The sun’s orb resembled a mosque’s dome rising in the east. Palm-tree columns and smoky columns from burning rubber met a roof of light whose magnitude belittled our delusions of control, Tariq beside the driver, Marwan behind Tariq, James and I on the third seat, the non-English-speaking driver taking an unforeseen route, the usual driver replaced that morning. Instead of charging down the Baghdad-Amman highway we were in the heartland of horror.    

Tariq said: “I’ve got no idea why we’re here.” 

A dead dog’s roadside head, facing away from its paws, epitomised horrid inevitability.

“Imagine,” James said, “if the normal driver wasn't sick.”  

A town rose over asphalt’s converging edges. Palms towered over low buildings. Fast-rising, black-smoke pillars, inexplicably ascending from flaming tyres, evaporated into celestial ambivalence.     

“I think,” Tariq said, “it’s Falluja.”     

Orange flashed in a hole in a fence, gas veins sucked up into permanent annihilation. 

Blue, red, yellow, and green doors, men in white, women in black, people rimmed with light; multicoloured minarets, rusting cars, bleating horns, a long traffic island, criss-crossing pedestrians, honk-bleat, mono-syllable traffic language honking, bleating. 

I gawked through a crack between my window’s curtains, my nose meeting glass. A girl’s ivory corneas slithered with surprise when seeing me. Mica-island dots floated shocked in her eyes’ milky lakes. I thought. Girl–don’t say anything! Why did I stuck my stupid face against this glass!  

She was on the traffic island, a baby in her arms. James drew his curtains. The baby, wrapped in the same fabric the girl was wearing, resembled a reference to an inevitable future, our futures now unclear. We sat in gloom. Metal glittered outside in sharp light.

The girl looked away. My temples ceased pumping. 

“It’s Falluja,” Tariq confirmed. 

War places places on the map by blowing them of it and Falluja was again on the map. 

Traffic lights ahead. Concern fizzed in the lake of hope that desire had excavated in my head. Lights green. We shouldn't have been in Falluja! Who the hell was this driver!?    

“Sometimes,” Tariq added, “the Americans close the highway. Maybe that’s why we’re here?”

The real reason, I feared, was because the driver had masterminded infiltration.      

One by one, cars shot past green. People were on the traffic island beside the road, lights green. Two men’s faces were covered by red scarves, lights green. Thin slits in the scarves sat above the men’s eyes, lights still green. A glimmer appeared where an eye should have been, lights still green. My lake temples boiled. Lights still green. The car ahead of us shot through, lights orange. The driver accelerated. Temple-lake steam thickened. Lights red! The last vehicle through! A gap opened behind us. James hissed: “What are we doing here?” 

“Having fun,” I replied.

Beeping, honking fume-exhaling cars bleated arcane speech. 

We left the main street, houses twenty metres from the road, streets again unpopulated, vision less checked. A swirl disappeared on the lake’s surface where that fizzing had been, newness again attractive, passing jade-coloured minarets like stems of exotic plants, the green bulb between two stems displaying white and yellow tiles beneath blue, green, and gold on the mosque’s walls. The people entering the mosque resembled colourful specimens lured into a wondrous plant.

A tank turret faced us. An armoured vehicle beside the tank. A black soldier’s eyes’ whites–like ivory in ebony–became even more ivory with amazement as our eyes passed, thin glass separating our corneas, his ivories shining astonished in black. 

We were as ignorant as he was as to why we were there. 

“A short cut?” Tariq suggested. 

“The driver must know,” James replied, “what’s happening here?!”

“I hope not,” I said.

Marwan cackled. 

Two tanks, separated by a dirt traffic island, spun and faced us with perfect synchronisation, an armour dance, exoticism obliterating my concern. 

The driver darted onto the island. The tanks brushed past on each side of us, vision blocked by dust. Disappearing dust revealed machine gunners poised to shoot from the tanks’ tops. Eyes, like stagnant pools of coldness, stared down at me; a gun barrel faced my window. No sympathy, intrigue or compassion coloured the machine gunner’s irises. Buoyed by thermals of hot information, I floated in wonder. 

Death happens just like that. 

“This,” James said, “isn’t the highway.”

We returned to paved road. I still felt elated because of those spinning tanks. I had never imagined such bulk being so nimble, wonderful seeing the unimaginable–sometimes.    

