1001 Nights Cast

Call passion hot, call vengeance cold.

The lower the temperature, the higher the impact.

Any dish you’ve cooked with anger—best you serve it cold.

Trouble slaps the town in millions of footsteps.

You should live this day by its details. Compile its moments in a list. Save these details for your grandchildren. Fifty years from now people will still be asking about this day. How it all started. How it all finished.

Yes. Make a list of the day. People might find it in the future. A list of some details you’ll remember. Details like these………

—Supping breakfast with a long spoon.

—Pushing your foot into shoe leather softer than the leaves on a young basil plant.

—Outside, a woman limps past mumbling the name of a priest.

—A phrase is scratched on the ground: CONGRESS WITH ANIMALS.

—Your fists strike a small goon from the east. Not in anger. Paid work.

—Didn’t petrol smell better twenty-five years ago?

—A chill presses in like a tubercular cloak.

—Clench up your left hand. It’s the same size as your heart.

—A wolf-whistling kid. He’s a trainee American.

—A man back from the mountains, thinner air in his lungs.

—There used to be a bright green hand-rail here, for catching your fall.

—A boat ramp. Two men. A dinghy. Ballast in a blanket.

—Is there a secret life in every thing?

—Concealed in a velvet satchel, a luminous cross.

—A woman’s scream in the distance. The temperature rising, just for a moment.

—In the aft of the boat, someone has recently loosened their bowels.

—A blustery stretch of harbour. Some crows lamenting damply.

—Exhaust smoke licking another slippery body.

—Compromised water. So much afloat that shouldn’t be here.

—What if birds learned how to swim and sharks commandeered all our vehicles?

—The wind swings around westerly, bringing pink light and burnt air.

—A thin hideout of scrub. Night will come down soon to thicken the cover.

—Right now, though, the clouds are on fire, pouring off the horizon.

—The most startling thing: how time can slow down.