THE HONORABLE ONES
LITERARY & PHILOSOPHICAL REFLECTIONS
An English Literary Adaptation
Translated
from the Arabic
THE DEATH SEQUENCE
The drumbeat of the baby’s cries quickened, pounding
violently. Hungry, the infant gasped for breath and lunged toward its mother’s
breast, clutching at it like a ravenous lion that had searched in vain for prey
and at last found it within reach. The baby knew nothing of life beyond its
mother’s breast: warmth and tenderness, a few drops of water to drink, and the
gentle touch of loving fingers against its soft, fragile body. To the infant,
this was life in its entirety.
The old woman watched from her chair, smiling as she
followed the baby’s laughter and the eager movements of its feet, which it
lifted and grasped with the fascination of gentle waves settling upon a shore.
Her mind wandered far away, and she whispered to herself:
“Death was never a sudden stop waiting for us at the finish
line. It was an eternal dance that began with our very first cry. From the
moment our feet touched the earth, we have walked along that same finish line,
resisting it and celebrating life while death quietly practices its art upon
us, in silent increments we scarcely feel.”
Long ago, I was this infant—this baby girl. I did as she
does, saw what she sees, and felt what she feels. At that age, life contained
nothing more than what this child possesses now. The old woman felt her breath
catch for a moment as a question rose within her: Where had that baby gone? Was
she not me?
She fell silent, then sighed, wonder and sorrow mingling
like wine in a cup. “No. She is no longer me. Nothing of that infant remains.
She vanished; she died inside me. Every feeling, every gaze, every touch,
everything she once enjoyed went with her. It blew away, evaporated, scattered
like a feather torn apart by a violent wind. I am no longer that baby.”
Her eyes widened as if she had suddenly awakened. “Yes, the
infant died. She is not me. Perhaps something in her once resembled me, but I
no longer possess what she possessed, do what she did, or receive the care and
tenderness she knew. She died and was buried long ago. Deep within me, I dug
her a grave; she disappeared into it until not a trace remained. Every new
birth within us necessarily means the death of a former, unaware self. That
infant died: her absolute innocence was taken from her, along with the
gentleness of one who knew no evil. Her first, unspoiled laugh was buried
beneath the weight of the awareness that came after.”
Before the aged woman, all the selves she had once been
began to take shape, like real ghosts she might almost touch. She could hear
their whispers and feel each transformation, each development, and then each
disappearance—as though that self had never existed. The figures called to her.
Their dialogue seemed visible on her wrinkled face, both outwardly present and
inwardly concealed. She began to converse with the selves that had faded and
turned to nothing, watching their scenes unfold before her as if made of flesh,
blood, and fire.
Stage One: A Dialogue Between the Infant and the Child
The death of unspoiled instinct
Scene: A quiet
darkness. A faint whisper rises from a child’s body as it takes its first steps
into life.
The Infant (the dead
self): (Her voice is an echo, filled
with stillness and purity.) “Ah, you who have only just emerged from my
absolute silence—how dare you pull away my covering? I was something pure. No
illusion had programmed me, no name had stained me. I was a floating idea
without constraints. Why are you so eager to define yourself?”
The Child (the newly
born self): (Her voice is beginning
to acquire its first notes, mingled with wonder.) “You are a silence I
cannot understand! I am light, color, and noise. I have begun to realize that
the world has boundaries and the body can move. I taste food that is not the
spring of stillness, and I hear stories claiming that some being watches us from
above. You, O nothingness, never knew the taste of words or the magic of toys.”
The Infant: “You
are stepping along the finish line they have drawn for you. Those words you
boast of are your first chains; those stories about ‘the being’ are your first
programmed illusions. By my nature, you were born without belief. No one had
programmed you or taught you the rituals of a religion. No one had dragged you
into religious group rivalries, insisting that one set of rites was more
correct, more authentic, or more faithful than another.”
The old woman remembered that, as an infant, no one had
burdened her with such instruction. No one had forced her to believe with
absolute certainty that the rituals she would later be taught were the only
true or best ones. She had not entered a divine marathon, desperately searching
for—or imagining she had found—a god hidden inside one religion, one
denomination, or one sect, each with its own forms and attributes that
contradicted those of the others.
As a baby, she had not exhausted herself searching for a god
who seemed to play hide-and-seek with humanity, vanishing into a thousand
shapes and a thousand thousand religions and rituals, then declaring with
complete confidence that he was one. One god—but which of these many versions
was the one? Nobody knew. Was it an illusion, a mirage, a deception, an
invention? No one had taught her to ask. As an infant, she knew only innocence
and had no demands placed upon her. There was no need for hypocrisy or deceit,
no rituals to perform, no threats or intimidation, no fear, and no imaginary
rewards called life after death. She lived like a piece of white cotton,
needing none of this effort or nonsense. Nothing could persuade her except a
mother’s warmth and biological need.
The Child: (She smiles, a mixture of mischief and
innocence. Yet that innocence is already showing the first faint stain, a
thread of dirt spreading across the white patch within the infant.)
“Now—and only now—the infant has disappeared and vanished from existence. You
buried her inside yourself and dug her grave by your own will.”
The Infant: “No,
no! That never happened. I did not bury the infant in the grave of my body. I
searched for her when I awoke one day and could not find her. I screamed,
searched the room, the house, and the street, calling out for her. But she did
not answer. She was like a piece of ice melting beneath a scorching sun, or
steam condensing inside a kettle until it dried away. I rushed to my room and
looked in the mirror. There I saw a little girl of a few years. I kept calling
for the infant, but she did not answer. Only the child in the mirror remained.
Then the baby’s ghost appeared, like a mirage approaching from afar, and told
me sadly and bitterly, ‘Time is over. The moment has passed.’”
The child laughed in defiance, her eyes full of scorn and
revenge. “Indeed, the moment has passed; time is over. You have no choice now.
I am all you have. I am the child, the tangible reality before you. No matter
how much you scream and search for the infant, she will never answer. And now
you have begun to inherit superstition; you have begun to replace instinctive
certainty with religious doubt. How miserable you are—you inherited your
ancestors’ legacy before you even knew what inheritance meant.”
The child surrendered and began to live her childhood,
abandoning the cries and calls for the infant. Searching for what no longer
existed was pointless. She was now a little girl, still innocent despite the
faint stain that had dulled the whiteness within her. Much of the infant’s
purity remained. She played, laughed, ate, drank, ran, and walked; then she
went to school and learned to read and write. Those around her began their
gradual work of programming and indoctrination. One day they performed their religious
rituals in front of her. At first, she understood nothing of their gestures and
could not see why they needed them. Little by little, as she grew, they taught
her at school, at home, in the street—in every place—that these rituals were
magnificent, that they would make her happy, calm, and secure, and even solve
every problem she faced. They kept teaching her until she mastered the art of
being taught. Soon she practiced the rituals herself and spoke about them
expertly to her classmates.
Stage Two: A Dialogue Between the Child and the Young Woman
The death of innocence and instinctive
wonder
Scene: A vast
space ruled by grand dreams and sharp contradictions. The dead child wears a
faded dress; the young woman wears a gleaming crimson gown.
The young woman suddenly cried out in astonishment, calling
for the child. She looked everywhere but could not find her. She missed her
terribly—the child’s presence, the sense of wonder she had carried away when
she left. Weeping, the young woman called for help and begged someone to bring
the child back. But whom could she call upon? Life itself offered no answer.
She stood before the mirror and touched a body that no
longer resembled the innocent child she had known for so many years. Beneath
her hands was a woman’s body, curved and unmistakably feminine, with prominent
breasts and a defined waist. Her face bore no resemblance to the missing child.
Then she understood: the child had died inside her. She dug a small grave
within this female body, buried the child deep in it, and covered her with
earth. She would never find her again. In her place stood a teenager, then a
woman in her twenties, overflowing with femininity, dreaming of love and
consumed by urgent desires and womanly impulses. She did things the child had
never done, felt what the child had never felt, and desired things the child
could never have imagined.
Yet amid this storm of feelings, cravings, whims, and
romantic adventures, she lost the child’s way of seeing the world—and with it,
her sense of wonder. The images before her grew dull. The streets seemed dim,
heavy-footed, dreary; they wearied her, although they were the very same
streets the vanished child had once loved. The inheritance of family and
society weighed on her shoulders until she could barely bear it. The old shops
no longer stirred her. Coca-Cola no longer tasted as it once had; sweets had
lost their distinctive smell and their power to carry her into a world of
delight. The street had lost its sparkle, and her grandmother’s house no longer
seemed beautiful. The melodies that had lifted her through childhood’s skies
fell silent, replaced by the rhythms of desire and the whims of outings. Her
needs had changed.
Now she was merely a young woman looking for hope, perhaps
in a job, a man, love, or an income. She no longer cared about images or light.
Wonder had died, and she did not seek it. Instead, she searched for a man to
fill the emptiness left by the lost wonder, and for money to buy clothes for
the female body that had become an object meant to stir emotion—but only under
conditions and within restraints. She knew she could never recover the child,
no matter how much she wept. She had to obey the desires and demands of the
young woman standing before her, eyes defiant, whispering like a snake:
“Do not look for her. That child died years ago and was
buried inside you. Now she is dust—or nothing. Submit to me: to my desires, to
the reality before you, to the life you will live whether you wish to or not.”
The Child (the dead
self): (Her voice is sad and
reproachful.) “You who inherited my funeral, do you remember me? I was the
absolute wonder that chased a butterfly for no reason at all. I possessed
fields of dreams so white they could cover the darkness of the world. And now
you have come, young woman, after committing the terrible crime of killing the
child within me—a crime for which no law in the world will ever punish you.
Where is the innocent laugh that your wild desires had not yet stained?”