Women in blue wearing pink headscarves were whipping black-and-white cows up an incline. Dawn’s violet ringed Earth’s lip. A woman in burgundy-pink apparel emerged from a palm grove. Yellow dates hung under the trees’ boughs like golden eggs under mothering branch arms, colours colliding gorgeously before rainbow horizon bands. Buzzing with gladdened fulfilment, I now didn’t care about the highway. Maybe soon I’ll regret this. But I’m going to love it before I do.

An oil tanker slowed us at a bridge at the Euphrates, morning’s blurred eye reflected with fuzzy palms in the river’s pale-blue glass. Tightening wire-time strapped us in, opposite-direction, bumper-to-bumper drivers observing us like cats observing humanoid chickens, unshaven, sharp, cold, feline faces spouting whiskers, steely curiosity glinting on dark faces. The traffic crawled. Faces stared. The tightening wires snapped on the river's other side when we accelerated, leaving the tanker behind.

We followed the river, relief like cruising at high altitude, men wearing white under palms on the other bank, heads wrapped in red-and-white scarves. The palms’ Bangalore-tube trunks produced green eruptions; worry obliterated by exoticism’s cleansing alleviation. Mosque domes, amid high palms, sparkled with elegant tastefulness. Pleasure and wonderment struck again before the magnitude of Iraq’s tourism potential, like a brilliant future emerging from a troubled past. 

Vehicles, rushing along the distant, umbilical-cord highway, flashed into the horizon, their occupants escaping with fascinating information–and soon we would be joining them.

But the driver, leaving the umbilical cord, joined a queue entering a petrol station, relief disappearing like those smoky columns into an engulfing sky. Our mouths sagged open. He, I thought, dismisses reality! 

Two other queues were waiting. Only people were moving inside the station, cars still, the people inside the cars also still. Only men, with heads covered by scarves, were wandering around–carrying guns! 

James gasped: “Jesus!”  

Tariq, raising his hands, said: “The petrol gauge is almost on FULL.”

His forehead furrowed. 

The gun-carrying men wandered, observing. The station’s roof produced a rhombus of darkness, the highway like false hope disappearing into the horizon. 

My temples simmered, vision sharpening and hazing simultaneously. I now yearned for boredom, for what normal people adore–predictability. What a turnabout in thinking! I had spent all day oscillating around a thin line of difficult-to-sustain, rewarding sensibility, abstractions removed, feeling a purity of emotion like being a part of nature. Now I was feeling too much like a part of nature! Often my mind had sat contented on that line, but you never know how close intolerability will get, and the potentially intolerable–in this unpredictability–was now making dullness attractive. Maybe, I thought, it’s better having a coward’s imagination, for this restricting blessing would be an intelligent restraining device, like morality. 

“Marwan, lay my jacket down,” Tariq said.

The Western jacket screamed against Marwan’s window. Tariq’s left arm, along the back rest of the vehicle’s front seat, exuded pretentious relaxation. Marwan laid the jacket down slowly–no fast movements. James and I drew our curtains slowly, gloom our only protection. Only our eyes shifted in our still heads. 

I hissed: “If something happens, and I survive, I won’t be responsible for my behaviour.” 

My lips hardly moved.

I was referring to the driver’s mutilation at my hands. He was risking our lives for cheap petrol, Jordan much more expensive than Iraq, risking death to make quick bucks–assuming he even knew the risks existed!

The armed men stared, James’s left-right-then-back-again eyes glinting, his head still. Subdued amazement smeared his stony face. Stacked-up seconds battled to break through uncertainty’s barrier. 

James hissed: “Idiot!”

Who was this driver? Nobody can be trusted here! Everyone could be a killer! Especially him! 

Speculation swayed my mind, howling possibilities creating blustery cerebral clashes, everything focussed down tight, like staring into wide-lens binoculars. 

Tariq, gesturing, expressed: Another place? The driver waved this off, shaking his head, the driver client and supplier simultaneously–a new venture in business practise.

“Just when I thought we’d made it,” I said, “we get a trendsetter in exotic business practices! We’re paying him! He’s supposed to be doing what we want!”

