That both pleased me and saddened me. I suffered from conflicting emotions and recollected in dismay the one still in prison.

“Dear Baldy” applies the balsam of consolation to your failure with surprising skill. In the future he’ll strive on a lower level for the force you once had. While you, who once searched for the secret of existence, have turned into a wealthy lawyer sinking in gluttony.

“If science is what you imagine, what are we but intruders on the periphery of life?”

“We’re successful men with a secret burden of sorrow; it’s unwise to open the wounds.”

“We belong, in fact, to a bygone age.”

“For God’s sake, don’t open the wounds.”

“Scientists are strong through their allegiance to the truth, but our strength derives from money which loses its legality day by day.”

“So I say that death represents the one true hope in human life.”

Omar looked gently at his daughter’s green eyes and said, “Buthayna, is it unreasonable to ask you not to give up your scientific studies?”

“No, I won’t, but poetry will still be the most beautiful thing in my life.”

“Let it be. I won’t dispute that. But you can be a poet and at the same time an engineer, for example.”

“You seem to be preoccupied with my future!”

“Of course! I don’t want you to wake up one day to find yourself in the Stone Age while everyone around you is in the age of science.”

“But poetry—”

He interrupted. “I won’t contradict you, dear. My friend Mustapha finds poetry, religion, and philosophy in science, but I won’t argue that position. I’m pleased and proud of you.”

The large red disk of the sun was sinking, its force and vitality absorbed by the unknown. The eye could gaze easily at it now, as at the water. Rosy dunes of clouds pressed around it.

Do you really want to know my secret, Mustapha? In the agony of failure, I sought power, that evil which we’d wanted to abolish. But you already know this secret.

FIVE