The Young Woman (the
newly born self): (Loudly, with
defiance and anxiety.) “Like you, I missed the child I knew all those years
ago. I swear that sometimes I see you in my mirror and weep for you. But I grew
up, matured, and saw you for what you were: a foolish, naïve little girl. I
mocked your innocence when I remembered your fascination with ordinary things.
What a silly child, seeing beauty in everything—even in ugliness itself!”
She sighed at length and spoke firmly. “She had to die. Do
not put me on trial now; it is too late. She was innocent and naïve, delighted
by the simplest thing—even a little toy or doll—as though it were an entire
year’s worth of treasure, or as though she had won a beauty crown and all the
wealth in the universe. It was necessary to kill that fool. Now you must
surrender to me, the young woman, and do what I command. Forget your childhood
dreams. You are no longer that child. Those dreams were pink bubbles that could
not withstand society’s winds. My dreams have changed. Now I want power,
recognition, and a woman’s identity. You were innocent because you did not
understand; I understand now that life is no game but a struggle. Did innocence
leave me? Yes—but it gave me the strength to fight.”
The Lost Child:
“It gave you contamination, not strength. Look into your eyes: they no longer
shine with faith in the simple things. They glitter with the desire to possess.
Innocence left because you allowed religious illusion, false rituals, and the
society that deceived you to shape your distorted thoughts and drive you like a
beast among a herd. As a child, you were more alert and aware. You asked
questions. You had been indoctrinated less; your mind had not yet been fully
programmed. It was clear as pure water, bright with logical questions, before
editing, deletion, conditioning, and the control of religious myths and
inherited social delusions. You selfish, foolish young woman—society taught you
to let it define right and wrong. You turned your wish for freedom into a war
against convention instead of a true liberation. You do not possess genuine
wonder; you possess magnified anxiety!”
The Young Woman (the
new self): (Whispering in broken
confession.) “You are right. Sometimes I feel that I am merely pretending
to be proud. I try to convince myself that youth is better, and that femininity
is more useful, attractive, and full of its own special passion. But when I
remember you, I see that what I call passion is contaminated by wild whims,
desire, and temporary instinct. The mask falls away, and I see that I am
possessed by instinct rather than in control of it. Now I understand the difference
between your radiant, luminous wonder and my desires, which have matured only
to lead, control, and possess me.”
The young woman began to cry. Until then, she had resisted
and concealed her face so the child would not see her tears, but they now fell
like dew upon flowers in the early morning. “I live in constant conflict.
Something irreplaceable has died inside me—something like a belief in
nothingness, the belief you held, little child, when you were once an infant.
The child who loved life for its own sake has disappeared—not for its
pleasures, and not for the sake of some empty promise waiting beyond it.”
“You have died, little child,” the young woman said, “and
the small mischief and naïve fears inside you have died beneath a wooden bed.
The fields of imagination you planted in the darkness of a room, among the
stories told by grandmothers, grandfathers, aunts, and uncles, have withered.
In their place has grown a dry logic that no longer knows how to dream.”
Time passed, and the scene changed.
The Middle-Aged Self: The Death of Rebellion
Scene: A sudden
quiet replaces the young woman’s clamor—her feminine impulses, dreams, husband,
children, and all that once surged through her mind and feelings. A grey mist
slowly coils around her body. When she turns, she sees a woman in her late
forties, approaching fifty, examining the white strands invading the blackness
of her hair. The silver cuts through it like a sharp sword, advancing day by
day. She gasps as she notices the first fine lines of wrinkles, which seem to
stare back at her defiantly. Youth’s blaze has begun to die down.
Middle Age (the newly
born self): (Her voice is heavy with
exhaustion, wisdom, and disappointment.) “Stand before me, young woman who
has gone missing. Show respect for my years and dignity. I know you are
searching among the white hairs that have begun to overrun your head for the
young woman you once were—the one whose noisy departure woke you, and whom you
tried in vain to recover. I watched you laughably trying to hide me, to erase
my features by coloring those white strands. I told you not to bother: the grey
always returns. Its whiteness has cut into your black hair, and my wrinkles
have invaded the youthful face you once had. Your skin has begun to sag and
contract until that face has faded away. You will not find her; she will never
return. Have you forgotten that we buried her together, in a deep grave within
you, and covered her with a thick layer of earth? Stand now in respect for my
age and dignity. She is nothing now. No matter how loudly you call, she will
not answer. Your loud voice can no longer deceive anyone. You have exhausted
the fuel of the stars that once lit your chest. I am here now, and my name is
the Cold Harvest. Where is the rebellious fire you once brandished? Where is
your certainty that you would change the world?”
The Young Woman (the
dead self): (Her voice gradually
breaks, though she tries to sound strong.) “So you are the new chain—the
middle-aged woman nearing fifty. I knew you would come sooner or later. I tried
to escape you, or at least postpone your arrival by a few years, but you
insisted on occupying my body like a burdensome guest I never wanted. Yet
biology imposed you upon me. Now you stand before me to remind me that we
buried the young woman in a deep grave, covered her with thick earth, and
watched her vanish within me. You slaughtered her with your sharp sword,
invaded her, and made her bleed through the white hair and wrinkles now
spreading across my face. How cruel you are! You stole my youth, stabbed it
with a poisoned dagger.”
The middle-aged woman laughed with authority. “And you were
the shield that crushed the machine! I killed you to bring you stability,
dignity, and maturity—to free you from youthful recklessness, false dreams, and
empty promises. I am the composed, dignified self born into reality, your new
reality. Biology brought me into your body to build you a house and draw a
clear map for life. You now reap what I sowed through struggle, but you reap it
coldly, without fervor. At least I believed in loss and victory. You believed
in the necessity of things and in the revolution of desires and instincts that
imprisoned you. I have come into your body to free you from them, so that you
may learn that maturity is more suitable, clearer, more useful, wiser, and more
experienced than the heedlessness of youth.”
“You may think I fear the lost young woman’s power, but I do
not. I have realized that all that youthful vigor was beautiful nonsense. I
lost you in order to gain silence. I can now see clearly the illusions we were
programmed to believe, but I am tired of fighting them. You stripped me of
rebellion and gave me the exhausting burden of acceptance. I now understand
that we are merely cells moving toward nothingness, and that all those rules
and religions were empty pretexts designed to keep slaves working in peace. Yet
I no longer have the energy to shout this aloud. The energy I once had died
with the young woman within me. In its place remains the energy of stillness,
mature contemplation, patience, and a deeper, more discerning view of the life
we share now.”
The Young Woman:
“So you are a wise but helpless woman! You can see the godless truth clearly,
yet you still walk with the herd because you have grown tired of running. The
death of passion is the real death. You have become your own ghost, caring
about small things while neglecting what matters. Do you not miss the day when
I was ready to fight the whole world for an idea?”
The Middle-Aged
Woman: “I do not miss a pointless struggle. I am now a remnant, gathering
the broken mirror shards you left behind. I sleep to escape this painful
philosophical awareness. Thank you, young woman: you died so that I could live
what remains of my life, a life that is no more than a lie, in silence and
disappointment.”
Stage Four: A Dialogue Between Middle Age and Old Age
The death of strength, the survival of
wisdom
Middle Age (the dead
self): “I have left you wisdom, old woman—the one thing that does not die
quickly. Strength, by contrast, is foam that washes away. I harvested for you,
hoping to lengthen this brief remaining moment, but I failed. All I harvested
was the bitter philosophical awareness you carry now: everything was absurd.”
The woman, her hair entirely white and her face deeply
furrowed, turned and saw before her a bent back, a cane held in trembling
hands, and exhausted, dim eyes wandering across a mirror cracked by time.
The Old Woman:
“Absurdity? Then you too have died without meaning? Have you left me to face
the end alone with this knowledge? Yet I see what you cannot. I watch the cells
dying; I see nothingness smiling at me from afar. Everything that passed was
merely a temporal illusion, a space between one thing and another. You did not
die; you turned into waiting.”
How much time had passed? How many years? She could barely
remember anything clearly. She struggled to recall even her daily needs;
sometimes she forgot her grandchildren’s names, ages, occupations, or what they
had studied—or were studying. She gazed into the mirror again, like a fish
searching for a river that had dried long ago.
All she saw was a mass of cotton-white hair and broken
teeth—or the few stumps that remained—leaving empty gaps inside a sagging
mouth. Her dry lips were etched with years of bitterness; wrinkles covered her
face, the skin around her eyes, and her neck, which now hung like curtains
dropped over what had once been a vibrant, youthful body. In the mirror she saw
only an extremely old woman, wrapped in wrinkles, her hair white as cotton. A
cane supported her hunched back. Her legs trembled beneath her and barely held
her upright; she dragged her feet with great effort, while her breath lay heavy
and still, like stagnant water.
Where were the bright, ringing laughs of youth? Where were
the legs that once raced the wind? Where was the firm, graceful female body?
None of it remained. Where was even the woman in her forties? She had been
younger than the missing young woman, but stronger, more active, and less
helpless. Even she had departed, leaving no trace of such overwhelming white
hair. This time, however, the old woman had learned her lesson. She did not
search for the vanished self; she let her go quietly. She no longer had the
strength to search, scream, call, or even whisper. Whispering itself had become
a difficult ritual, something she could manage only when necessary. Her
strength had failed, and she knew she must accept reality. She had neither the
means nor the energy to seek the lost selves—the former beings that had been
buried and died inside her one after another. They had become ghosts with no
existence. What was the point of looking for something that was no longer
there? She understood that everything was a handful of wind.