James groaned. One of those scarf-hidden faces filmed before Arabic slogans–groomed to heighten martyrdom’s mounting mountain–knocked on the driver’s window, the “martyr” clutching an AK-47! That gun, with its bony metal braces, resembled a steel skeleton, a cold, bony instrument of annihilation creating cold, bony skeletons. 

Molecules, previously unknown, swum up my veins. They felt like the transparent blue spheres of deep-sea creatures. Now I understood terror. The spheres shrunk my ego, sucked, by foul information, into nothingness. My name was supposed to get etched into history’s bedrock through my unusual experience. Because I was supposed to live long enough for this to happen, my possible impending death attained the sad grandeur of tragedy–at least to me. Dying prematurely, without my "vast potential" getting itself realised, smashed all other considerations as I plunged into microscopic insignificance.    

The driver’s window fell. James whisper-hissed “Idiot!” like steam escaping from a crack in a pipe, Head Scarf Head persistent with inquiry–a head full of what? Eyes gleamed in the split in the scarf that covered Head Scarf Head’s face. The only visible part of his body were those gleams, James mumbling: “Gawd…” Chemicals swirled like one of those black smoky columns from my feet to my temples, a coiling dread-snake slithering around my heart, squeezing it, Head Scarf Head, of machinegun Arabic, splattering words, driver hands rising exasperated, Tariq staring straight ahead, Head Scarf Head facing Tariq, chemicals sweeping from my feet through my legs and exploding in my head. We resembled street entertainers specialised in immobility. The driver’s hands and head shook again before he tossed them up with recondite annoyance. Was a deal involving us now off? 

The driver grabbed the steering wheel. We reversed, swinging around. Then: hollow swat, tight-drum-skin boooom….our roulette-wheel eyes spun, dumb-surprise gapes…A round?....Tariq said: “He was trying to buy petrol! And a car backfired!” We yelled: “A car backfiring!!” The van shot past the burnt skeleton of an upturned bus that resembled the fossil of a creature that had withered aeons before, our Nile-relief laughter flowing amid parched earth. 

“Petrol!” the vehicle streaming down the highway. “A car backfiring! Haaaaa!”

We cruised under heavenly vastness. The space now had the levitating beauty of a precious gift. A gigantic horizon rimmed the desert. Relief loosened our limbs. Our heads lolled between wakefulness and sleep. Glinting-dot traffic, a moving diamond necklace, fell over the earth’s edge. The speck of the most distant vehicle glinted where hazy barrenness met gargantuan heavens. 

Pylons, twisted into frozen-melt falls by air attacks, lined the road. 

James, who real name was Jamal, said: “I’m now worried about my visa.”

He smiled self-deprecatorily. He was Indian. He didn’t have a visa for Jordan. 

“You really would be worried,” I replied, “if they shot people for false entry.”

Half-melted pylons disappeared and reappeared behind his grinning face. The road narrowed where buildings, like ivory nuggets at the base of an enormous sapphire dome, dotted the horizon. Those buildings possessed for James a significance that disassociated them from the past, James’s present expanding, future contracting, nuggets expanding. We shot straight at them.

A goat herd throbbed like a moving black carpet. The driver pulled into a petrol station. The carpet halted besides the station’s paved surface, the border just ahead. The driver removed plastic containers from the vehicle’s boot. 

The goat herder filled a bucket with water so his goats could drink. The orderly way the goats took turns to drink unconsciously mocked human greed. 

The driver filled his containers with petrol. We stretched our legs. 

“He loves petrol,” James said.

“Imagine if the Jordanians confiscate it all,” I replied.

“They might,” James said.

“He’d go crazy.”

“He already is.”

Between two border fences was a refugee camp of tents bordered off by barbed wire. Women wearing overcoats and headscarves moved between the tents, their fabrics shimmering like precious stones against tent whiteness. The camp was divorced from normal chronology. You could feel it; it wasn’t just a staging post between more fluid physical states, but an incident freeze that fate had absorbed into the giant-backdrop sky. Time in that camp had geological scales. 

“Refused entry,” James said, referring to the refugees. 

We passed the first fence, stopping beside a hut. The driver asked for our passports. James wanted to get out. He leant forward, hands on the top of the facing backrest. His nose almost touched the backrest. There wasn’t a door adjacent to our seat.

“Don’t worry,” Marwan said. “The driver will take care of it.”

