Photo © Tommy Pedersen
As he was waiting to hear the knock again, it daunted him, a thought he explored timidly so many times before, but was not quite courageous enough to say it out loud, to himself or the other monks in the peninsula. What if it was his Lord, finally coming to see him?
October 2014's edition of Long Story, Short Journal is 'The Monk of Zege' by Mahtem Shifferaw, a writer and cultural activist who grew up in Eritrea and Ethiopia. In her tale, we are invited into the life of a hermit monk who dwells both within crisis and extraordinary beauty. Zege's landscape is teeming with wildlife which encroaches upon the monk's solitude--particularly his wounded companion, a vervet monkey. Photo by Tommy Pedersen. READ 'THE MONK OF ZEGE'.