Akko, or When days were long and knights were short

Fletcher Flora didn't just have one of the more unlikely names in noir; he could also write the stuff.

His story "As I Lie Dead" (1953) reminded me of why the American movies later called films noirs were once known as melodramas. It is overheated with sex and doom from the beginning and, as a bonus, I did not see its end coming.

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I read "As I Lie Dead" on the train to Akko (Acre), one of the oldest in a land of ancient cities. Akko/Acre was the final stronghold of the Crusader states in the Holy Land, a place where all but the shortest Knights Templar must have taken the lord's name in vain as they smacked their medieval heads against the low roof of what some people today think was an escape tunnel.

The city's real big knights were the Hospitallers, whose "subterranean" Crusader fortress was spectacularly well preserved because subsequent occupiers simply filled its halls with rubble and buried them.

Anyone who was anyone knew about Akko, wrote about it, or invaded it: The pharaohs.  The folks who wrote the Bible. Newcomers like the ancient Greeks, the Romans,  the Crusaders, and Napoleon. I suggest that you follow them.

© Peter Rozovsky 2012