Stage Five: Farewell and Nothingness
A Dialogue Between the Old Woman and
Death
Scene: The old
woman lies in her chair, while the infant lies before her in a small wooden
bed, still crying as though mourning her—or sensing the burden of the
inheritance that will eventually disfigure its future laughter. The old woman’s
eyes remain open. She struggles through her dying breaths. The room is empty
except for the infant’s cries and the defiant movement of its little feet. She
sees a dense shadow approaching slowly.
Death (the dense
shadow): (A voice without echo,
whispering into the ear of consciousness.) “The time has come to fulfill
the promise, last heir. There is no longer an infant, a child, a young woman,
or even a middle-aged woman. They all died and were buried inside you. Nothing
remains but a crumbling ruin, like an old abandoned house coated in dust, its
walls rusted, cracked, and furrowed. I have come to take this empty vessel, all
the selves and lost identities you once contained, old woman. You and I now
face each other, and you have no choice but to face me.
“I know you humans: you do not value your dead until I
arrive, and you remember them only after they have gone. How many dear people
lie forgotten in your rusted memories? While alive, they were ignored,
humiliated, and treated as though they mattered to no one. Then I arrive as
their eternal guest, and suddenly you remember them. You rush to say farewell,
weep, fill your eyes with tears, and write a thousand elegies—as though they
had always occupied your thoughts, as though you had been beside them every moment
before they died. Only after I arrive do you mourn them in the most beautiful
and tender words. Only then do you see what you never saw, understand what you
never understood, praise them, remember them, immortalize them, and value what
they said and did while they were alive. Only after they have vanished do you
judge them right and forget what you once said and did to them. You humans
awaken your sleeping consciences only when I arrive—when it is too late. Then
you invent eternity out of nothingness.
“You are all beneath my hammer. When I choose, I strike down
the one I have selected and send them where there is no return; I seize their
final breath until they pass into nothing. And now I am all that remains for
you, frail old woman. I will bury the last crumbling fragment of your former
selves. They have all died, and now it is your turn to join them where there is
nothing to return to. Congratulations: you will receive nothingness, the void,
the emptiness. Extinction is all there is. You would be deluded to think
otherwise. For all your years, they deceived you and traded on your dreams,
selling you a bargain called life after death. I will not deceive you as those
who programmed you did. I believe in science and reason. I am frank and honest;
I know no patchwork excuses, fraud, or religious delusions and rituals, all of
which you practiced throughout your life.
“Consciousness ends; perception stops; the brain ceases to
work; then the heart, the pump of blood, stops too. That is all. Perhaps you
will join nature’s cycle and become a tree, an edible fruit, or drinking water.
Perhaps your decaying bones and dust will become part of the natural cycle on
this wretched planet, which I assure you will one day end. But this will not
begin the imaginary myth of an afterlife with which you were deceived, poor old
woman who practiced rituals day and night out of fear and greed for imaginary
rewards. Something deeper and more mature may endure: life on other
planets—Mars, Saturn, Jupiter—and other beings. The human species will probably
become extinct and be replaced by beings more advanced, longer-lived, and
technologically more developed. Who knows? Perhaps they will live forever,
never fall ill or decay; perhaps they will not defecate or urinate, perhaps
they will not have sex as you do, perhaps they will not bleed, perhaps they
will not even be made of flesh and blood. What matters is that life and the
universe will continue, enduring forever.”
Death asked, “Are you afraid of this nothingness you used to
philosophize about, and of the words of charlatan sheikhs and religious men who
spun tales around it for so long, dressing you in the patched garment of
illusion and falsehood that you wore all your life?”
The Old Woman: (Her voice is barely audible, yet firm with
understanding.) “You are not the end, Death. You are merely the final
confirmation of reason. I now realize that I spent my entire life believing a
great lie, wasting my years on religious illusions and the trick of one god. I
believe you now because you are logical and trust science. I am no longer
afraid of the nothingness I once feared, nor of the afterlife they invented,
taught me, and programmed me to believe in since childhood. I realize now that
I have carried nothingness with me since my first cry. Only now do I feel
relief—relief from the burden and toil of life. I am happy because I will have
nothingness; at last, eternal silence, far from life’s illusions and programmed
clamor. Atheism was my instinct, my honest nature before it was contaminated or
taught away; and nothingness is my destiny. Both release me from divine
illusion.”
Death: “Have you
left anything worthy of remaining in the emptiness in which you lived? Did you
enjoy pleasure, accomplish a noble goal, or complete the great mission you
dreamed of when you were young? What is your final harvest?”
The Old Woman: (She closes her eyes for a moment.) “My
harvest is a comforting regret. I regret every minute in which I was not
myself, every moment spent in illusion and deceptive hope. Yet I am happy now,
because at last I have grasped the hard truth: there is no creator, no
punishment, and no reward after you. My final message is this: live as though
there were no god, and die as though there were no resurrection. Now… take me.”
The Final Scene: A Dialogue Between the Old Woman and the Grave
The final encounter with absolute
nothingness
Scene: Complete
darkness. The remaining self begins to feel the cold of earth. A voice emerges
from the ground—from nothingness itself.
The Grave (the silent
voice of nothingness): (A rough voice
embodying the material and logical end.) “Welcome, old woman. There is no
light here, no reckoning, no angels. I am neither paradise nor fire. I am
simply soil that returns cells to their elements. Did you achieve immortality
through a message or a word, as you once dreamed, or have you realized that
everything will become dust?”
The Old Woman:
“How coldly logical you are! I understand now that the attempt to leave an
eternal message was itself an illusion. The last illusion nesting in other
people’s minds is that achievement equals immortality. But the only immortality
is the endurance of the atom. I lived as best I could; I loved and strayed; I
believed in reason and rejected the myths of every religion without exception.
I learned that there is no heaven, only atmosphere and space; that other life
may exist, and that nothingness means extinction. Now I possess nothing but an
exhausted body.”
The Grave: “Then
have all your former selves—the beings you passed through from infancy
onward—come to an end?”
The Old Woman, dead
in her grave: (Her smile fades; her
voice mingles with the dust of the end.) “No. Only now does the true
sequence begin: a scientific and logical one, without the deceit and fraud of
religions, and without the imaginary god invented by human beings to flee from
themselves and deceive themselves. They imagine they are more important than
other creatures, that they were made—or, as they claim, created—to live
forever. In their foolish arrogance, they invented another life and an
imaginary being, believing it would protect, judge, punish, or reward them
alone, unlike all other creatures. Yet if we looked at reality honestly, we
would find human beings among the basest, vilest, and most malicious of
creatures, the source of every corruption and ruin.”
The old woman’s body began to decompose. After the worms
consumed it, it would gradually become silent earth, returning as a plant, a
stone, or nothing at all. “My life was no more than a passing moment between
one thing and another. In the end, I did not die; the illusion simply stopped
beating. Farewell, earth… farewell, mortal existence.”
End of reflection
THE CRACK
“We live in an age that glorifies outward perfection and
mocks the mark left by a wound. But I say otherwise: the one who lacks
something may become its greatest giver, because loss has planted need deep
within them, and that need is a spring that never runs dry. Salvation does not
lie in sealing the cracks, but in letting light shine through them.”
So the wise man thought as he walked slowly, carrying on his
shoulders the two jars he habitually took back and forth every day. Despite his
advanced age, he kept walking for exercise; his years had brought him
experience and maturity. He carried one jar on his right shoulder and the other
on his left, listening with interest to the conversation between them.
A Symbolic Projection: The Two Jars
The intact jar attacked her sister with the arrogance of
stagnant pride.
The Intact Jar:
“You cracked vessel, symbol of deficiency in a world of completeness!
Everything goes smoothly for me. I am the perfect representation of what
society wants: quiet, obedient, full, and securely in my place. I cause no
disorder. You, by contrast, are nothing but a bleeding crack, losing what you
have at every step. You are proof of failure that produces nothing.”
The Cracked Jar: (Her voice is sorrowful, but carries a
defiant strength.) “You are complete only on the outside, my intact sister.
You are the model of a woman who accepted submission as her purpose and brought
children into a life they never chose. I see marriage as a heavy restraint, a
rock pressing on my chest, a cursed disease I could not endure even for a few
hours. Yes, I am cracked, but my crack is the price of rebelling against a
society that sees a woman as a vessel for obedience rather than a source of
existence!”
The Intact Jar:
“You are alone, rejected, unable to fit in. Your crack is a social and
psychological disability: you refuse the restraint that life requires. You
cannot hold the water of marriage or endure the bonds of partnership. You are
an outcast, refusing the natural path society mapped out for you. You are not
fit to be a vessel. Your crack shows that you cannot obey and will not accept
the system. Every step you take is a lost one; you lose something at every
turn. No wonder they consider you defective.”
The Cracked Jar:
“You describe a dead kind of perfection. You have produced nothing, confronted
nothing, and never had to carve your own path. Every pain I have suffered in my
education, every struggle for divorce and liberation—that is precisely what my
crack represents. It is not weakness. It is a force of will that compels me to
grow.”
The intact jar repeated her accusation: the cracked one was
a social failure, unable to hold the water of marriage or the bonds of
partnership, an outcast who refused society’s natural route. She was not fit to
serve as a vessel. Her crack proved her inability to obey and her rejection of
order. She moved through life as a loser, and no wonder others saw her as
incomplete.
The Cracked Jar: (Her voice blends pain, pride, and
awareness.) “You are complete only in a false outward sense, my intact
sister. You chose surrender and a hollow fullness over a free existence. I have
always been the unbearable individual. I refuse to see a man as a partner; I
see him as a heavy chain, a cursed plague whose presence I cannot endure for
hours on end. My crack is not failure—it is a declaration of sovereignty! It is
the price of rebelling against obedience, and the defeat of the idea that my
worth depends on the presence of another being. I have created a world of my
own, one in which I can do without everyone else, because, at my core, I accept
division only by myself.”
