building on Calea Victoriei one day, he felt someone's familiar gaze follow him from across the street, as if to catch his eye. He crossed over, as though answering a call, and discovered a picture of Ann among several other portraits
On Jews And Judaism
The Jewish problem is not only a problem of the absolute Mathematician; it is one of the whole mankind. The first Christian commentators of the Pentateuch kept calling the attention to the mistake of registering the Scripture to the letter. Certainly, the Jews in Moses'
Occurrences In Current Unreality
I pant, I sink, I tremble, I expire. P. B. Shelley When I stare at a fixed point upon the wall at length, it sometimes happens that I no longer know who I am, nor where I am. On such occasions I experience my lack of identify from afar, as if for a moment I had become a
The Chase
I first heard of the persecution of Christians when I was in the second form at primary school. Mr. Salmen, our teacher, told us that people had been thrown alive to the wild beasts and that they had gone to death with pride after agonies of pain. Much later, I happened
Purgatory
Beetle legs ran across his face and he woke up. He stretched and got up, threw the tiny insect on the floor and crushed it, still half asleep. Then he looked down over his body searchingly, pleased with the way he could make his arm muscles twitch and jump as he wanted.
Yesterday
To clarify the unities of place, time and action in this world: here, now and thus, when one can no longer believe in the laws of happening, because this place is not in the now, and this now does not thus give temporality to the here. The present reality of things past