“Is the earth really round?”
“Yes.”
“You have seen it? You know that it is round?”
“Yes.”
“You have been around it, yourself?”
“Yes,” I said, mendaciously.
They sat back and considered this. Then they asked particulars. They could understand that the earth was curved, for they had seen that the mountains were not flat, so it would be possible for the earth to be curved. But were the seas curved also? Would water curve? I said that it would, that, indeed, it did.
Had I been upon the great spaces of water and seen that they were curved?
I had been upon the seas, I said, and they were curved. They did not look curved, because the earth was so large and the eye saw so little of it, but they were curved, for one could go quite around the earth on them.
They smoked over this for some time. The byraktor rescued his coffee pot, in deep abstraction. I did not expect them to believe what I had said. How could they? It must have appeared to them the wildest of fairy tales (although in all Albania there are no fairies, and therefore—I suppose that is the reason—there are no Albanian fairy tales). Men suffered much at the hands of our ancestors for telling them the monstrous idea that the flat earth is round. I wished I knew what thoughts were taking shape behind those dark Albanian eyes.