Yet the cracked jar knew that something inside her had been
shattered. At times she only pretended to be strong; at other times she truly
was. Still, a deep feeling of frustration and despair sometimes took hold of
her. Was she weak after all? Patriarchal society looked at her and saw nothing
more than a jar to be filled and emptied by the man. Because she was cracked,
they assumed she could not do her job. She, however, believed she was stronger
than all of them—stronger than the foolish patriarchal society that lost every
battle with life yet kept its head held high, boasting of its own cowardice and
laziness while marginalizing women and relegating them to second place.
One day despair overcame her and sorrow sank deep. She
wondered why the wise man insisted on carrying her every day when he knew she
was cracked. Whenever he returned home, she held no water for him to use; only
the intact jar delivered water. She sighed, bitterness mingling with a hidden
determination and stubborn resilience.
“My crack makes me unable to hold water—not even a single
drop. I am not fit to be a jar. Then why am I a jar at all?”
She felt that something within her distinguished her from
the intact vessel. There was a secret strength whispering that she would one
day do something great and meaningful. Despite her crack, she would endure; she
would not be the failure the intact jar believed her to be, a vessel unfit for
its intended purpose and useful for nothing. The voice echoed inside her,
ringing through the fissure and dropping leaves of strength, as though the
crack had made her more singular, more independent, and more distinctive than
anyone else.
The cracked jar resolved to trust the voice and hear its
echo: Your crack is the secret of your
greatness. Yet how? The voice kept repeating itself; the crack seemed to
groan along with it, whispering confidently: “Be the stronger one. Your crack
is proof of your uniqueness and your productivity! It produces; it plants; it
will harvest.”
Although she felt some confidence in this thought, anxiety,
confusion, and despair still possessed her. She asked the voice inside her,
“How can that be when I am cracked? I believe you, but what path will take me
there? And when will it happen?”
The voice answered with absolute silence—with emptiness and
stillness. Winds of ambition and curiosity stirred inside her. She decided to
ask the wise man, her question veiled in confusion, sorrow, bitterness, and a
carefully maintained composure.
“Why do you insist on carrying me back and forth every day,
wise man, when you know full well that I cannot carry even a drop of water? You
take me home daily, knowing that I have no water inside me and that only the
intact jar can pour any out.”
The wise man smiled tenderly. He stroked the crack with
gentle fingers and profound care, as though he held a precious treasure.
“I hold on to you because I do not see the crack in you. I
see what lies beyond it. I am certain that without your crack you would not
have become the heroine. You are a magnificent spirit, singular in your very
being, rare in what you have achieved.”
He placed the jar on his shoulder and carried her to a lush
garden, full of the colors of creativity and beauty. The garden pulsed with
woven novels, literary poems, and a fertility no eye had ever witnessed.
Then the wise man turned toward the side where the intact
jar was carried. There he found a desolate yellow wasteland, like a desert of
the soul. The intact jar produced only stagnation and acceptance; not a single
drop of creativity had fallen from her to water the world.
The Wise Man: “My
cracked jar, I see what lies beyond your fissure. Your crack was the source of
light and creativity. You watered the world with your pain; your deficiency
made you surpass others. Instead of seeing you as incomplete, they tremble
before the completeness of your crack, and feel deficient beside the strength
of your will, which turned a wound into a message.
“You are a whole number that refused division except by
itself. You turned inward around your crack and wound, not to weep over your
fate, surrender, or fear anyone, but to develop yourself. You turned your
fissure into flowing water, a spring that watered this barren land with your
creativity until it blossomed into a lush garden. You gasped in amazement when
you saw its beauty. Without your singular crack, the fruit could never have
ripened.
“Your crack, my beloved and precious jar, makes those who
think themselves complete feel deficient beside you. Your crack has slaughtered
their complacency, cutting them apart like a sharp blade and scattering their
pieces beneath your feet. It is the price of your brilliance and creativity.
The very thing they mistook for a flaw made them look like dwarfs beside you.
Your crack raised you and diminished them; it honored you and humiliated them.
It quenched your thirst and left them thirsty. It lit your way and darkened
their nights. Your crack cracked them open.
“Your crack was a powerful giant they could not stand
against. It became a symbol of defiance and defeated them all. Every day it
roared in their faces, terrifying them and declaring that they were nothing but
drums—noise on the outside, emptiness within—producing only boredom and yawns.
Your crack became the whip that made them shrink before you. It created your
grandeur and awe; it became the bridge by which you crossed above them all.
Your precious crack frightened them and lifted you. It was your fortress of
safety. It turned their alleged completeness into a visible, shameful defect,
while the deficiency they imagined in you became a perfection plain even to the
blind.”
The wise man turned again to the side where the intact jar
was carried and found it barren, yellow, and desolate. She had never let even a
drop fall. She was merely a container that carried water and poured it into
another container, producing neither fruit nor flowers. She could never create
what the cracked jar had made: a lush garden, a paradise alive with creativity
and art. On her side of the path she had produced only a wasteland. One day she
would leave the world without a trace, unlike the cracked jar. She had brought
nothing new; she was simply a vessel whose supposed completeness was deficiency
itself—an empty completeness, a disabled completeness, incapable of anything
creative or beautiful. She had always believed herself whole, until she saw the
flourishing garden watered by her sister’s crack and learned the truth.
Philosophical Conclusion: The Declaration of the “Whole Number One”
The cracked jar wept with joy and understanding. She
realized that the creativity with which she watered the world—writing,
literature, and art—was a garden grown from her inner fissure.
The crack had created a wholeness that false perfection
could never provide. It was a bridge that carried her to the summit while
others remained stagnant in their imagined completeness.
“So I now proclaim my philosophy: like Dostoevsky, I love
humanity in the abstract, but I hate human beings as individuals and cannot
bear the bonds of partnership.
“I am the whole number one in the equation of existence. I
accept division only by myself. I am an individual; I do not love even numbers
or partnership. I find my world in solitude. This is no mere mathematical
equation but a profound philosophical declaration: the crack gave birth to
life, not death. Those who appear sound and complete on the outside are dead
within; they are deficient and have nothing with which to nourish the world.”
The Cracked Jar:
“You see solitude as denial, while I see it as wholeness and a dissolving into
the self.”
The cracked jar stood proud and confident. “Now I know that
my intuition was right. The voice that whispered of my strength now rings with
unmatched confidence. My crack gave me the will to continue my education to the
very end and drove me into the fierce struggle for divorce and freedom. These
obstacles are not signs of deficiency; they are the stakes to which I tie my
creativity. You confronted nothing, so you produced nothing.”
She understood the truth: her crack was not a defect, but
her true, indivisible identity. With dignity she declared:
“I now proclaim my uniqueness. I am the whole number in the
equation; I accept division only by myself, and I will not share my being with
another number. This is not selfishness, but the wholeness of a self born to
live within its own world. Like Dostoevsky, I love humanity as an abstract
idea, but I hate human beings as individuals and reject every chain that
obstructs my individuality. I now water the world with my flowering crack,
while those who falsely call themselves complete remain dead within, diminished
before the abundance of my light.”
End of reflection
I AM THE WHOLE NUMBER ONE
I am the whole number one in the equation of existence. I
accept division only by myself. I am an individual; I do not care for even
numbers or partnership. I find my world in solitude. This is not merely a
mathematical equation, but a profound philosophical statement: the crack gave
birth to life, not death. Those who appear sound and complete on the outside
are, in truth, dead within—deficient, unable to nourish anything.
“I see solitude as a refusal,” someone says, “but I see it
as wholeness and a dissolving into the self.”
Now I know my intuition was right. The voice that once
whispered of my strength rings out with confidence and vigor. My crack gave me
the will to pursue my education to the last moment and drove me into the fierce
struggle for divorce and freedom. These obstacles are not signs of deficiency;
they are the stakes from which I hang my creativity. You have faced nothing,
and so you have produced nothing.
I now proclaim my individuality: I am the whole number one
in the equation. I accept division only by myself and will not share my being
with another number. This is not selfishness, but the wholeness of a self born
to do without the world. Like Dostoevsky, I love humanity as an abstract
concept, but I hate human beings as individuals and reject every bond that
constrains my singularity. I water the world with my flowering crack, while
those who falsely call themselves complete remain dead within, impoverished
before the abundance of my light.
End of reflection
THE SPIRAL DECEPTION
She hurried into her room as though she were a commander who
had made a decisive choice, or an adventurer compelled to take a necessary
risk. She seized her wallet, sat on the sofa, and drew out a banknote worth a
substantial amount—not a fortune, perhaps, but enough to buy some of the things
she needed. It could at least pay for the antidepressant she had been taking
for months, or cover a visit to the dentist she regularly saw to check the
teeth that had begun to erode, with decay eating into some of her molars.
All of this passed before her like a film while she held the
banknote and stared at it in silence, a silence roaring with questions and a
torrent of conflicting thoughts, coated in the rust of aversion and disgust.
She squeezed the note between her hands until it crumpled like the face of a
centenarian, then pressed it harder still. She remained on the sofa, staring at
it with flat, indifferent eyes, like the faded eyes of a dilapidated house
coated in dust.
Boredom mingled with revulsion. The drums inside her mind
began to pound faster and faster, their rhythm racing toward the wrinkled
banknote lying on the floor. In a flash, before she could hesitate, she picked
it up. Her decision was made. With anger and disgust, she tore the note into
pieces, turning it into a paper corpse. The scent of banknotes seemed to rise
from the shredded remains and fill the room until she felt she was choking on
it.
