Christ Is Born

Reminders of purity from the lost distant past in the black unsweetened tea. (Teh o kosong.) Reading the T’ang poets again clean rivers, patches of burning flowers along waterways and green mountains in the north set the appropriate scene. With Christmas around the corner the younger owner at the Al Wadi counter thinks he knows the reason for the variation from the usual order: ginger and condensed milk put aside for the commemoration of Christ’s birth.
“Hristos se rodi.” “Vaistinu se rodi,” the Serbian Orthodox will greet each other outside the churches in a fortnight. “Christ is born.” “Indeed - in an archaic old Slavonic - he is born.” (The Julian calendar marks 7th January as the day.)

NB. “Five T’ang Poets,” in a compelling translation by David Young.