Marwan’s unflustered casualness suggested destiny was in the hands of Almighty Good. 

The driver entered the hut with our passports.

“Please!” James insisted.

James believed his destiny was in the hands of Almighty Earthly Influence. 

“It’ll be alright,” Marwan said.

“Please,” James continued. “I really have to get out.”

Marwan let James out. James raced into the hut, clutching a letter from the Indian ambassador obtained through a family connection. I followed him into the hut’s gloom. A man shrouded in half-light behind a desk looked stripped of sentiment. A fan swished. A map of Jordan covered a wall. The man was studying James’s passport. 

James said: “Excuse me sir, I’ve got a letter from the Indian ambassador.”

The man read the letter. He was formal, but relaxed, eyes solid with concentration. His facial expression didn’t change. 

He said: “I’ll fax the letter to the authorities in Amman for verification.”

“Thank you,” James replied. 

“How long are you intending to stay?” the man asked.

“Two days,” James replied. “I’ve got a flight from Amman to Madrid.”

“Can you show me the ticket, please?”

James dashed back to the vehicle, relieved his destiny had returned to his mitts. We were too rational to believe in universal protection–hence we had rational fear. James had a long stride for a short man; he used it to the full while returning to the hut, stretching out with the purposeful enthusiasm controlling fate induces. The letter was in the fax machine. The man studied the airline ticket; then said: “Thanks.”

The fax machine fell silent, the fan humming like summer lethargy.

“It’ll take a few minutes,” the man said. 

The driver, drinking tea beside the fax machine, possessed the inoffensive distance of one pursuing vital business. Being in the oil business makes all other activities irrelevant as any oil man can tell you.

The black moustache on a man in a white ensemble on a chair outside the hut contrasted vividly with his apparel, his red headscarf lurid against the hut’s whiteness. Smoking a shisha, he was as sedate as the desert. James paced around in front of him. The curious, non-judgemental pipe smoker observed the pacing James, fretting foreign to the pipe smoker as terror had been to me only hours before.  

James, hearing the fax machine, dashed back into the hut. The immigration officer, studying the response, remained mysteriously impassive. Concern's leaf-structure pang sprang inside James’s head–or, at least, it appeared that way to me. The immigration officer’s distance was joyless, no desire to help or hinder.    

He picked up a stamp, silence engulfing fan humming. Light from the door left the man’s eyes aglow with lifeless sparkles as if the hut’s gloom had drained those irises of enthusiasm; repressed intransigence could have ignited into something regrettable had any false moves been made by James who observed the stamp with that look that dogs have when they suspect that their food bowls could be filled. The threat the bureaucrat offered to Jamal’s immediate future altered Jamal’s perception of time, trapping him in refugee-camp abeyance, feeling he could have ended up in that camp, separated from progress.

Fear gushed out of him when the stamp struck his passport. The wheels I had imagined spinning in his temples stopped as his stamped passport re-entered his hands. The refreshing light he drifted back out into made things look younger.                                               

In the vehicle, we headed towards another white building where men in blue uniforms were waiting for us. James’s head fell against our seat’s backrest. He glanced out a side window. A self-absorbed disassociation from possibility left him incurious with contentment. The uniformed men’s black moustaches made hairy crescents upon their faces. 

We had to get out with our possessions, the driver instructed to place his vehicle over a rectangular hole. A man entered the hole through a door. A metal detector swept over the vehicle’s underside. 

Was the driver making Molotov-cocktails? I imagined the man in the hole discovering bottles pasted to the vehicle’s underside.

“He’s just seen Molotov cocktails,” I said.

James hid his amusement. 

“He combines driving,” I said, “with Molotov-cocktail manufacturing.”

Marwan and Tariq were asked to enter another hut with the documents and disks they had brought with them from Iraq, Tariq walking head down like a condemned man. Bureaucracy emerges from the territorial instinct. Everyone unknown entering a new space is suspicious until proven otherwise, the more important the space, in the minds of the occupiers, the greater the suspicion.

Tariq conjured up worst-case possibilities. Bureaucracy does that to consciousness, especially as he had to say–exactly–what was on the disks.

“You don’t know?” he heard.

“Only generally,” he replied.

“Generally–what do you know?”

“It must be information about our projects in Iraq.”

“And what projects are they?”

He explained.