“An illusion, an illusion! Nothing but an illusion. It is
the illusion of control that a colored piece of paper grants you. Money is not
a virtue to pursue; it is a narcissistic curse, a great deception. It makes you
look rich while stealing your honor, conscience, and morals from you day after
day. And despite my deep hatred of it, I am afraid of losing it. This is a
coercive relationship: we often need what we hate, because we are forced to.”
The Spiral of Money: The Hand-to-Hand Game
Looking at the fragments of the dead banknote, she addressed
it directly.
“You are a glittering deception, and in the end you are
nothing. Look at yourself. You used to spin and slide from hand to hand,
promising every hand that held you its wishes fulfilled and its hopes achieved.
Whoever possessed you believed they held the most powerful weapon, a shield to
protect them, an Aladdin’s lamp that would grant every desire and fulfill every
ambition. Why not? They believed they carried a deadly weapon in their grasp,
moving toward their goal with bitterness on their lips and sorrow in their
eyes—yet they remained subject to your will. They could reach what they wanted
only through you, you wretched banknote.
“And now you are a torn corpse at my feet. Rot. Go to hell!
You slip slyly from one hand and roll into another, passing from hand to hand.
Every hand, every finger that clutches you believes it holds an Aladdin’s lamp.
With the lightness of a professional thief, you offer empty promises. You
persuade the hand that has acquired you that you have granted its wishes and
helped it achieve what it sought. Then, with your familiar, malicious
slipperiness, you slide into another hand and offer the same promise, creating
the same illusion. You pass like a cloud into yet another hand, then circle
back to the very same hand, repeating the same performance and making the same
promises. In the end, nothing—nothing but suggestion. You merely make people
feel that they have gained what they wanted, achieved something through you,
obtained what they needed or dreamed of. But it is suggestion, nothing more.
You yourself keep slipping around the same circle, and they continue living the
same illusion.
“It is a closed loop. The fingers and hands that clutch you
imagine they are moving forward. The beginning is not zero but the bank or
vault where the note is first printed. An employee receives it as ‘profit,’
then hands it to a merchant, who passes it to someone else in a shopping
basket. Eventually, the very same note—or one like it—returns to the bank to be
distributed again. Everyone sells; everyone buys; everyone pays for the
illusion of profit with a piece of their soul. A contest takes from the
competitor to pay the judge; the winner then gives away what they won to pursue
another goal, and the money returns to the business that feeds it back into the
larger circle. The circle keeps spinning and making everyone dizzy without
creating anything real. It produces only slaves who lose their consciences to
the lure of wealth.”
The shredded banknote smiled at her—a sly yellow smile
tinted with the color of control. With arrogant pride, it replied:
“But you need me. You cannot deny it. Without me, you cannot
live; you cannot eat or drink or find the medicine you need to stay alive. You
cannot go to the dentist or the market. You cannot buy a dress or a blanket to
protect you from the bitter cold. Without me, you cannot own an air conditioner
or even a fan to save you from the burning heat. In short, without me you will
be lost, perhaps destroyed. However fiercely you resist, in the end you will
submit to my power.”
The Silent Dialogue: Money and Nothingness
She stared at the note with hatred.
“That is precisely why I hate you. I do not deny that,
unfortunately, I need you. But often we need things we do not love—even things
we detest—and we submit to their control. Life has forced me to live under the
lash of your power. You whip me with my need for food, drink, medicine, and
doctors. Life has placed me beneath your lashes and made you the executioner
who broke my back beneath this unbearable burden. I chose you, but I never
loved you. There is a vast distance between what we willingly choose and what
we are forced to need.
“You forced me to clutch you between my fingers until you
felt like a knife, your sharp blade tearing into my hands and every finger’s
artery. I have always hated you; I truly despise you. You took my freedom,
bound me, and subjected me to your iron chains. Oh, how those chains have cut
my wrists! Why should I keep them when they have robbed me of liberty? Now the
time has come for revenge. What a despicable power you are, you piece of
paper!”
The Spiral Circle: The Game of Illusion
“Money is no treasure; it is an exhausting circular trick.
Look at it: the circle turns and spins without creating anything real. It is an
endless hand-to-hand game. An employee takes a salary from the bank and gives
it to a merchant; the merchant uses it to pay obligations, and the bank takes
it back again, only to redistribute it among the laboring slaves in every
field.”
The torn banknote confronted her with the arrogance of a
flirtatious woman.
“And even the freedom you flaunt—I can subdue it. By
controlling the whole world, I can bring freedom under my sway and buy it with
my influence. I can reduce it to nothing, make it my captive, and force it to
kneel before my power, my glitter, and my irresistible seductions.”
She met its gaze with defiance and pride, like a storm
blazing with fire.
“Be quiet, you contemptible thing! Do not put the word freedom into your filthy mouth, which
knows only degradation, domination, and the subjugation of the weak. Freedom is
too sublime to be bought by your supposed seduction. You may be able to control
everything else, but not freedom. It is your sworn enemy, greater and loftier
than you, like a towering structure your kind can never reach. Before it, you
are a rusted matchstick beside a skyscraper, an ant beneath the feet of a giant
elephant. What do you know of freedom? It alone has escaped your chains. It
alone has understood what it means to do without you, abandoned you with
contempt, turned its back, and trampled you beneath its feet. Do not dare utter
its pure name with your filthy tongue.
“If all the treasures of the earth you carry were laid
before a hungry lion or a wolf waiting for prey, would they care? Would you
stir even a single thing within them? No. In nature’s eyes, you are
nothing—mere matter worth less than the grandeur of moonlight or the courage of
a mother defending her child. Yet humans, in their foolishness, kill, steal,
and sell their honor for you!”
The Torn Banknote (a
narcissistic illusion): “I am the game, human beings. I am neither virtue
nor evil; I am the symbolic chain you chose for me. You are the ones who wish
to kill, and I provide the justification. You are the ones who wish to stray,
and I provide the cover. You invented my circle to enjoy a temporary illusion
of possession, then you blame me! There are no slaves in nature—except you, my
slaves.”
Climax: The Madness of Doing Without, and Sacred Art
She spoke with pride blended with sorrow and bitterness.
“I lived beneath the burden of this noble contempt for
money, yet I forced myself to need it in a world that recognizes nothing but
currency. Then I remembered the principle of doing without, practiced by
Tolstoy when he possessed everything, while I practice it possessing nothing. I
want to prove that doing without is an inward decision, not a material
condition.
“I know that, in other people’s eyes, tearing you apart and
turning you into a lifeless corpse was an act of madness. From the world’s
perspective, that is what it was. But for me it was renunciation and
revelation—indeed, a sacred art that grants my self another life, one I can
live truthfully, not bound and humiliated by you. I have declared to the
universe that I can do without your game and refuse to let a currency I hate
control me. I humiliated you and tore you to pieces until you became a dead body,
useless for anything, and I did it at the very moment I needed you most.”
The banknote’s remnants looked at her in anger and
astonishment.
“Why did you do this, you fool? How stupid you are! You
could have gained so much by keeping me. What would you have lost by holding on
to me? On the contrary, you could have bought what you needed and achieved at
least some of your goals. But through your foolishness, you have made me
worthless and useless.”
Her eyes flashed with triumph; her voice stood tall with
pride.
“See? See how trivial you are! A simple act of tearing made
you nothing. Your place is in the rubbish; even rubbish can be recycled, but
you cannot. That is why you are sad, enraged, and weeping: I have made you feel
your insignificance and worthlessness. A tiny crack in you, a drop of ink, a
spot of tea or coffee, or hot water burning your sensitive skin can wrinkle you
and make you defective. Then no one wants you; everyone refuses to take you in
their hands, even though those hands once dreamed of possessing you as the most
precious thing in existence. With the slightest crack, wrinkle, or stain, they
kick you aside and recoil from you, though they once longed to hold you. How
trivial you are! You are only a wretched banknote, cheap and worthless; you cannot
tolerate the smallest flaw because one little defect strips you of all your
value.
“Do you know why? Because you have no value or meaning to
begin with. And now, shamelessly, you want to compare yourself with the breeze
of freedom, with its greatness and immortality? Never! How far the earth is
from the Pleiades. Freedom is the act of letting go of your cursed chain. No
crack can break it; no knife or scissors can tear it; no hand, no weapons, no
force can weaken it. It does not bend or grow faint. It is a shining star in
the vast universe, beyond the reach of hands. It is hope’s beam, enduring life,
true strength—not the deceptive strength with which you delude those who
possess you.
“You say I cannot live without you. I answer that even if I
owned all the wealth in the world, I would eventually die like every biological
creature. Sooner or later, death is inevitable—at least as far as we know. What
would you do for me then? You might buy the finest and most expensive food, but
you could not buy the appetite or desire to eat it. You might buy the world’s
most expensive bed, but you could not buy sleep or peace of mind. You can buy
medicine, but you cannot buy life. Even if medicine prolongs life for a while,
in the end I will perish and go to nothingness. If this end is unavoidable,
then, if death is inevitable, it is shameful to live as a coward. That is why I
was brave enough to commit what you call madness: I tore you apart with my own
nails at the very moment I needed you most, to free myself from your cursed
chain.”
Conclusion: A Declaration of Inner Wealth
The happiest person is the one who has nothing to lose—the
one who, when struck in the eye, can say, “It was already ruined.” I now live
rich in renunciation, not in possessions.
“I see sorrow plainly behind the smile of Elon Musk, the
richest man in the world. You could not give him even a drop of true happiness;
you offered him only a faint smile, painted over with hidden sadness. You are
disabled and helpless, so do not be arrogant or tyrannical. You are a human
invention, and one day people will probably replace you with something else.
You are a slippery, illusory mirage, and that is all you are.
