Tuco re-read the news article's opening paragraph.
"Aisha Parveen doesn't
matter. She's simply
one more impoverished girl
from the countryside,
and if her brothel's owner goes ahead and kills
her,
almost no one will care."¹
Meanwhile the Associated Press reports a court in the same country
dismissed a death penalty case against a man
who converted from Islam to Christianity.
And he will be released soon, officials said,
lack of evidence.
The horse whinnies impatiently.
It's time to ride.
Tuco saddles up, swings up and looks across the valley.
He tries to imagine the mountains so far away,
the place where fourteen year old girls are kidnapped with impunity.
And people die over religion.
All he sees are these mountains
grey and dusty in the morning light.
Low clouds on the slopes will lift soon
and the sun will fill the hiding places
of crows and coyotés.
The horse begins the steady steps down the slope.
Tuco's mind remains lost in another world.
The article said that one million children are held
in conditions of slavery in Asia alone.
Tuco can't quite grasp something of that scale.
"Globalization is a
coherent theory for times of
comparative peace and
economic expansion like the 1990's.
It is less persuasive in times of
conflict and fear like those we live in today."²
Tuco begins to hum, remembering an old southern tune.
The
devil went down to Georgia, he was looking for a soul to steal.
He was in a bind 'cos he was way behind: he was willin' to make a deal.
When he came across this young man sawin' on a fiddle and playin' it
hot.
And the devil jumped upon a hickory stump and said: "Boy let me tell
you what:
"I bet you didn't know it, but I'm a fiddle player too.
"And if you'd care to take a dare, I'll make a bet with you.
"Now you play a pretty good fiddle, boy, but give the devil his due:
"I bet a fiddle of gold against your soul, 'cos I think I'm better than
you."³
Seems all to familiar, Tuco thought.
Different tune, different time
but its the same dance.
Life has no meaning
unless one lives it with a will,
at least to the limit of one’s will.
Virtue, good, evil are nothing but words,
unless one takes them apart
in order to build something with them;
they do not win their true meaning
until one knows how to apply them.«