# Winter. 1950- 2015.

As I look upon her, as if in a magic gaze through lives, I find my soul. My expression. My whole meaning of smashing through the maze of mirrors that time had built around us. Soul mate? Duh. This is something beyond history.

She's exquisitely delicate, like a full-bodied globule of Domaine de la Romanee-Conti. Perceforest. The first Sleeping Beauty. I had watched her every night, through the looking glass darkly, during nights. When I was all alone, having announced my victory over that anonymous opponent who, out of sheer non-choice always gets the white pieces. His move. This is my move. I want to steal Chronos, the perennial keeper of the clock. The three-headed serpent. A man, a bull and a lion.

Now, what do I choose for this ' The Beauty Sleeping in the Wood '? One moment, let's take a detour; there's a relation between the three heads of the Chronos - past, present and future, of course, but, one can choose - out of the three. Not a fourth one. If I chose my past to represent the Perceforest in front of me, that was unmindful. How could I be so casual about vital matters!

I had already made up my mind to rob her. If I wanted to dis-robe her or just possess, was another thing. My bother at this moment is why my logic abruptly divorced me to marry a romance. Very unusual - normally I rob things, not beings. Well, that brings us to where my first reverse theft assignment came about. That night when the newsman and I walked up the road. he had bad news.

There were some drafts drawn up earlier that week which would facilitate international arms trade between the world's two most powerful nations - China and Japan. The bad news was, they were stolen by an Indian and both nations have covertly issued an ultimatum. The deadline had two more days to go but the PM didn't want the thing to go public as in many other instances. He wanted the news baron to muffle the whisper machine.

' How can I help?' I asked, walking alongside the man.

' Well, find them! ' he said curtly.

I didn't bother for a repartee which might have surprised him, because that was why he had always called me The Doer, after that meeting at midnight

Now that I had something to rub my hands in excitement, I forgot how poor were my fighting skills. Till I reached Tashkent.

# Entry 2.

A robber is also a bit of an antihero.  A reverse thief, if you prefer. After initiating myself into the art of stealing, I made a trip back in time, to read about inglorious, mysterious heists, thefts, robbery. One could say that sort of dampened my early sense of misadventure and made a philosopher out of me. I began to wonder about history. The historic apathy of people and how these scoundrels used it to steal time. A procrastinator is also a thief of time, certain books claim, by the way.

I bought this plush apartment in the midst of this vast city - it helped keep my anonymity intact. Invisibility is another mandatory for a thief, no matter if he is a reverse thief. Gradually, softly, I became a curator of precious time. Time that most people consider worthless stopping by - such as, let's say, a wine glass, used by a famous poet who died in dire poverty, while crossing a railway track with his last poem in his pocket. A wisecrack boozer who drank along with him previous night might've sold the souvenir to a teashop owner. People drink tea out of it, spit on it, lick it. Why, another stupid drunkard might even throw that away in a fit of fury!

I had made up my mind never to give social sanction to such historic atrocities. A self-appointed historic deputy. So I walked into the shop one day and casually lifted it. I paid for that, mind you.That was my first fling with legitimate time robbery.

There's an antithetic to this stance, if you haven't figured that out yet. By some crooked logic, suddenly robbery becomes legitimate. That bothered me, more than that girl who was always sleeping in her bed, eight floors down in the structure opposite my high-rise. I would look at her after I finish my reading and a little bit of chess. No one suspected anything amiss; after all, I was rich and if at all something dismayed them, it would have been why I was still an eligible bachelor. The security to the milkman were always courteous as if in the presence of a count.

Well, we shall come back to the sleeping beauty in a while, let me finish this entry - that bothered me, the fact that a robber becomes a regular guy. I wanted out and that was why I chose this hobby, but all of a sudden, I am sought after by the cops and the powers that be. Indeed, one night I was walking down the wide, deserted road when I noticed a gent hurrying ahead. I caught up with him. I wanted to know if he was an irregularly regular thief. A petty thief to a criminal, anything may be appointed on an otherwise decent man in these times. If I can be an elite robber, an old man can be a serial murderer.

But that wasn't so. That meeting introduced me to espionage as well. He was the managing editor of a credit worthy newspaper in the country. And he was on his way back after meeting the prime minister. ' It is better that I walk, rather than use my car,' he said, during the conversation. But more on that, later. Let me log on to the on-line chess and checkmate my customary opponent. Poor chap, he has been at it for at least three years from now, beaten precisely at the 12th move. I can imagine his frustration. Or could it be a her? You never know.

Fall, 1958.

Robbery. A handsome word. Reminds me of Antonio Banderas doing a Robin Hood. I was reading when I should have been fornicating butter-scotched lasses behind the Tangerine tree in the grove. No, I wasn't a nerd. I found characters more delectable than the bad odour of the morning breath, that was all. So here I was reading about The "Rare Books" Section at the House of Wisdom. Whoa! ' The rarest of the rare books from the East and West hemispheres housed in the Grand Library of Baghdad, the Library of Congress of its time. It was the single largest library in the world, and contained some of the oldest books ever written from three continents. It's also where the Persians likely kept the greatest hits from their history, including discoveries in science, medicine, astronomy and technology that made them the biggest swinging dick on the planet for several centuries.