“Okay. Wait outside, please.”

Tariq paced around, staring at the hut, terror now distant, like it had occurred to someone he once knew, who now faced paedophilia or planning-terrorism charges, torture and beheading again things that only occurred to others, circumstance elevating or relegating experience with subjective shuffles.

The driver’s hands flew in response to questions about the petrol filling his boot, his vehicle a powder keg. The immigration officer, concerned about a blaze on the road to Amman, listening with pleasant reasonableness, found the driver curious for the driver exuded a disarming oblivion that made the driver look harmless. With spirited determination, the driver convinced the officer that a rear full of petrol wasn’t dangerous, driver hands describing circles, Tariq staring, pacing, stopping, pacing, repeating: “Nawful–what did you put on those disks!?”    

“Don’t worry,” Marwan said.

Marwan breathed calmness. He and Tariq had prayed together in Nawful's house in Baghdad that morning. I had reached a conclusion: Only Marwan was a consistent follower of eternal optimism. 

We had to put our luggage through an X-ray machine. A conveyor belt entered a grey, metal box. Vents lined the box, other people ahead of us in a queue. 

A television monitor sat before a security officer’s face. The solid objects in other people’s bags made schematic representations of reality on a screen. Security is now big business, money made by creating schematic representations of reality in the minds of TV viewers, terrorism, like an oil field requiring exploitation, power’s latest money-making scheme. 

I relaxed until seeing a black plaque on the machine’s side. Crosses lay over a sign showing film. Tariq was still staring at the hut. I felt he had little to worry about: his staff would have been careful about what they had put on those disks. But it still didn’t stop him from staring.

“Don’t worry,” Marwan repeated. 

I raced to the other side of the machine. My backpack was moving on the conveyor belt towards the X-rays. I removed the film from my bag. The security officer confirmed my suspicions by saying: “Good idea.” I put my backpack back onto the belt. Bending over, I studied the vents inside the machine, trying to convince myself that the rays started past where my backpack had been. I couldn’t determine anything definitive because the purpose of the vents was unclear. Niggling fear arose–a great loss might have occurred! Dread smothered me. I may have lost photographs of a unique phase in history, radiation possibly having obliterated a “glorious” past. And what is death–total obliteration! And now, not directly confronted by real obliteration, I had become sensitive to trivialities, the ego smashing perspective, things swollen by narrowness. My photographs may have been destroyed! My very being may have been compromised! 

Tariq, still facing the White Hut of Fate, hands on head, muttered: “Nawful–what did you put on those disks!?” That hut had become a place of grave import in Tariq’s imagination, like a Versailles or a Reichstag, where he felt his future was being decided.

“It’ll be alright,” Marwan calmly insisted.

Tariq’s tight face quivered. I studied those vents. James looked around like a satisfied visitor. He had his visa. I needed evidence to sustain a desired view that had achieved monumental importance. I now had to endure a frustrating wait to discover if X-rays had obliterated a dramatic part of my past. I chastised myself for having been lax. I hadn’t controlled destiny when I should have. What an idiot I was! The fact that I had possibly survived being murdered now wasn’t enough for Fate’s goalposts had moved.  

A policeman appeared with Tariq’s disks. Tariq’s temples, if his eyes were any indication, seemed to throb like frogs’ cheeks.

“Here,” the policeman said. “Have a good trip.”

Boyish glints appeared in Tariq’s eyes. 

“See,” Marwan said. 

Marwan knew what follows death. He had it clearer than anyone I’d ever met, like a pebble of unbreakable consciousness washed smooth by belief’s caressing waves.                                          

“What a relief,” Tariq said.

I hoped to say the same after picking up my developed films; anything could bother me because permanent annihilation was for me the likeliest end, fretting hence inevitable when ideal illusions of destiny got hit.

I breathed again after collecting the undamaged developed films. That happened as two Americans got hung on that bridge near Falluja. I wondered who the driver had been.

Feeling truly lucky lifted me with volcanic grace as it should have when the Jordanians were checking us out. 


THE END

Back (as though) //not//colour


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Nathan Anderson is a poet and artist from Mongarlowe, Australia. He is the author of numerous books and has had work appear widely both online and in print. He is a member of the C22 experimental writing collective. You can find him at nathanandersonwriting.home.blog or on Twitter @NJApoetry.

