“As if he’s searching for his soul,” Mustapha observed.

Othman frowned. “Wasn’t it he who lost it?” Then he sighed. “So it’s all ended in philosophical meditations.”

Mustapha went on, trying to restrain his mirth. “I’ve often felt that he wanted to revive his dormant impulse to write, and he continues to try. But he dreams sometimes of a strange ecstasy.”

“Can you be more explicit?”

Omar turned toward them. “Drop the subject and just consider it an illness.”

Othman looked at him sharply and murmured, “Perhaps it really is a disease, for you’ve lost your old vigor.”

Mustapha said, “Or he’s searching for the meaning of his existence.”

“When we’re aware of our responsibility toward the masses, the search for a personal meaning becomes quite insignificant.”

Omar asked with irritation, “Do you think the question will die when the dictatorship of the proletariat is established?”

“But it hasn’t been established yet.” He looked from one of them to the other. “Scientists search for the secret of life and death through knowledge, not through illness.”

“And if I’m not a scientist?”

“At least you shouldn’t throw the dust of wailing and lamentation in the faces of the workers.”

Mustapha said, “You’re hurling some strong language at our friend at a time when he really is in pain.”

“I’m sorry, and I’m afraid I’ll have to remain sorry indefinitely.”

Omar asked, “Won’t the heart come to our rescue if we’re not scientists?”

“The heart is a pump operating through the arteries and veins. To see it as a means of apprehending the truth is sheer fantasy. Honestly, I’m beginning to understand you. You’re looking for ecstasy, or perhaps for something called absolute truth, but because you lack any effective method, you turn to the heart as the rock of salvation. But it is only a rock, and with it you’ll recede to the depths of prehistory. Your life will have been wasted. Even my life, spent behind prison bars, has not been sacrificed for nothing. But your life will be. You’ll never attain any truth worth speaking of except through reason, science, and work.”

He hadn’t witnessed the desert sunrise, or felt the ecstasy which gives assurance without proof. The world had not been cast, like a handful of dust, beneath his feet.

Mustapha said, “I believe in science and reason, but I have in my hands a kasida* which Omar wrote just before renouncing poetry for good. In it, he declares his revolt against reason.”

Controlling himself, Othman said, “I’d like to hear it.”

Omar was about to protest, but Mustapha had already unfolded the paper, and begun to read:

“Because I neither played in the wind

Nor lived on the equator

Nothing charmed me but sleeplessness

And a tree which doesn’t bend to the storm

And a building which doesn’t shake.”