FIFTEEN
‘All hope is lost.’
To the ears of the overly optimistic, these are harsh words indeed; the cruellest and most soul-destroying of expressions.
Such words have been spoken throughout civilisation, handed down in memoire and oral narrative, sometimes fittingly, other times less so.
During a period of drought, a villager will shout that all hope is lost as a heavy cloud drifts by. All over the world, people declare their hopes in their elected ministers destroyed as the government turns sour. In many a lover’s heart, all hope is abandoned as the moon that reminded them of their loved one fades from sight. Some lose their hope in Sudan – the world’s grain-store – when they find its fields empty, others declare themselves disappointed by Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Memories of My Melan