The Incoming Sun

The hummingbird of Lagos, I, will stay for the incoming sun,
reciting all the verses on the petals of blossoms.

Through winter, I have held back the butterflies,
in my stomach from flying out,
I will, until my fire is quenched, consume regrets.

My mind is a symphony of love carols,
My body is an exhibition of memories.

Of all the darlings I didn't behold,
Out of this, my coy mistress, this songster,
saying every move I make will make me a jewel
in the seabed of despair.

Would my father know my mom by embracing
the flimsy vocalists in his nerves?

In the coffee shop where you steal the gaze of flowers,
And yearn for the coffee entering your mouth to be tenderness,
the kind of tenderness with which you build laughter nests,
where you will place your head for rest.

This too I desire—the incoming sun,
in whose landscape I shall hum my empathy.


Dusk 

We have normalized eating dusk in the cafeteria of life,
Every day breaks with a knife that prays into our bodies,
We are phantoms chewing on the bones of despair.

There are too many ants in my heart
Stinging the little part of me trying to stay alive,
The remnant of the light in the custodian
of darkness is being harassed by the wings
of vultures that devour the skin of the sun.

How much more will our bones scream
Out light,
And leave us as vacuums that welcome featherless birds,

On a dinner table where our spoons try to seize
A little moment to crackle,
Earthquake took over my sister's body,
And our tongues went sour with sorrow.

This darkness raining like memories of war,
In the hands of a boy holding the skull of his mother,
Has engulfed my spirit,
And our home convulses.

The walls are falling apart to the mockery of my broad nose,
At this moment, I am a snail wishing to stay safe,
In my shell,
To nurture my ambitions that are not lost.

Philip Chijioke Abonyi, a native of Nsukka, Nigeria, is a writer and photographer. His exceptional talent has garnered him several awards, including the 2022 Brigitte Poirson Poetry Prize and the 2023 Archipelago Poetry Competition. Notably, Philip was shortlisted for the renowned Eriata Oribhabor Poetry Prize in 2018. His remarkable literary and visual creations have been showcased in esteemed publications like Eve magazine, Agape Review, Typehouse magazine, and other notable platforms. It is his desire to continue to inspire audiences, leaving an enduring impact on the creative landscape.

In the words of Goldsmith “the good are joyful and serene, like travellers who
are going towards home; the wicked but by intervals are happy, like travellers
who are going into exile.” 

Examine the Vicar of Wakefield as a satirical prose
fiction.

Or
Examine the Vicar of Wakefield as allegorical satire and novel of sentimental
genre.
Or
“Here fears are not quelled or hopes are not fulfilled; burlesquing both
sentimental fiction and readers’ expectations.” Examine the perspective from
the main character of the Restoration novel The Vicar of Wakefield.

Goldsmith's novel is allegorical satire and prose fiction embedded with the
characters of sentimental genre, Goldsmith enshrines his novel in engravings
of an everyman Christian in the role of a materialistic clergyman engulfed by
sentimental views of paterfamilias. The abduction of Sophia and imprisonment
of George are further trials to the reconstitution and restoration to the Vicar’s
family. “The joys that fortunes bring, like trifles and decay; Friendship is but a
name and happiness is still an emptier sound”. 

The Christ-like suffering
experience of fatherhood resonates Christ's crucifixion and vicarious
atonement through the resurrection of the Vicar as well as Olivia and furthermore, the
 restoration of George and Sophia.
Goldsmith’s novel is a place where no man is fond of liberty as not to be 
desirous of subjecting the will of some individuals to his own and where virtue
 is always under siege by the likes of Thornhill, a villain motivated less by lust
than like Deborah by an impulse towards tyranny and revenge.
The vicar’s adherence to individualistic spirits to God’s laws reclaim, “ … “ Olivia’s
seduction by the promiscuity and lust of Mr. Thornhill exemplifies the
catastrophic debacle impacted in the world of rigid adherence to principles and
reaches the moral weakness or frailty of the womanhood in Olivia.  The Vicar of Wakefield broad heartedly and open mindedly embraces the returning
 repentant wretched daughter as exclaimed in his assertiveness of dialogue and
action of personae/ ‘His benevolence lies in his rhetoric and his action often
belies what he professes’ …./ 

Firstly, the Vicar storms in remonstrance and
wrathfulness upon Olivia’s escaping the domestic hearth and eloping with the
seductive Squire Thornhill “Bring me my pistols. I’ll pursue the traitor. While
he is on the earth I shall pursue him.” 

