The Backpacker's Handbook

    The structure loomed over the ruins like a giant crashed bird.  It was constructed differently from the rest of the city.  Although much larger than any other of the stone remnants, it seemed, at this distance, to have been put together from cruder materials.  I decided to have a peek.  It required a walk outside the perimeter of the Timgad ruins.  I read on my map that the fort dated from Byzantine times, which would account for its stylistic singularities.  It loomed more and more imposingly as I approached it.  As advertised, it indeed was a kind of primitive castle. There was a wide entrance, some twenty feet high, which once may have supported huge wooden doors.

   The interior was dark. I pressed on, entering the portico, feeling my way through a great central hall.  The fortress was made entirely of small, roughly hewn rocks.  Its lines were severe and utilitarian.  Above me the ceiling faded into the darkness.  Abruptly I tripped over a loose stone in the path, and a loud surprised noise emerged from my throat.  Without warning, a great host of bats swooped down from the recesses of the bulwarks, twittering and screeching their eerie cries. I ducked instinctively as they swirled and swooped around me like miniature dive-bombers.  It was quite unnerving and I panicked, looking for a speedy exit.  They flew through my hair, brushing against my face. I had a flashing thought of rabid animals covering me with tiny painful bites and sprinted for the exit. The bats decided not to follow, but I continued running blindly for a hundred yards, finally coming to rest on the base of a column. The cries of the bats were still audible from within the gloom.

    I panted, staring back at the Byzantine fort.  This was not part of the bargain. God, bats!  I looked around the area for a time, bewildered.  The fun had gone out of this expedition. Making my way back to the ruins in the city, I attempted to busy myself studying the vestiges of Roman life, but my curiosity had taken a blow.  It felt as though I had been rejected by this place, that it had no connection for me.  I kicked a few stones around a small plaza, trying to decide what it all signified.  I considered what I knew about Roman history.  The usual schoolboy facts.  Great conquerors, leaders, civilizers. But the stories from my youth no longer seemed relevant.  An idea occurred to me, courtesy of the attacking bats.  Maybe the Romans were precursors of a continuum of evil in Europe, proto-nazis from the ancient age. What had they accomplished in subduing and controlling their piece of the known world?  Surely, their art, literature and culture counted greatly in the progression of human knowledge, but in the final analysis, their ruins were haunted places, the abodes of night creatures. They enslaved vast regions and peoples in their quest for dominance.  The glories of their conquests had long withered, leaving nothing but relics of brutality and fear that gave proof to the lie about empires.