The old man strolled into the town square to feed the birds each day.
He was a bit of a mystery. He always had a bag of bread crumbs. The birds seem to know him by sight, gathering around his feet before he opened it. He was friendly enough, always happy to chat with people about his former life. His affable nature meant that if any of the town’s folk found themselves with a few minutes to spare they would think nothing of joining him on the bench for an idle chat. Somehow, the stories he told got intermingled with stories about him told by others. Nobody knew his nationality.
Some say he used to work for the national intelligence agency of Israel, Mossad. Others said he was a man servant in the Indian palace of a Maharaja. Some believed he was a skipper on a Scandinavian fishing trawler. Nobody knew for sure.
Nobody, that is, until the day his sister showed up. She had walked there from a nearby town to find out how he was going. Despite their true past, and the actual circumstances of their lives, they had always been close.
She was only too keen to tell people how their parents had abandoned them to live on the streets decades ago.
She told her own stories.