Lastly the Vicar settles down in a
 pacified manner to reclaim his lost daughter despite her wretchedness: / “ever
shall this house and this heart be open to a poor returning repentant sinner…
Yes, the wretched sinner shall be welcome to my house and my heart, tho
 stained with ten thousand vices.” /

The Vicar of Wakefield’s dialogue and rhetoric “I only studied my child’s real
happiness” and “my tenderness as a parent shall never influence my integrity
as a man”. His daughters must be killed off in an unsuccessful ploy to obtain his
 freedom and his sons must cheerfully lie in custody with their father; his wife
 must suffer shame and the penury of the situation; Mossess must labour for
the whole family and this stresses the matter of principle. 

Goldsmith's maxim of
‘submission in adversity’ has been metaphorically satirized in the sense of the
disastrous effects of audacious pride associated with the mastery of
fate. Thus, submission in adversity consecrates the Vicar’s stance as "a
 calm spectator of the flames’ whilst sermonizing lectures and preaching
 homilies to families and exhortations to prisoners and the moral
 climax of the action touches its pinnacle in the maxim of the Vicar's: 
“If our rewards are in this world alone, we are then indeed of all men the most
 miserable.”

The Vicar of Wakefield is in stark contrast to the foil of Ephraim Jenkinson and
this is profoundly evidenced in his exclaiming speech after a colossal
 catastrophe infests to pester his family in ruination as in the instances of
 abduction and elopement, murder and violence, crime and imprisonment and
 burning flames. /“May all the curses that ever sunk a soul fall heavily upon the
 murderer of my children/…/ May the flames continue burning all my
possessions…Here they are!--- I have saved my treasures (my little ones)”/

Jenkinson is an allegorical character of evil being defeated by the triumphant
 force of goodness. “Perhaps you’ll think it was generosity that made me do all
 this. To my shame I confess it, my only design was to keep the license and let 
the Squire know that I could prove it upon him whenever I thought proper and
 so make him come down whenever I wanted money.”

Further Reading and Works Consulted

'The Vicar of Wakefield and the Sentimental Novel’ 
David Durant 
University of 
Kentucky, Studies in English Literature 1500-1900, Summer 1977, Vol. 17, No.
3, Restoration and the Eighteenth Century Summer 1977, pages: 477-491
JSTOR Database George E Haggerty’s Satire and Sentiment In The Vicar of
 Wakefield.

Realms Unveiled


In the realm of tomorrow,
where dreams soar without constraints,
a silver screen unfurls,
painting vivid visions on the canvas of imagination.

Advanced technology becomes a stage,
where untold wonders dance to their own rhythm,
like a boundless symphony of creativity,
captivating the daring hearts of dreamers.

Skyscrapers reach skyward,
a towering tribute to ambition,
echoing whispers of a grand past,
where Hollywood's legacy lingers in whispers.

Machines assume the roles of characters,
with depths unseen and personalities untamed,
an ensemble of artificial souls,
each with a story waiting to be unveiled.

Space stretches its arms wide,
the final frontier of limitless exploration,
Star Wars' legacy dances in the starlight,
Interstellar journeys unfold, galaxies as our playground.

Thrilling encounters come alive,
Jurassic Park roars with ancient echoes,
alien worlds spring forth from Avatar's inspiration,
where wonders thrive in uncharted realms.

Environmental harmony takes center stage,
a scene from The Lorax materializes,
preserving Earth's fragile beauty,
an Inconvenient Truth silently acknowledged.

Nature's majesty shines through the lens,
a Planet Earth documentary unfolds,
revealing the extraordinary tapestry of life,
a testament to the wonders of existence.

The evolution of humanity spins a tale,
The Matrix weaves its intricate web,
where Neo and Trinity rise against the current,
defying boundaries and pushing against the unknown.

In this future world, dreams find their place,
Leonardo DiCaprio's talent embraced as a guiding light,
a tapestry of hope interwoven with anime's delight,
as we embark on an ever-unfolding journey.

