The work was gigantic. Noise, bustle, raised dust that never settled, hammering, iron against iron, orders at the top of their lungs and above all, in the midst of the uproar, the unmistakable cries of elephants.
Hundreds of human ants were busy moving huge stone molons, rolling them on logs. Some pulled, others pushed, others moved the recently released logs and brought them in front of the blocks to rebuild the transport route.
Everywhere the shouts of workers, half-naked bodies masked with sweat and dust intermingled, the creaking of trees felled with powerful ax blows and, sometimes, the shriek of pain of a man imprisoned under their fall.
Little by little the jungle receded. Soon the ancient temple, rescued from the suffocating cannibalistic vegetation, would once again rise with pride and splendor.
Jumbo was one of the elephants in the play, one of the largest and most powerful, but he did everything his mahout ordered sacrificially.
He would push gigantic blocks up and up a ramp to place them on a platform atop a wall.
With its trunk, it uprooted long, slender trees and took them to the carpenters' workshops, which transformed them into transport logs or scaffolding beams.
With its enormous legs, it tamped the zaborra and reduced it into sand with which the masons made a primitive cement.
Jumbo's power was incredible, and when he stood up on his hind legs and gave off his long, eerie roar, the entire jungle shook. It was really impressive.
When the sun receded on the horizon, the mahout would take Jumbo to the river where it would cool his dusty skin and try to quench his unquenchable thirst.
Jumbo really enjoyed these moments of rest. He wallowed in the little puddles that formed on the river bank; he played splash at the birds that fluttered near him; and above all he looked beyond the water's border, beyond the green hills, where the sun would soon disappear.
He wondered what would be on these tracks where the caravans left. What would his life be like if he could escape and cross the deep waters of the river, abandon the work and free himself from his trainer.
Some night, when the full moon illuminated the camp, he heard other elephants bellowing in the distance, who had been born and raised in the vast savannah, and these bellows were calls for freedom that told him a great life, sometimes hard, another fun, but that would be his own.
Then he dreamed that he tore off the chain that bound him and crossed the solid wooden bridge to create his own future.
But he knew that was an impossible dream. Oh yes, he was very strong, he could move stones and uproot trees, just as he was told. But he could never break the chain that encircled his leg at night or wrench the stake driven into the ground.
He remembered when they first put it on. He was still a kid of little more than a meter. He had tried to get rid of her for days and nights, weeks maybe, pulling, hitting, tensing all his young muscles, until panting he had given up, defeated, desperate, aware of the impossibility of mastering the tools created and imposed by man.
Many years ago. And he had never tried it again. He had been too humiliated by his old defeat. Why try it when you are convinced in advance that you will not be able to get it right?
He would stay here, feeding his eternal dreams of fulfillment and freedom, a slave to the designs of the men who ruled him, bound by his own renunciation. He has lost hope of freedom because he has not understood that our limitations lie in ourselves and in our self-confidence the strength to go beyond them.
Some people are like Jumbo, they have a lot of potential but years ago they were convinced that dreams are dreams and they would be unable to achieve them. They make any difficulty an insurmountable barrier, they have lost confidence in their abilities and selflessly follow the paths marked by others.
Last night, one of the birds landed on Jumbo's head and said:
«Do not doubt yourself, try it, free yourself from your mental chains, and you will achieve your dreams».
