A Short Trip to History

 The Pageant of Victors

K.H

History calls them Great
because the dead do not vote on adjectives.
Alexander stitched the world with spears,
called it unity,
left behind a map scored in Macedonian breath,
cities speaking his name like a fever.
He burned Persepolis,
then staged weddings at Susa—
blood and marriage fused into empire.
Empire, he said,
as if the word were not already a wound.
He carved his name across the earth,
as many cities bore his name:
Alexandrias rose like echoes of his shadow,
from the Nile to the Oxus, from Arachosia to Issus,
even a city for Bucephalus by the Hydaspes.
Most have crumbled, swallowed by time or desert,
yet Alexandria in Egypt stands, a living testament,
a heartbeat of stone and salt,
all others whispers in sand and memory.
Caesar crossed a river
and discovered destiny was shallow enough to wade.
He slaughtered the Helvetii,
and cut down villages that dared resist.
Rome crowned itself eternal,
built roads so legions could arrive faster—
all roads leading not to Rome
but through bodies—
and laws so suffering could be administered politely.
The empire fell,
but only after teaching the world
how to kneel efficiently.

A man, if any , called himself a prophet,

and his followers marched armies in the name of God,

claiming angels flying above them:
from Mecca to Medina,

from the Arabian desert to Syria.
Cities fell; tribes resisted; and battle devoured them.
They led and commanded,
forcing treaties with the sword,
seizing property, taking women,

fighting over f virgins
turning lives into spoils of conquest.
Caliphs after that vague man—
extended this terror everywhere;

across Persia, Levant, Egypt, and North Africa,
punishing rebels, silencing dissent,
enslaving populations, stripping lands,
belief and devastation entwined like blood and sand.
The Umayyads and Abbasids followed,
carrying on campaigns of plunder and death,
ensuring that obedience was bought with fear,
and empire measured itself in suffering.
The Mongol khans rode like a storm
that mistook annihilation for order,
leaving the streets silent,
the earth swallowing countless souls.
Cities disappeared so completely
even memory learned restraint.
Empire here was speed—
history rewritten before the feather
could finish its stroke.
Napoleon measured Europe
with cannons and calendars.
He gave us reason marching in formation,
the Enlightenment wearing boots.
He crushed revolts in Spain and Haiti,
dragging liberty in bloodied chains
Liberty followed him—
dragged, not chosen.
He lost at Waterloo,
but victory had already drowned millions
long before the rain.
The British Empire never shouted.
It sipped tea while continents rearranged themselves.
It starved Bengal,
torched villages,
and called conquest commerce,
plunder administration,
famine mismanagement.
An empire so vast
the sun never set—
only the people.
Spain came with the cross and the sword,
and pretended not to notice
which one did the real converting.
It enslaved, murdered, and baptized by fire;
gold sailed west;
ghosts stayed behind.
Empire learned to pray
after the work was done.
Later the Ottomans—
each promised divine order,
each punished dissenters, rebels, and minorities,
each delivered graves drawn with careful angles.
The Persians, the Qing, the Habsburgs—
each promised order,
each massacred rebels, minorities, dissenters,
each delivered graves drawn with careful angles.
And then came the moderns,
who no longer needed crowns.
They invented ideology.
They named slaughter progress,
bombs deterrence,
civilians collateral,
borders security.
Empire without emperors,
invasion without footprints,
wars declared in conference rooms
while villages learned new definitions of silence.
Hitler marched with certainty,
painting Europe in ash and flame,
measuring worth by blood and lineage,
industrializing death at Auschwitz, Treblinka, and Bergen-Belsen.
Millions perished,
and yet monuments were built,
names etched into history books
as if the world could admire
the efficiency of atrocity.
Stalin walked in shadow and frost,
his terror bureaucratic,
ordering famine, purges, and gulags,
so that the soul itself learned to fear its own heartbeat.
Millions vanished—
skeletons of obedience counted in numbers,
history reduced to metrics,
memory shivering in silence.
Mao sent the Red Guards
to burn books, temples, and villages,
to hammer the past into dust,
and yet call it revolution.
The Cultural Revolution devoured millions,
while ideology became the new sacrament of suffering.
The atomic age dawned
and with it Hiroshima and Nagasaki,
cities obliterated in the name of deterrence,
children counting to zero in the ruins,
the sky itself scarred with our capacity for annihilation.
History presents this as a procession—
dates, treaties, portraits in museums—
a serious face painted on a carnival of blood.
But look closer:
it is a farce rehearsed endlessly,
the same play with new costumes,
the same lie spoken in different accents.
What did we pay?
We paid in bones used as foundations.
In languages that survived only as lullabies.
In mothers who learned geography
by counting sons who never returned.
In cities renamed so often
they forgot who they were.
In children taught to salute flags
before they learned to question gods.
We paid with the slow erosion of mercy,
with the normalization of cages,
with borders drawn like scars
and defended as if they were sacred texts.
And still, the conquerors are remembered,
their statues cleaned,
their invasions summarized as chapters.
The dead remain footnotes,
anonymous, obedient even in memory.
Perhaps the true history
is not the rise and fall of empires,
but the endless patience of humanity—
how much suffering it can absorb
before calling it normal.
Perhaps progress is not forward motion,
but repetition refined.
And perhaps the final empire
will not fall to rebellion or decay,
but to a simple, unbearable question
asked too late:
Was any of this worth
the cost of being human?

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