When I was little more than a boy my parents<\/p>\n
Took me to Palmyra as a reward for my exams<\/p>\n
It was located northeast of Damascus in Syria<\/p>\n
Which seemed rather exotic to me<\/p>\n
But I did not show my hidden excitement<\/p>\n
And apart from an English couple named Daniel and Jane<\/p>\n
We were the only English people there<\/p>\n
All the others were either French German or Dutch<\/p>\n
At the time I was obsessed with the lost jewels of ancient Palmyra<\/p>\n
Which the poet Baudelaire had dreamt of many years previously<\/p>\n
But knew that these jewels were nothing more than a poets dream<\/p>\n
Lost in time and times ruin<\/p>\n
The English couple fascinated me though<\/p>\n
As they seemed to silently orbit each other<\/p>\n
Sometimes together sometimes alone and sometimes not even seen<\/p>\n
I thought that might be lovers or ghosts but could not be sure<\/p>\n
But I watched their every move when in the desert city<\/p>\n
It was said in the Bible that Palmyra was built by Solomon<\/p>\n
A city which was by now crumbling into the seas of sand<\/p>\n
This was all that was left after the passage of the counted years<\/p>\n
There was a modern town nearby with pleasant restaurants and hotels<\/p>\n
Our hotel was on the road to the ruins which hinted of mirages in the white heat<\/p>\n
All life that had once been there was now sleeping beneath the dusts of the desert<\/p>\n
On the day before we departed I saw the Englishwoman bury<\/p>\n
What appeared to be a ring in the sands near a temple<\/p>\n
She said nothing but lingered for a while before vanishing from my view<\/p>\n
I never saw either Jane or Daniel again as they did not return with us<\/p>\n
This haunted me for many years as did my visit to Palmyra<\/p>\n
I often longed to return with my family and retrace the steps of my previous visit<\/p>\n
But knew that this would be impossible<\/p>\n
As the wheels of history had moved towards<\/p>\n
A hell that I could not even begin to understand<\/p>\n
I wondered if Jane’s ring was still beneath the sand<\/p>\n
It is likely that it would have remained there<\/p>\n
No matter what was happening elsewhere<\/p>\n
As this is the way that history works in the desert<\/p>\n
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When I was little more than a boy my parents Took me to Palmyra as a reward for my exams It was located northeast of Damascus in Syria Which seemed rather exotic to me But I did not show my hidden excitement And apart from an English couple named Daniel and Jane We were the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9903","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9903","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9903"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9903\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9908,"href":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9903\/revisions\/9908"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9903"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9903"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9903"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}