“I know that unhappiness inhabits the hearts of those who
possess treasures and fear losing them. I choose to be ‘poor and rich’ at once:
poor in the silly, sticky circle of your game, rich in the principle of
renunciation that cannot be bought. You are a great deception, but tearing you
apart is an art understood only by those who have looked absurdity in the eye
with certainty.
“I declare openly that you, money, are nothing but a
narcissistic illusion, giving slaves a false sense of control over their
masters. We live in an age in which human beings have made a colored piece of
paper into a god, worshipped through meanness, theft, and the trading of honor.
You tempt people into becoming scoundrels and deviants, though in truth you are
nothing beside nature’s innocence.
“All the evil committed in your name—from a woman selling
her body under material temptation to a person killing for a fortune—is done in
the name of this hollow entity. If Elon Musk’s or Bill Gates’s money were
placed before a hungry wolf or a predatory lion, it would not move the animal
at all. Nature recognizes no such illusion, but humans have chosen to be slaves
who despise their chains and yet fear losing them. We are forced into a
relationship of hatred and servitude.
“If you tell me that tearing you into tatters was madness, I
will tell you in return: this madness is my final certainty—that life is a
short lease, that nothingness is the final sum, and that nothingness has no
need for a single banknote.”
End of reflection
THE EMPTY HALF
Within a vast glass space, the world was divided into two
halves. One half was illuminated—the full half. The other was empty, like a
desert stripped even of its sand by a violent storm and a rushing flood, left
without the slightest trace of anything except a void so transparent it was
almost invisible.
The Glass’s Paradox
The two halves stood facing each other inside a clear glass
vessel divided into two worlds. The full half gleamed with the sparkle of naïve
hope, while the empty half remained quiet, silent, and transparent.
The Full Half (loudly, with shallow confidence): “Look
at me, you emptiness! I am certainty, tangible matter, proof to people that
life contains goodness. Without me, the world would be nothingness. I am the
source of ambition, the hope naïve people chase. You, empty half, are merely a
symbol of failure and bitter pessimism. Why does no one wish to plunge into
you?”
The Empty Half (with deep philosophical calm, like a
teacher who understands the truth, and an air of proud inquiry): “Are you
so certain of your status? Have you ever wondered why your optimism and your
high expectations have disappointed so many people? Have you wondered why,
after your false promises and rosy dreams—dreams that appear lovely while
concealing a bleak darkness—some optimists have taken their own lives, or why
those who were once optimistic have collapsed? Do you not understand that you
disappointed and shattered them? You turned their inner worlds into wastelands,
until some threw themselves from high balconies or took lethal substances. All
of this came from your deception and malice, you evasive fraud.
“You killed them. You made them run with all their strength,
believing the road you laid before them was broad, smooth, paved, and open.
Then, in the blink of an eye, they crashed into a hard, rotten, merciless wall
and fell, broken. I, by contrast, do not need anyone to plunge into me. I am
the truth that makes no promise only to betray it. I do not deceive them as you
do. I am honesty and clarity. I do not let them down.
“You, the full half, wave a nonexistent treasure before the
foolish. You lift their expectations into the open sky, only to crush them
cruelly when they discover that your substance is no more than a temporary
mirage. You are a decorated deception; I am an honest void from the beginning,
and I will never betray anyone.”
A Debate on Indifference and Suffering: The Strength of Pessimism
The Full Half:
“You preach lazy indifference! You tell people to sit still and be pessimistic,
while I call them to move and work. You hide your emptiness, weakness, and
darkness behind these words, imagining they will protect you from my power, my
glittering optimism, and my rosy dreams that bring happiness and stir people’s
energy. You are poor and can give nothing. What can nothingness and emptiness
offer? You are a barren desert inhabited only by rats and snakes on its bleak
sands, with wolves howling into solitude. You hide behind weakness and hang
imaginary curtains around yourself, claiming to be honest and harmless. But you
possess nothing: you are nonexistence, sadness, gloom, blackness, and darkness.
I am splendor, a dazzling glimmer, and bright colors announcing the coming
spring.”
The Philosophical Argument: A Defense of Nothingness
The Empty Half (with a sage’s confident gaze and deep
intellectual composure): “You have just confessed, without realizing it, to
your own naïve, childish arrogance and shallow, foolish enthusiasm. You speak
with idiotic pride, like a glamorous fashion model in expensive clothes,
walking along an elegant carpet toward her final steps—straight toward a deep
pit hidden beneath roses the same color as the carpet.
“You slyly mix poison with honey, indifferent to the
consequences. People fall while chasing your false pink mask. You yourself have
admitted that you offer only rosy dreams and illusions. Truth glitters before
them like a flash of light, calling out from afar and tempting them with
bright, shining colors. They run breathlessly after this radiance, unaware that
it conceals darkness, evil, and deadly poison wrapped in silver foil inside a
luxurious candy. You are poison in honey, darkness inside what looks like
brilliant light—or so it appears, and so you deceive the innocent and naïve who
drown in your sea of optimism and rosy dreams.
“My honesty warns them from the start. You do not understand
that clarity is the wealth of the poor, and transparency is the riches of
nothingness, despite what you believe. I do not deceive or promise lies as you
do. I show them the snakes playing in my land; I do not hide them beneath
flowers and roses until they suddenly bite without warning. I show them the
scorpion’s venom from the beginning. I show them the barren desert, with all
its snakes, scorpions, gloom, and pessimism—but it can also inspire them.
“I inspire work and effort. This is not poverty, but
striving. My message is simple: here is reality as it is. Be careful, take
precautions, and arm yourselves for the struggle so that you may win—or at
least remain safe instead of living with regret. I compel them to strive rather
than surrender to the deceptive complacency you encourage. You anesthetize
them; I warn them. I make them work to turn my barren desert into a flourishing
garden, heavy with blossoms and fruit, and I remind them to take every necessary
precaution for their safety.
“I walk beside them quietly, step by step, with care and
patience, whispering that danger may be approaching. They become more alert and
cautious, stronger, more perceptive, and more insightful. I am a warning, not
an anesthetic. I call them to work, think, and struggle, and not to be dazzled
by glitter that leads only to regret and frustration. As long as they walk
beside me, they are protected from disappointment and from running breathlessly
after a mirage; they are protected from deception. They walk with me alert and
watchful, rather than drugged by false hope. I urge them to leave their comfort
zone, think, pay attention, strive, and take care.
“What does that have to do with your deception, false hopes,
rosy dreams, and lies that leave behind only the dead, the suicidal, the
murdered, the guilty, and the criminal? It is all because of you, you malicious
deceiver! You tempt them into a trap, then stand laughing at their ruin with a
miserable sense of triumph. What a fraud you are!”
The Full Half (with arrogance wrapped in insolence and
contempt): “Do not deny it, my poor friend—or rather, my sworn enemy. The
promises you call deceptive, false, dreamy, and illusory have benefited many
people, including those you describe as dead, guilty, or destroyed. My
so-called false promises have stirred the energy of countless people. Their
rosy color gave them positive energy, made them dream and plan, and then act.
Many achieved what you call my false promises: some amassed fortunes, enjoyed
great success, and rose to the highest ranks and positions. They did so because
they ran after me and my promises, which soothed and motivated them to achieve
what they wanted.”
The Empty Half (with a sorrowful, sarcastic question):
“And what about the others? What if you compared those who followed you and
escaped drowning in their hopes and ambitions with those who drowned in your
illusions, whose efforts shattered against your merciless rock of deception?
You crushed their heads and bodies to pieces; some fell dead or were driven
mad. Those you call victims of my gloom are your victims—the survivors of your
deception who sought refuge in my sober sadness to protect themselves from your
treachery.
“The gloom you accuse me of creating was made by your own
hands—hands stained with the blood of the dreams and aims you slaughtered
without mercy or pity. They found no refuge except in my warm, tender embrace.
I had warned them from the beginning, but they ignored my call and ran,
gasping, after your glittering deception. When you betrayed and slaughtered
them, they returned to me in remorse and defeat, like a disobedient child who
comes weeping into a mother’s arms and begs forgiveness.
“Those who escaped you were rescued only by chance, fate,
risk, deception, fraud, corruption, or wrongdoing—not because of you. They are
a drop in an ocean of people you betrayed, deceived, and left dead or broken.
You planted their despair, and I arrived afterward to harvest it, trying to
remove its bitterness and replace it with truth to ease their pain.
“So what do you boast of, foolish, arrogant deceiver? I
treated the wounds you inflicted. I call people to work, not merely to hope.
From the suffering and grief you planted, I help produce art, beauty, and
creativity. They came running to me with the thorns of your false roses
embedded in them, and in my honest embrace they turned their pain into art. I
made their sorrow a bridge of tears leading them to the highest peaks of
artistic achievement. I turned suffering into art and beauty without cosmetic
cover-ups or patches like yours.
“I taught them to see light emerging from the darkness of
sadness and pessimism. I am beautiful, noble sorrow; I am a symbol of
creativity, a flood from which they draw their art and invention until they
reach the summit. Here I am, with no alteration, distortion, deception, or
poison hidden in honey. I am here to heal, not to trick. I teach that
suffering—the suffering you caused—can be a source of inspiration and beauty,
and that sorrow and the cracks of life can inspire progress. I do not exchange
or falsify the truth; I treat the wound. I am the physician who removes pain
and turns the wound into a bridge to success, one people can cross calmly,
confidently, and with dignity. I make wholeness from deficiency and permanence
from the crack. I am the healing physician who sees beauty in sorrow and finds
a motive and light in suffering, drawing thought from the depths without
deceptive glitter or reckless illusion.
“So tell me, which of us is better? You are the murderous
deceiver, the criminal; I am the healing physician. You are evil concealed
behind a beautiful, imaginary mask, while I am the visible good that honestly
points to the place of pain and presses upon the wound, forcing its owner out
of comfort and laziness into effort, so that they may discover happiness inside
their scars and creativity inside their pain.
