“You will walk.” — and suddenly every certainty becomes a question.

An excerpt

“When the cobbler Ahasver, in Jerusalem, refuses a condemned man a sip of water, it is — to him — merely a decision for order, a boundary that must be upheld. But from that small certainty grows a verdict that blows his life apart: Ahasver must keep walking. Always.”

Dust is the memory of a crowd. It settles on eyelashes, on tongues, into the folds of clothing, and later, when everything is over, you find it again in the creases of your own hands, as if you had shaped what happened yourself.

The alley in front of my workshop emptied slowly, but not neatly. People didn’t dissolve like smoke; they stopped in small groups, talked, pointed, repeated sentences they didn’t understand themselves. Some looked back at my door as if something had happened there that needed judging. A man spat on the stone, half in disgust, half in relief. A woman pulled her child closer, as if she could shield it from eyes. The workshop held its breath. Tools lay still, leather smelled of work, pitch gleamed in the bowl like a dark, patient liquid. But something had shifted. Not visibly — more like a nail someone has loosened just a little: so little the board still holds, but enough that one day it will creak. The sentence in my head remained: You fear everything will break. Outside, the city kept moving as if nothing had happened, and that was precisely what was uncanny. Order can pretend it has won while it already carries cracks. Stepping out the door didn’t happen as a choice, but as a reaction, the way a body reacts to smoke. The alley was brighter than the workshop; dust stood in the sun, dancing as if this were a festival. The noise had moved on, but it was not gone. It still hung between the houses, in the voices that echoed. It drifted toward the edge of the city, to where you finish things you no longer want in the center. My feet carried me. Not fast, not in a rush — rather with an unpleasant insistence, as if something had to be checked. Maybe the Romans. Maybe the crowd. Maybe one’s own hand, whether it had truly stayed on the doorpost.

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