IN THE MOUNTAINS THERE YOU FEEL FREE (PART 1)

- What about Gstaad? I says to Thomas, - weren't we supposed to end up in Gstaad? But Thomas no longer answers my questions, he just lights another of those "Modern cigarettes" or pours himself another glass of Absolute Mandarin or if it is late evening, cold and dark and the whistling of gas from the pipes at the gates of the houses, and we are still out he grabs yet another box of Tak cornflakes in the kiosk and tries to ignore the man right in front of us on the other side of the counter staring so evil over the brim of his mask. Way back in the old days when we were still young and full of visions and hope, in LA, Hong Kong, yes, even in Dubai we always used to talk about Gstaad, about the mountains and sweet loneliness, about skiing and eating cold snow right out of your hand. And when we came back from all these second, third, fourth worlds, all the endless numbers of Others and incomprehensible lacks of civilisations, when our Mission would be completed and the revolution loud enough to roll on by itself in the hands of The People, we would never again leave good old Europe, oh, no, we would settle down like Heidegger on the top of a mountain, each in his little (but comfortable, warm and heimlich) hut, each with his beautiful (and silently reading or cooking or woodchopping) woman, and not together, no, never more, far away from each other, maybe just being able to catch a glimpse of the other wandering his loneliness on another faraway Alp, but now we no longer even mention Gstaad any more, since we set our feet on The Islamic Republic of Iran we don't dream about Europe, and then one day in the middle of the neverending greyred desert as we passed the reactors buried in the dust under Natanz I suddenly silently realised that I no longer knew what to do if I ever would come back, home, what home? I thought, where in the world is my home?

We no longer eat, just bread and bananas, just yoghurt in the mornings and Absolute late in the nights (that is Thomas, I mean, I just peel myself another local mandarin), my eyes are red and sore and my suit is all stains. – Nielsen, you look like a tramp! Thomas says. And what about you, I thinks, in your worn out and dusty boots with heels fallen of, you look like an Estragon wandering aimlessly in the world of Beckett. Last night we went to the square of the Revolution, and the streets were filled with bookshops, but the books were all about piping and chemistry and computer programming, and there were piles of dictionaries, but not a word, not a vision, not a single grand European novel to translate or understand, and the dark streets were dense with intellectuals, each walking his loneliness …