(no subject)

My family is Greek, but somehow they managed to get an Ancestral Family Katana.

I guess that started back in the 1600's, when my great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather was working in Constantinople, hawking lemon candies at the bazaar.

An Arab pilgrim was given the blade in thanks by an Indian criminal he'd met along the road, wounded by a lion, and bandaged. The Indian Criminal stole it from a Chinese pirate, who'd found it washed ashore on the body of a Japanese courier who was carrying it from a master craftsman to a newly-founded samurai family.

The pilgrim, a Christian Arab member of an esoteric druze cult, had sworn total pacifism, and did not wish to carry the blade, but would not refuse a gift, nor let such art go to waste. The first man to offer the pilgrim kindness as he staggered into the streets of Constantinople was my great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather, who gave him some lemon candies and a flask of water. And so the pilgrim gave him the blade.

And it's been sitting in my family's umbrella racks in all the generations since.