A Byzantine princess is snatched and entrusted to a fierce Ottoman warrior to deliver to the sultan as part of a surrender package of the city, until an unexpected overturn of the political chessboard changes all their fates.

The protests against GWB’s inauguration last Saturday [January 20, 2001] were the largest since the anti-Nixon rallies on inauguration day in 1973, the press has informed us. But a lot of newspaper and TV reporters have been pretending not to understand why so many of us were standing in the cold rain in Washington, chanting and waving placards and booing when the dignitaries rolled by Freedom Plaza.