Modern Meditation

From A to X, A Story in Letters, John Berger, 2008

This novel is a collection of love letters written by A’ida to a prisoner Xavier, serving two lifetime sentences for terrorism. The letters were found in pigeonholes along the prisoner’s cell wall when all prisoners were moved into a new prison facility. The letters were given to the author who doesn’t know if the two are alive or dead. He decides to publish the letters in the order they were found in the pigeonholes and manages by secret means to get a hold of additional letter A’ida never mailed.

The novel is thus a series of meditations without a clear reference to time or place that manages to be extraordinarily engrossing and challenging. References hint the characters are probably somewhere in Latin America and the repressive regime in power seems to have access to the latest American weapons like the Apache helicopter and M1 tank. A’ida is a trained pharmacist who continues to help the resistance, treating the wounded and sick who arrive at her store in the middle of the night.

A’ida continues to ask for permission to marry the prisoner so she can visit but her requests are denied. Her only means of communicating her life and her love are the letters. Some she cannot mail. In between letters are quotations and reflections presumably by the prisoner on a wide range of contemporary questions. A few examples on the subject of capitalism:

Today’s capitalism would be impossible without the very high return of the thick energy of fossil fuels, hence the question of what may happen in four decades when oil supplies are exhausted. Will there be only the thin solar energy?

The day that hunger disappears the world will see a spiritual explosion such as humanity has never known.

Only for the powerful is history an upward line, where their today is always the pinnacle. For those below, history is a question which can only be answered by looking backward and forwards, thus creating new questions.

All usurpers do their utmost to make us forget that they have only just arrived.

The sky a reminder of what may be temporarily forgotten – e.g. the private equity funds available for financial speculation are today worth 20 times more than the sum total of the world’s gross national product!