SLOTH

Those two boys were fifteen when they came here the first time. 
They used to smoke as grown-ups and they wanted to change the world.

At twenty they used big words; they spoke of going away and change their lives. They held their cigarettes like movie stars.

With thirty they were still discussing the opportunity of becoming someone important, of doing something great. I saw their dreams disappearing with the smoke that came out of their mouths.

They are sixty now and the only thing they have been able to do in their lives is backbite the friends that were brave enough to go out there and achieve something.

They sit here and smoke and complain they were unlucky; they feel sorry for themselves and envy those that made it.

I´m just a tree, but I know it wasn´t fate their enemy, it was simply their own sloth and cowardness.

(The Olive Tree Tales)

TEENAGER

The stereo she was carrying was playing loud Rock & Roll from the sixties. She put it down at my feet and took a mirror out of her bag. She smiled into it as she would have done more than forty years ago.

She started dancing.

She had sworn herself never to forget the teenager she had been.

(The Olive Tree Tales)

THE SHIELD

He used to come here to pray.

He asked to be the one to go last.

When she died, he came here to say thank you.

His eyes were full with tears but he knew he was given the chance to protect her till her last breath.

For forty years he had been her shield and now he was still protecting her from all that pain, from the umbearable weight of loneliness. It was his only comfort; only on it he would have found the strenght to stand again.

(The Olive Tree Tales)

A GOOD LIFE

She was here yesterday with her grandson. She was playing, she was happy, she knew she had a good life. 

I am here for many hundreds years now and I know how it goes; nevertheless when today I saw her funeral passing by I could have cried if I were a man. But, as always, not for her: for the pain of those that stayed.

(The Olive Tree Tales)

A SHINING STAR

They arrived here to pray, the woman and her little son.

She showed him a picture and with broken voice she told him her father was now a shining star.

The boy took a long moment to watch that old picture and then he said:

- I was also a beautiful star up there, I was grandpa favourite one. Don´t cry, he sent me here to take care of you, mum.

(The Olive Tree Tales)

A BETTER MAN

When they arrived they seemed a normal couple.
She was pregnant.
Then, for nothing, she started beating her up.
She lied still: he left. He thought she was dead this time.
It took her more than one hour to stand up again. Slowly, with faltering steps she walked away praying:
- Dear Lord, please, help me to make my baby a better man than his father is.

(The Olive Tree Tales)

ART

In Summer, she comes here to work on her needleworks.
It is nearly eighty years now.
None believed important to learn her art. It will be gone with her.
What they don´t know is that they will need hundreds of years to reinvent it.

(The Olive Three Tales)

ASYLUM

I saw him arriving from the sea in this land. He asked for asylum; it was granted.
Now he feels offended if his neighbour wears a little cross.
But his wife goes around in a black Niqab and his neighbour shouldn´t consider it offensive.
Strange idea of gratitude.

(The Olive Tree Tales)