As confusions of wildebeest roamed the savannah plains, a frail little gust of air struck the rounded side of a rock. Compressed for a fleeting moment, the gust doubled back on itself, forming the seed of a wind.
All fresh and young, the little wind clung hold to the rock, fearful of letting go. As she did so, she heard the voice of an old wind, ripened by adventure.
And so the fresh young wind let go, and her own journey began. She flew over the vast grasslands of Africa and out over the blue-black ocean, across the jungles of the Amazon, and beyond a hundred horizons.
Becalmed, then rescued by a passing albatross, sucked up into the vortex of a colossal storm, zigzagging along valley floors, and rising higher than the mightiest of mountains, the little wind grew in confidence and verve...
Until she was no longer a little wind at all.
Having spiralled the earth a thousand times, she happened to pause at the rock against which she had been formed so long before. And there, she found a frail little gust clinging to a rock - a frail little gust that had just been born.
A story for both children and adults,
The Old Wind
is a tale in the genre of teaching stories, told and retold by our ancestors since ancient times.
Hailing from a family of storytellers, its author, Tahir Shah, is widely regarded as one of the most original writers of our age.