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The fifth of my stories: Hannibal’s final speech
My unpublished stories
What you are about to read is an unpublished story of mine taken from the novel that I started writing in the summer of 2021. In it, a main story alternates with various small stories (for now from 3 to 5 per chapter) that the protagonist narrates at the end of the day, each with its own specific meaning and “why” within the plot. In September 2021 I launched a survey on the Middle East and Surroundings Telegram channel to understand how many were interested in the project and, to my great joy and surprise, there were many votes and all of them positive. Not wanting to reveal the whole work to you, I have chosen to show you only the stories, so that you can have something absolutely new and unpublished to read and I have an extra motivation to carry it on. My ambition is to write at least one chapter a month and thus make this column a fixed appointment, but in any case the stories of each chapter will be loaded all together and only and exclusively if the latter is completely finished. My ambition is to write at least one chapter a month and thus make this column a fixed appointment, but in any case the stories of each chapter will be loaded all together and only and exclusively if the latter is completely finished.
Precisely for this reason you will already find on the site all the stories of the first chapter “The sand and the wayfarer”: “”The Tuareg and the voice of the desert“,”The Sand Child“, “Atlas“, “The Island that is not there” and “Hannibal”; and the second, which includes: “The tattooed young woman”, “Ashes of Sufis” and “Antaeus”.
Enjoy the reading!
Hannibal
The great leader sat on a beach in the Marmara region, without strength or men, looking melancholy at the sea with poison in his hand, his only weapon against the enemy of all time. There, with his mind lost in the waves, he told his story for the last time, so that the water itself would be able to tell it to the rest of the world.
“Oh sea that for so long you were a link between my two homelands and witness of my exploits, my time has now come, but I want to drown with you in my memories and in my glory, I want to taste the black dress for the last time and stained with the blood of my enemies, before putting on the white veil and sinking into the green meadow.
My father conceived me during the war and the city where I was born was founded by the desire for faith and revenge, my family raised me to be a phoenix of fire and I honored my task in every moment of my life. I passed you, oh sea, with a great shot and once I got to the other side, I showed the world the fire I had inside. I and I alone managed to melt the snow of the mountains for the passage of my elephants, I and I alone brought my enemy to his knees, I and I alone were able to perceive the labored breath of terror, I and I alone I put his very existence at risk.
I arrived with my army and my beasts at the very gates of his city, but something rejected me; God had established that my people should fall into the infamous arms of the enemy, becoming one with them. Then he fled and I went to the land of the Bruttians, where I spent whole years observing how the divine plan was fulfilled: the help I asked for was not answered, my brother fell in battle and an angel of the apocalypse took the enemy’s reins, aiming his own aims towards my sacred home.
By now certain of my end and of my people, I headed without any fear against him, determined to fall crushed by the hand of an envoy of God; my Lord, however, had more in store for me. In that last battle I gave my all, coming to terrify the angel himself and make him feel excruciating defeat; I was one step away from annihilating everything, but in the end it was I who was annihilated, not by man, never by man but by God alone, who wanted to conduct his own history in this way.
At the end of the battle, however, I was spared by the Divine and so I understood then what my role would be in his History. I went to the East to discover the secrets of the fiery phoenix from my ancestors and when I knew every detail, I went to Bithynia. Here I made myself immortal, building a hidden nest of fire, so that the phoenix of my soul can find a new people capable of wiping out my enemy forever.
Do you want proof of my prophecy? Look at the one who most honored my memory, he will die exactly in 1500 on this beach, some claim that even the poison will be the same. “.
Having said these words, the great leader drank the bitter chalice, like a phoenix it burned instantly and his memory melted in every corner of this town.
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