“I am renunciation and indifference. My lack of desperate
pursuit is what draws goals toward me. Your impulsiveness, recklessness, and
deceptive seduction drive people away from their goals, erecting a terrifying
barrier between them and what they seek, then throwing them into an abyss of
ruin until they die slowly or take their own lives after the violent shocks
delivered by your dazzling promises. In the end, they find only a mirage. What
are you after all this? Evil, contempt, shame, and disgrace wrapped in a
glossy, ornate covering, prettified and patched up with illusion and lies. You
should have been ashamed from the beginning instead of boasting of your
recklessness, fraud, and vileness. My crack is the driving force; your
glittering promises are the deep abyss, the deadly trap.
“I call for intelligence and calm reason. I follow the
principle of the teacher Cioran: the only way to obtain everything is to do
without everything. I am the indifferent one who attracts goals; I do not chase
them like a naïve optimist. When I work to fill myself, I do it quietly and
patiently, in the spirit of Taoism, because I expect no reward from you,
arrogant full half. I am the zero point that cannot be disappointed.”
The Full Half (with anxiety, collapse, and defeat in its
voice): “But I hide pain and failure beneath a layer of hope to keep life
going! I did not mean to deceive or do harm. I only cover the shame of pain and
beautify suffering with bright colors so the exhausted soul can find comfort
and rest. I do not lie; I only adorn things. I make them beautiful.”
The Empty Half (embodying the beauty of suffering): “I
do the opposite. I strip pain bare! I reveal suffering as a weapon of awakening
and a motive for self-discovery. I tell you, full half, that digging deep into
the garment of suffering is where hidden pleasure and true happiness can be
found. I am the true teacher who forces the heart to descend into its depths,
purify the soul, and remove the false mask from supposed beauty. You are a
naïve child. You do more than lie or decorate; you kill and poison. You are a
deadly poison, a perfectly engineered deception at its most malicious. You feed
people false hopes stuffed with every kind of illusion and poison, leading them
toward failure and darkness. I, by contrast, am the logical pessimist who sees
sorrow as a fine thread leading toward light.”
A Cry of Choice
The Empty Half:
“I call for conscious choice! I invite people to look at me and come into this
emptiness, which will not deceive them. Let them learn that failure, pain, and
suffering can become driving forces; that deficiency can be a singular kind of
wholeness. I am the empty half, yet I am more truthful and intelligent, and
creativity springs from my silent depths.”
The Empty Half (in a calm, philosophically devastating
voice): “You are not evidence, but a carefully crafted deception, naïve
full half. You wave a treasure before people so they chase a mirage, only to
discover on arrival that you are worth nothing. I do not call for passivity; I
call for intelligent movement. I practice renunciation so that the goal may run
toward me, instead of my panting pursuit ensuring that I am disappointed. You
make life frantic and anxious; I make it contemplative and wise.”
The Full Half (stammering, visibly tense): “But I give
people hope for tomorrow!”
The Empty Half (crushing shallow logic): “What kind of
hope? Yours is the cruelest form of disappointment! You raise expectations to
the heavens, and when they fall, the fracture is twice as severe. Unlike you, I
am honest. I am empty and promise no one anything. I am the zero point that
teaches people to build themselves, slowly and patiently, with reason—not with
the breathless excitement of a naïve child. Your optimism is a deficiency of
awareness.”
The Full Half (broken, finally aware of the weakness of
its argument): “Ah, empty half… your evidence is irrefutable. I thought I
was victorious because I was full, but now I see that my fullness was weakness,
illusion, and disappointment that led to final defeat. I feel powerless before
your truth and awareness. I surrender, in reason, to the wisdom of nothingness
and the beauty of conscious pessimism.”
The Empty Half (final
word): “Look at me! I am the empty half, yet I am more truthful, more
intelligent, and more certain. I invite you to enter this emptiness, which will
not deceive you, and learn that deficiency is the beginning of a truly
individual wholeness. I am victorious because I never ran after an illusion.”
End of reflection
SECRETS OF THE NIGHT
In a corner of the city, where wet pavements met the dim
glow of streetlights, lived a woman named Layla. She was strong and rebellious,
drawn to art, literature, music, and the profound mysteries of the night.
Layla (gazing at the star-studded sky):
“Night, you are my only friend. In you I find shelter from the storms of the
outside world. No one understands me as you do.”
The Night (whispering gently): “Why do you refuse
love, Layla? Why do you keep your distance from men and choose solitude?”
Layla (smiling sadly): “I have tried love,
only to discover the pain it carries within it. Every experience was a harsh
lesson, and every man held a secret that wounded me. I refuse to become a
victim again.”
The Night: “But
love is not always pain. It can be a refuge; it can be inspiration. Do you not
see how the stars dance in my sky?”
Layla (contemplating the stars): “I see them,
but I prefer to dance alone. In my dance I find freedom; in my words I find my
voice. I do not need a man to complete me. I am complete as I am. I find myself
in solitude. My solitude completes me; it does not diminish me. It opens worlds
to me, not just one world. I find life and wholeness within myself, in the
emptiness of my solitude—a space that I see and feel as the summit of fullness.
“True deficiency and emptiness lie among these masked
people, behind their false human faces. I find loneliness only amid human
noise, hypocrisy, empty courtesies, and their ridiculous displays. I become a
feather tossed about by the wind, battered by people’s words and hateful
voices, heavy upon my weary self. People exhaust me with their stupidity, lies,
pursuit of self-interest, deceit, and hypocrisy. I find myself only in your
warm embrace, night. I take refuge in you and confide what lies in my heart. As
I contemplate your silent stillness, I find honesty in it. I contemplate the
silence and emptiness wrapped in your dark cloak, where your silver stars
shine.
“I know how to live through your precious hours. I wish they
would never end beneath the scorching sun of day. I see honesty in your
stillness, silence, and darkness. Under the moonlight, your quiet corners seem
to whisper to me of the people who filled the streets, roads, and alleys
throughout the day with the noise of their lies and deceit.
“There was the vendor bellowing as he chased money, raising
prices and cheating with his scales to profit. There was the young man meeting
a girl and walking with her through crowded streets, only to lure her behind
trees away from the noise, deceive her into giving him a kiss—or more—and leave
her running after him in alarm. There were murderers and criminals, thieves and
prowlers, filling the streets all day with lies, sweat, filth, crimes,
falsehood, deceit, and cruelty. Innocent animals wandered among them, confused
and unable to find help. All they found was a man carrying a stick to whip a
mule or donkey into moving faster as he wished. They saw a cat or dog searching
through rubbish for a scrap of spoiled food, while human beings passed without
the slightest concern. Some even threw stones at the animals or beat a cat to
drive it away from a shop, home, or possession. What scoundrels they are!
“But you, tender night, seem to record all of this in your
nocturnal memory and store it in your treasury of calm and stillness, colored
by the silver light of your moon and studded with your sparkling stars. You
reveal people’s secrets to me, expose them, and seem to tell them: ‘Silence! Be
quiet, humans. Go to sleep; perhaps you will never wake. I have come to silence
you and quiet the evil with which you polluted the earth all day. You ruined
it. Now be quiet and sleep. Leave the streets and roads; retreat to your beds.
The voice now belongs to me; words give way to my stillness and calm.’
“This is how you whisper to me each night, dear night.
Truths hidden and dissolved beneath sunlight and human clamor are revealed. You
bring them forth honestly through your stillness. Your silence is the greatest
witness against them. Their fingerprints appear clearly on roads, walls,
houses, balconies, and streets in your calm and quiet. Through silence, you
reveal what they committed all day, keeping it as a secret between us beneath
your moon’s light and the sparkle of your stars. You tell me what they did by
day. You are my friend, the hand that comforts my shoulder and wraps around my
chest with tenderness. I find myself only in your stillness, escaping the human
noise that engulfs me during daylight. I lose myself in that din until your
gentle hands come to lift me onto a carpet of moonlight and carry me far away
from people and their daytime clamor. Their day is theirs, not mine. I belong
to the night; I am a nocturnal creature. You and my solitude are the two
friends I have chosen, and I need no others.”
The Night: “But
solitude is heavy, Layla. Do you know the danger hidden in an artist’s
isolation? You might lose yourself in the shadows of your own thoughts.”
Layla: “I know.
But do not worry about me, tender night. I know very well how to enjoy you and
my solitude in your depths. The night has its own people, and I am one of
them—one who knows how to enjoy its hours and fill every minute with pleasure.
I know how to return to myself within the folds of your stillness, and how to
flee toward you from the reality of the day. I know how to live you as I wish,
not as foolish humans want me to.
“You know, night, that I do not fall asleep quickly, and I
do not want to lose a single minute wandering through your quiet hours, your
sweet music, your magnificent symphonies. Sometimes I think, sometimes
remember, sometimes smile and contemplate, and sometimes I feel pain.
“With you, night, I see a separate world, a reality unlike
the harsh, coarse indifference of daytime. By day I see a cruel man holding a
thick stick and whipping people to make them work—by any means, whether through
theft, cheating, deceit, or murder. But with you, I find a different world,
inhabited by another kind of being: more transparent, more delicate, more
harmonious, like a musical scale. I am one of your inhabitants, night. I wish
you would never disappear, that the sun of your day would never rise, and that
your hours would stretch on and on.
“Your roads are long, and your paths cover the earth.
Everything in you surges fiercely: feelings, tears, and sincere confessions far
removed from the noise and crowds of day. Everything in you is silent yet
eloquent, honest and transparent, whispering with a freedom rarely found by
daylight. Night, my friend, you reveal feelings as they truly are. That is why
I chose only you as my friend and was content with you instead of all
humanity—especially that detestable creature called a male, or a man, if he deserves
the name.