The card catalog alone would be considered priceless. The library was like a rough draft of a university, it was where everyone went to learn. Not only could this create a checklist for countless works we know nothing about, but possibly subjects we could never know about, such as extinct animals or plant-life (the Romans supposedly had a plant that was such a good form of birth control they farmed it to extinction... imagine cloning that).
And since Baghdad was once the capital of the world for science and mathematics, books like Space Travel by Mohamed, How I Cured AIDS by Hippocrates or E.T. Episode I - They Came In Peace by Ezekiel would have likely been in their possession. Probably.' *

That stuck. Meaning, I didn't turn to robbery as the last resort of a scoundrel. On the contrary. I was rich by inheritance and incredibly bored with wealth. This sounded good enough for a man of precarious ethics. Robbery. In broad day light. Why I could even dis-rob a girl, if I chose! A girl like the Sleeping Beauty. No fetish is more exciting than lifting the gown of a sleeping nubile girl. Yes, yes, I know it is taboo - but then I am an outsider, remember. A robber is always an outcast, hence sanctioned to commit all the sins in the testament.

Those was my post-major years in college. I was hopping about, in search of an adventure.Serendipity was my mistress and she dropped a gem for me to start my game of cat and mouse. I chanced upon a small shred of paper. An old one. Looked pretty ancient. Perhaps the second edition of the Egyptian Book of the Dead. 

I didn't bother much about it, except keep it in a tin of biscuits.

The next day I came across a priest who was supposedly mad, blabbering about The Lost Sayings of Jesus. Upon more intimate investigation with a female curator, I gathered that the Gospels of Matthew and Luke were identical and could have come from a source called the Q Document. It was never found, but grapevine went that it was somewhere out there. The issue didn't have anything to do about Christianity or any religious sect, but it all seemed to stem from the sayings of people who KNEW something or two about spirit and ' experiences.'

Well. I could make out this was somehow part of that stuff. But, alas, digging deeper, I found out that it was part of an obit in a newspaper. But that turned my luck further.

* http://www.cracked.com/article/18368_7-books-we-lost-to-history-that-would-have-changed-world/#ixzz37ls3RCUX

# Entry 1. October 15.

robber (n.)
late 12c., from Anglo-French robbere, Old French robeor, agent noun from rober (see rob). Robber baron in the "corrupt, greedy financier" sense is attested from 1870s, from a comparison of Gilded Age capitalists to medieval European warlords.
It is the attempt of the more shrewd to take advantage of the less shrewd. It is the attempt of the strong to oppress the weak. It is the old robber baron in his castle descending, after men have planted their crops, and stealing them. [Henry Ward Beecher, sermon, "Truthfulness," 1871]
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A robber should look down upon lesser mortals. It is a mandate. Like God, peering  down from the heavens. That's how they measure it, anyway. Folks like this preacher here say, that is illegal, illegitimate and illogical. Quite normal; they have their reasons: their possessions, kept under the permanent fear of theft. Money. House. Car. Golf sticks. Why, even spouses. People, marooned on their little lives, like islets.

Well. True, perhaps. Let us look up rob. It's a verb.
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rob (v.)

late 12c., from Old French rober "rob, steal, pillage, ransack, rape," from West Germanic *rauba "booty" (cognates: Old High German roubon "to rob," roub "spoil, plunder;" Old English reafian, source of the reave in bereave), from Proto-Germanic *ra
ubon "to rob," from PIE *reup-, *reub- "to snatch" (see rip (v.)).
Lord, hou schulde God approve þat þou robbe Petur, and gif þis robbere to Poule in þe name of Crist? [Wyclif, c.1380]
To rob the cradle is attested from 1864 in reference to drafting young men in the American Civil War; by 1949 in reference to seductions or romantic relationships with younger persons. Related: Robbed; robbing.
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See? Keywords - young men; seductions or romantic relationships.

A whole slew of Mormonic sermons enveloping a verb, making it into a noun. But, in a way, they are one and the same -  the attempt of the more shrewd to take advantage of the less shrewd. Like Somerset Maugham's The Magician. Or Nabakov's Lolita. Take note of the mention of Christ in the verb? Lord, hou schulde God approve þat þou robbe Petur, and gif þis robbere to Poule in þe name of Crist. Yes, Christ had two robbers by his side, forever doomed to carry the burden of history. Robbers are fated to carry the weight of so much human history.

Which is why I am a robber. I rob history. Rob - it's a magic thing. A magic rob, that makes me invisible to these helpless people who can't see what is beneath their noses - history. That's why I look down from the heights of my hideout in this high rise at her - Perceforest. The sleeping Beauty.