Chekhov Letters

During my Mustansiriyah years in early 1990s culminating triumphantly and terminating joyously--after all, all's well that ends well-- in my exodus in 1995, I picked up from a stack in the central library, a volume, and after I blew the dust from it, I sat down to read it, and its material transported me to spheres which made me transcend--at times more than one, meals at your Baghdad home made me do the same-- the feeling of hunger I was feeling on that--one among many others-- days, to pilfer a phrase from dear good old WW when he describes a tree by saying: a tree among many. That volume contained Maxim Gorky's letters to Chekhov. The other day, I was reading Chekhov's letters to his wife the actress Olga Knipper. The letters made me imagine dear good old Anton Chekhov smiling with a protective humour and a full awareness of life's absurdity, plus awareness of the brief intensity of our existence