Dragon Ball's power-ups and One Piece's grand saga,
ignite wonder in our souls, boundless and untamed,
Studio Ghibli's flights of whimsy inspire,
Miyazaki's spirit lives on, guiding our creative fire.

Beside us, Naruto runs with determination,
while Pikachu's electric spark lights our path,
we author our own story within the realm of anime,
laughter and love intertwined, as cherished friends abide.

Death Note's strategic moves and Attack on Titan's might,
fuel our resolve to face challenges unyielding,
we step forward like Fullmetal Alchemist's quest for truth,
alchemy of dreams fueling our eternal youth.

JoJo's iconic poses defy gravity's constraints,
Sailor Moon's celestial sway whispers of destiny,
a tapestry of hope, interwoven with anime's infinite might,
as we script our own fate beneath the moon's gentle light.



Eyeglass escapades

In the search for my specs, what a quest!
I turn on my phone's light, hoping for the best.

At breakfast, I'm like a swimmer in a sea,
Navigating cutlery, poking eggs with glee.

But wait, what lies beneath the table's edge?
Oh, just the legs, mocking my misplaced pledge.

"Mama, mama, have you seen my specs?"
I mutter, as confusion wrecks.

Books scattered on the bed, no trace in sight,
"Call me Ishmael," I read, my frustration takes flight.

Not in the closet, no frocks or kurtas to keep,
As I rummage through, chaos runs deep.

Living room, kitchen, I search with zest,
Sofas, tables, spice jars put to the test.

Even the garage, fearing it got crushed by a car,
But it's just the exhaust, nothing bizarre.

The bathroom, my final hope, oh dear!
Starting with the toothbrush holder, no specs appear.

Could it be lost in the commode's swirling flush?
My humble abode, carrying my specs, oh hush!

Accepting defeat, a new frame I must obtain,
The lens in ailing grandeur, a funny refrain.

Toiletries back in place, the mirror hangs askew,
And there I stand, wearing my specs, who knew?

Oh, the irony of the search, a comical twist,
Lost in the quest, finding it right on my wrist!

Fizza Abbas is a writer based in Karachi, Pakistan. She is fond of poetry and music. Her work has appeared in more than 90 journals, both online and in print. Her work has also been nominated for Best of The Net and shortlisted for Oxford Brookes International Poetry Competition 2021. 

MAYA TO YOU

Bury in yourself all the desires 
that are a trap and a binding 
thread for this world. 
Survive Maya's first death which is like a blessing. 
Once the old man in you dies, another time the body dies, 
while the soul has its circle of movement in eternity. 
Maya endure all the hardships, because this life is like a dream. 
Maya does not regret anything. 



IF YOU WANT 

If you want peace, keep it in your mind, 
Don't look for peace in places where it doesn't exist. 
If you want glory, it comes by glorifying God, not by having influential friends, 
We, poets, are like flowers, we grow from the rain 
we receive as grace, some are roses, some are weeds, there are many of us, 
let's connect only if we have similar sensibilities. 
If you want to be a particle in the bridges that connect the whole world, 
you need to open your heart more strongly and sincerely embrace your brothers and sisters around the world. 
If you want peace, you can't get it
if you don't respect the cows that feed the whole world with milk, 
if you don't want war in the world, 
remember that God and all his followers are watching with sadness how cows are killed en masse, 
wars in the world will not stop if we are not compassionate towards cows and all other beings.
If you want peace, keep it in your mind and don't disturb anyone who walks beside you.

Maja Milojković was born in 1975 in Zaječar, Serbia.
She is a person to whomfrom an early age, Leonardo da Vinci's statement "Painting is poetry that can be seen, and poetry is painting that can be heard" is circulating through the blood.
That's why she started to use feathers and a brush and began to reveal the world and herself to them.
As a poet, she is represented in numerous domestic and foreign literary newspapers, anthologies and electronic media, and some of her poems can be found on YouTube.
Many of her poems have been translated into English, Hungarian, Bengali and Bulgarian due to the need of foreign readers.
She is the recipient of many international awards.
"Trees of Desire" is her second collection of poems in preparation, which is preceded by the book of poems "Moon Circle". 
She is a member of the International Society of Writers and Artists "Mountain Views" in Montenegro,and shealso is a member of the Poetry club "Area Felix" in Serbia.