The images that come to mind when I think of India usually include people. I see crowds bathing in a river in a religous ceremony and masses of people at a street market, bicycles and cars and animals all using the same road. I think of masses a yellow marigolds from a movie of several years ago that told of two modern Indians marrying in a traditional ceremony. I think of another movie--Gandhi and again, masses of people following him into the water. I think of dusty lands, a hard dry climate. And I hear a music that draws me in, but I dont' quite understand. I think of Hindu gods with multiple arms and animal parts within their human bodies

And the images of China: I see the Great Wall stretching for miles and miles through mountains, as far as the eye can see. It's funny, although China is a heavily populated county, images of people don't come to mind as they do with India. And I see mountains rather than water. I also think of Tibet and the Dali Lama and Buddhist monks. The rice fields of Pearl Buck's books come to mind as do images of natural elements found within the I-Ching--water, mountains, wind.

Finally, images of the Middle East. I think of Jerusalem and holy palces. I see heat and beige buildings. But mostly I respond with an emotion rather than an image--the emotion of compassion. I feel so sorry for people living in that region. How does one stay innocent and open hearted amid the pervasive fear and hatred? What other part of the world has a wailing wall?

The Turkish tales reminded me immediately of the fairy tales our mother read to my sister and me when we were little--like Rapunzel and the Billy Goat's Gruff. There's an element of trickery--not harm, but slight of hand. The stories are parables or indirect lessons. All three stories included some sort of indirectness being the twist, like the indirect birth prediction of an old man and the indirect rescue of her marriage by a wife. Not unlike the Japanese, we Americans must seem direct to those from these other eastern and middle eastern cultures.