Cain and Abel were, according to the Old Testament, two sons of Adam and Eve.
Cain is described as a crop farmer and his younger brother, Abel, as a shepherd. Cain was the first human born and Abel was the first human to die. Cain committed the first murder by killing his brother. Interpretations of Genesis have typically assumed that the motives were jealousy and anger. Jose Saramago offers a different story in his final work, Cain, stating that Cain killed Abel because he couldn’t kill God. Saramago’s Cain states: Our god, the creator of heaven and earth, is completely mad.

Only a madman unaware of what he is doing would admit to being directly responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people and then behave as if nothing has happened, unless of course it’s not a case of real, authentic madness, but evil pure and simple.

(Photos: Istanbul, a 2600-year-old city of 14 million people and many old things.)