“No,” Othman replied with annoyance. “Nor do I want to know about it.” He thought for a while and then said to the architect, “Shouldn’t we provide a lavatory?”

“It will be used by strangers and made filthy.”

“But surely we could plant some kind of a tree or ivy, couldn’t we?”

“That won’t be a problem. It could be watered from outside.”

When the work had been completed, he went to examine the tomb and pay the balance. He looked over it admiringly. The door was open, and through it he could see the stairs leading down to the burial place, brightly lit by the sun. He bent forward a little to look at the floor of the tomb. It was smooth and fresh and spotlessly clean, bathed in light. He felt it was his eternal home, all ready for him; and his bones were not going to be lost in a heap of others like his parents’. Out of the depths of his soul came a soft strange voice whispering to him like a lover to lie down on the clean, bright ground, have a taste of the comforts of which he had had no share in life, and enjoy the peace which he had never experienced in the tumult of his raging emotions. For a moment he wished to obey that mysterious call and be through with the world, both its cares and its hopes.

He remained in the grip of these enigmatic thoughts until he left the cemetery and made his way back to town. And how he wished to transfer the remains of his parents to the new tomb so that he would feel more at home in it! But that, he had learned a long time ago, was not feasible, for the paupers’ burial ground was so crammed with corpses, it was impossible to tell them apart.

“There’s no doubt that my life today is better than it was before,” he thought, desperately trying to convince himself that he had done the right thing.

This of course did not mean that he had abandoned the path of God’s eternal world, even though his zeal had noticeably waned.

THIRTY-THREE

Let the days go by!

Whatever happened, he had become a family man and the owner of a tomb; he had come to know new kinds of food, other than sheep’s head, rice, lentils, and beans, and he had also discovered something to be done with money other than mummifying it in the Post Office Savings Bank.

But were days not heavy and monotonous in their passage? Had he lost hope irretrievably?