​Folktales from Samaria by Peter Cashorali

A large tree in the middle of green woodland. Large white text reads: Folktales from Samaria. Smaller text reads: Discussing disabled characters in fairy tales and folklore.

There was, there is, a country called Samaria.

A few days after a man’s husband died the plumbing backed up. The plumber came. They talked while the plumber worked and the man mentioned the death. The plumber took a photograph out from his wallet, of his dead brother, the hollow bruised-looking cheeks not unlike the plumber’s own, the open casket surrounded by flowers. Of the flowers he said, “They never die.”

Nothing good was expected from Samaria.

There was a man and he betrayed, then abandoned, the person he loved most, the person who couldn’t and so didn’t live without him. Now he had trouble breathing. One day, talking with the friend of a friend, he described this difficulty. In turn she told him how once, years before, exhausted from living with his insanity, she had taken her brother to the airport and, after buying and thrusting into his hands a ticket whose destination she refused to know, left him, left him, ran through the terminal as fast as she could and left him there.

It was felt to be a dark place, Samaria, best avoided, best left quickly if you found yourself there.

A man arrived in an unfamiliar city. He called Lyft to pick him up at the airport. The driver made conversation. As he spoke to the back of her head the man’s small talk became a description of the darkness and small abandoned towns past the end of the old life, the unlit roads all the longer around the holidays. The driver invited him to join her family for Thanksgiving dinner, as a cousin, or, if he liked, a brother.

As much of the time as possible a state of war was maintained with Samaria, not because anyone wanted its territory, but so it wouldn’t spread.

A woman, memory long since having evaporated and her mind exposed to the elements, lived in a facility. Each Sunday her youngest son, the disappointment, cooked a meal and brought it so she wouldn’t have to eat the white Sunday dinner served to the patients. Her hand no longer understood spoons, so he fed her. This took most of the afternoon. The woman thought the man visiting her certainly was friendly. And the food here was delicious.

No one knew when Samaria had been founded, or why. It had just been there when everyone arrived. One of the conditions of life.

A man sat in his room in the locked ward of a nursing home, holding his socks and slippers. A girl, finished visiting her grandmother down the hall, looked in and asked if he needed help putting on his socks. The man thought for a moment and told her no, what he really needed was help with the demons in the bathroom, because they bothered him at night. The girl took clippers out of her backpack and gave him a pedicure, holding his feet on her knees, one at a time.

The borders were strictly patrolled because that was Samaria on the other side. Even so the breeze came and went as it pleased, so you couldn’t be too careful.

A man, harassed by voices shouting and blaming him for their deaths, stood in the middle of traffic, howling back at them. Another man came to the edge of the sidewalk and, holding up a five-dollar bill, let its mild green light shine out between the cars, and waited.

If someone from Samaria was met on the road, people turned their eyes away, though if you had to make eye contact the advice was to do so with suspicion, as the best way to avoid contagion.

A homeless man saw another man who sometimes gave him change, who was carrying something the homeless man couldn’t see, though he could tell it was too heavy. He took out the package of cookies he’d bought at the 99-cent store and offered one to the man.

The only use anyone could find for Samaria was as a measurement of what they themselves weren’t, at least.
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There was a man who took care of three households, illness and someone he loved in each of them. One day he was set upon by the awareness of how this situation would resolve, which beat, stripped and left him lying by the side of the road. A doctor passed by and said, “They’re going to die.” A therapist passed and said, “You’ll be alone.” Another man, who spent his time making lists of his own Oscar choices for every year since the Academy began in 1929, stopped and invited the man to help him. “It will be slow at first,” he said. “But once we get going, I think we can really get some work done.”

The Samaritans believe that under the world is an ocean, not of salt water but sweet, good to drink, good for anyone, but that the earth from being walked on is packed down hard, and so needs to be broken, so that the water can rise.

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About the author: 
Peter Cashorali is a neurodiverse pansy living at the intersection of rivers, farmland and civil war. He practices a contemplative life.