THE BOOK OF
OTHERS
OTHERWISE KNOWN AS THE BOOK OF BASTARDS
Nobody remembers the PhoeniciansThe Indians never had a chance
Chapter 2
For example, there were a lot of nations who thought they would be Chosen,
2When the time came,
3But when the time came,
4rThey didn’t make it.
5The Phoenicians invented the first salphabet,
6And sailing ships,
7And trade,
8And did a lot of exploring,
9tLong before the Greeks and Romans started building monuments and temples and armies and all the rest,
10But it didn’t work out for the Phoenicians,
11uAnd nobody remembers any of their names or their books or their cities or anything else they did.
12Poor bastards.
13vThe Carthaginians wanted to be Chosen,
14So bad it hurt,
15And thanks to Hannibal and his elephants, they came that close,
16Getting stopped just a few miles short of Rome,
17Which wasn’t close enough,
18Because the Romans couldn’t be stopped short when they got to Carthage,
19wAnd destroyed it completely,
20Forever.
21Poor bastards.
22xAnd there have been lots of Others who came close or thought they might someday,
23Through all the thousands of years,
24Including Trojans and Philistines,
25Koreans and Indochinese,
26Polynesians and Celts,
27aBasques and bIcelanders,
28cAnd all the little nameless people, in all the countries of the world, who never knew what they were dying for, when all it was was history.
29dBut there are always winners and losers,
30Because that’s the way history works,
31And the ones who were in the game for at least a little while had it easy compared to the ones who never had a chance.
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Chapter 2 / 9