Prologue
Like the
champion in Sienkiewicz’s novel, I have made a covenant and
started to look for coins. It was almost a year ago that I made the promise of
not leaving the country until the shield is complete. Aiming to complete a
puzzle is always driven by an egoistic drive. You expect that the last piece
will reveal something about you. The underlining urge in all of us is to be
special, to be a defining element in the complex mechanisms of interactions;
recognized as an individual element. Achieving greatness is not a clandestine project
for any who embark on a journey with the prospect of returning home stronger.
It is the strongest, yet most just irony of life, that the last, long awaited
piece of the puzzle was set in place not by me, but by a friend.
