The Winner Stands Alone by Coelho Paulo

Author:Coelho, Paulo [Paulo, Coelho,]
Format: epub, mobi, azw3
Published: 2010-06-10T04:00:00+00:00

The Winnder Stands Alone

4:34 PM

Jasmine is sitting staring out at the sea while she smokes a cigarette and thinks of nothing. At such moments, she feels a deep connection with the infinite, as if it were not she who was there, but something more powerful, something capable of extraordinary things.

She remembers an old story she once read. Nasrudin appeared at court wearing a magnificent turban and asking for money for charity. You come here asking for money and yet youre wearing an extremely expensive turban on your head. How much did that extraordinary thing cost? asked the sultan.

It was a gift from someone very rich. And its worth, I believe, five hundred gold coins, replied the wise Sufi.

The sultans minister muttered: Thats impossible. No turban could possibly be worth that much.

Nasrudin insisted:

I didnt come here only to beg, I also came to do business. I know that only a true sovereign would be capable of buying this turban for six hundred gold coins so that I could give the surplus to the poor.

The sultan was flattered and paid what Nasrudin asked. On the way out, Nasrudin said to the minister:

You may know the value of a turban, but I know how far a mans vanity will take him.

And thats what the world around her is like. She has nothing against her profession, she doesnt judge people by their desires, but she knows whats really important in life and wants to keep her feet on the ground, even though there are temptations at every turn.

Someone opens the door and says theres just half an hour before the show begins. The worst part of the day, the long period of tedium that precedes any fashion show, is coming to an end. The other girls put down their iPods and their phones; the makeup artists do any nec- essary retouching; the hairdressers comb back into place any stray locks.

Jasmine sits in front of the dressing room mirror and lets them get on with their work.

Dont be nervous just because its Cannes, says the makeup artist.

Im not nervous.

Why should she be? On the contrary, whenever she steps onto a catwalk, she feels a kind of ecstasy, a surge of adrenaline. The makeup artist seems in a mood to talk, and tells her about the many celebrity wrinkles she has smoothed, suggests a new face cream, says shes tired of her job, asks if Jasmine has a spare ticket to a party that night. Jasmine listens to all this with infinite patience. In her mind shes back in the streets of Antwerp on the day she decided to get in touch with the two photographers who had approached her earlier. She had met with a slight initial difficulty, but it had all worked out in the end.

As it would today and as it had then, whenalong with her mother, who, eager for her daughter to recover from her depression as quickly as possible, had agreed to go with hershe rang the bell of the first photographer, the one who had stopped her in the street.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.