Chapter 8
Evening by the Euphrates, but I am remembering another waterway—or am I merely dreaming of it?—the Hellespont.
It is strange, is it not, how much of my life has been bound with this water music, when I have never been entirely comfortable playing it. Perhaps I saw myself drowning in its rhythms. So foolish, really, when we all must die anyway.
Still, I could chart my life by those liquescent byways. The Granicus. The Nile. The Hydaspes. But first the Hellespont. I stood with my feet planted in its shallows that day, the spear in my left hand itching to claim a continent.
At that moment, though, I was far from the lord of Asia, being perfectly poised between that world and Europe, East and West, immortal death and a safe but unremarkable life.
I can still turn back, I thought