“I chose myself. I chose to be me. I write my poems, paint
my pictures, and play the strings of my heart. The darker it gets, the more
inspiration I find. In you, night, I discover refuge, where I can become
whoever I wish.”
The Night (deeply moved, in a melancholy musical
tone): “You reflect a unique beauty, but remember: in every darkness there
is light. Yet I wonder each night, as we whisper to each other: are you afraid
to open your heart to a man again?”
Layla (confident and defiant, gazing deeply into
the night): “I fear nothing. I have simply chosen to live in my own world.
I do not want to be bound by other people’s emotions. I want freedom—to live my
moments as I please. I chose this willingly, with my full consent, and I
believe my choice is wise and brings me happiness.”
The Night (whispering with admiration and
encouragement): “Your freedom lies in your strength. But remember that life
is not only solitude. A day may come when you feel longing, when you need a
partner with whom to share these secrets.”
Layla smiled gently, her sweetness dissolving on her lips
like a piece of rock candy.
“Perhaps. But until that day, I will keep dancing with you,
night. I will write you my secrets and sing you my dreams. You are my refuge
and my friend. Within you, dormant consciences awaken; your pillows bear
witness to everything I tried to conceal of my distress throughout the day.
With you I break free from daylight’s chains, soaring like a bird in your sky,
like a butterfly fluttering through your silver fields.
“With you, night, a new passion is born every time—a mad
confession, a decision made firmly during the day that soon collapses and loses
its power with the last ray of daylight, when your footsteps begin knocking at
the earth to announce your captivating arrival.
“With you, night, I know the difference between one hour and
the next, and the flavor of each. I know when the call to prayer begins, when
it is time to listen to and enjoy the voice of Fairuz, and when to end those
melodies with a musical piece that breaks your rare, beautiful silence and adds
to its beauty—a piece that surpasses all words. Only with you do I know wonder,
because I belong to your world. With you I become intoxicated by words. Beneath
your folds I flirt with the moon, and the stars flirt with me every night. With
you I live a complete life that lacks nothing, a life in which I have done
without everything and everyone, without ever leaving my balcony where your
moon appears, or my bed shining with your silver stars.
“Only with you, night, do I understand that the happy ones
are the people of the night. The night alone.”
At that moment, the night wrapped Layla in its warm embrace,
as if whispering that a world of success, glory, and goals still lay before
her. It assured her she would reach what she sought, that she differed from
everyone around her, and that she wrote for tomorrow and for the future. She
was its favorite shining, passionate star, a star beyond the ordinary, and
every secret she carried contained a kind of immortality.
End of reflection
STUBBORN DENIAL
Scene One: The Sermon
Sheikh Hassan stood in the mosque pulpit, his voice
thundering beneath the golden dome, his eyes flashing with fire.
Hassan (quoting a prophetic saying): “...The
eyes commit adultery, and the adultery of the eyes is looking!”
He continued, raising his voice: “Woman is nakedness; her
hair is temptation, and her body is a fire that burns away faith! Remember the
Prophet’s words—peace be upon him: ‘I have left no temptation more harmful to
men than women.’”
The congregation nodded in agreement. Some murmured, “Amen.”
But among the last rows sat Yara, his former colleague. She was wrapped in a
black cloak as dark as a moonless night, and a matching scarf covered her head.
Yet golden strands had slipped free and flowed over her shoulders like a
waterfall, escaping the restraint of a hair clip. Outwardly, she had been
compelled to wear the hijab to enter the mosque. Beneath the cloak she wore a
blue dress that brushed her smooth, pale knees; the uncovered curves of her
legs seemed to glow with a white light bright enough to illuminate the women’s
section.
The women listening to Sheikh Hassan’s sermon from the
screened gallery turned toward her. Yara covered her bare legs and gathered her
golden hair after receiving their fiery looks, full of resentment, envy, and
disgust at her presence.
Yara did not wear the hijab by choice. She had put it on
merely to gain entry to the mosque, even though she did not pray and had little
trust in this religion—or in religions generally. She was skeptical of them
all. To her, religious rituals were crumbling, outdated myths that held back
progress and civilization. She saw people living by the fantasy of an imaginary
being with supernatural powers who supposedly controlled everything. What a
display of dependency and naïve thought!
Yet she dared not say any of this openly. She lived in a
merciless society that might kill her or imprison her; at the very least, it
would ostracize her and shower her with looks of revulsion and loathing. Though
she was confident she was right and believed she had scientific and logical
evidence to support her view, she kept quiet. She was educated, well-read, and
a researcher at a scientific research center. Inwardly, she often mocked her
colleagues: how could people work in scientific research and still believe
religion’s nonsense and myths, unsupported by any logical or scientific
evidence? These were nothing more than tales and claims without proof.
But she limited herself to silence. A passing glance, a
momentary look of surprise or anger, was the most she dared offer—an expression
that seemed to deny the reality before her, as though the beliefs her
colleagues defended with such passion were merely fantasies, driven by the fear
of the unknown into which they had been raised, by greed for reward, and by
fear of punishment. It was the carrot-and-stick principle. Yet all the while,
believers remained certain and stubborn, as though they had died dozens of
times and seen conclusive evidence proving their convictions.
Sometimes Yara sympathized with them; at other times she
feared them. She was forced to flatter and pretend in order to protect her own
life, the safety of her family, and those she loved. She did not even dare tell
her relatives about her doubts and thoughts.
Then Hassan’s voice rang in her ears. She watched him from
the women’s gallery, preaching with fervor. She had come only to see him—or
perhaps to challenge him, to wield the power of her femininity and announce
that she could bring him to his knees in a contest he was bound to lose.
Perhaps she had come to mock his words, which he delivered with the confidence
of someone who had conducted hundreds of scientific studies and conclusive
experiments to prove them.
He had been her colleague at work. His office had stood
beside hers before she resigned for good, choosing to devote herself to
research online. Yara disliked the constraints of employment and preferred
independent work. She had resigned after enduring insinuations, gossip, and
spiteful hints from her male and female colleagues.
Now she stared at Hassan in silent defiance. Her beautiful,
sleepy eyes—framed by long, naturally captivating lashes—sparked with
amusement, mockery, indifference, and a sense of victory. The sermon ended, as
did the prayer she had performed more out of playacting than conviction; she
had never believed in it. Men and women streamed out of the mosque into the
street.
Then his eyes met hers for an instant. Hassan felt as though
lightning had pierced his chest. His blood boiled, his heart shook, and the
earth seemed to tremble beneath his feet.
He swallowed, his voice trembling slightly, and remembered
his own sermon: “Let them wear loose, flowing clothes and be modest, for
modesty is part of faith...” Yet he continued to look at her despite
everything, denying to himself what he felt. “No... I do not love. I am not
infatuated. Love is desire, and desire is the fire of Hell.”
Yara’s voice echoed in his memory—her doubts about religion,
her opinions, and her rejection of what he held to be true. She had confided
these things to him alone. Though he rejected her ideas, he had kept her secret
out of fear for her safety. Whenever he remembered her laughter and the sweet
ring of her voice, which struck his heart before it reached his ears like a
golden anklet flashing with the brightness of a sharp blade, his feelings
collapsed. A tightening band seemed to close around his throat, silencing him
until words dried up. He found himself defending her and covering for her.
She knew she could bring him under the spell of her beauty
and femininity. But he always fled, while she laughed; he ran from her like a
terrified mouse. He was the dignified sheikh, a man who would never yield or
soften before such a temptation. He was fortified by religion against this
wicked devil. How could he ever surrender? Impossible!
Yet Yara enjoyed tormenting him. She knew that he was hers
in his heart, and that he concealed his weakness behind the mask of religion.
Inside, he was a lovesick, devoted, passionate man. Outwardly, he denied and
resisted; inwardly, he remained in endless torment.
He continued to ask himself, trembling with fear: Did he
desire her? Then came what seemed to him the obvious answer: No. He neither
loved nor desired her. It was impossible that he could be in love. He had a
wife and children. His wife was virtuous and religious. How could he love a
woman who rejected everything about religion that he regarded as truth and
certainty? Had he gone mad? Was he possessed by a cursed, rebellious devil?
Scene Two: The Dream
That night, Hassan slept restlessly on his white pillow.
In his dream, the question surrounded him, clouded and
unresolved: Could it be that I love you?
If loving you is only a possibility, why has my blood surged so wildly? His
throat seemed to close around the answer; even his mouth fell silent and died
as he dreamed. “My heart has fled behind your veil,” he murmured, “to kiss
whatever it can reach of you.” He kept asking himself: Do I love you?
A version of the poet Nizar Qabbani appeared, taking
Hassan’s own form and speaking in his lyrical voice:
“I do not love, I do not fall in love… I do not desire
you—no, no...”
Hassan was astonished at himself. What a master he was at
running away and denying! He had perfected the art of fleeing from her and
displaying rejection before other people. Yet inside, every glance, every step,
every whisper, every change in her voice made him paint beautiful pictures of
her behind closed doors.
Sometimes he confessed his love to himself in secret, as
thieves confess their crimes before judges. Then, suddenly, he would deny it,
reject it, curse it, and insult it—as though he were an accused man behind
bars, condemned to death after admitting his terrible crime, only to deny it at
the last moment and pretend that he had been joking or insane, or that torture
had forced him to make a false confession. This was how Sheikh Hassan always
persuaded himself.
He would wake, seek refuge in God from the accursed devil,
perform ablution, and pray, asking God to forgive his sins and accept his
repentance for this invasion of his heart and every cell of his body—a force
that seemed to overpower him without mercy or restraint.
But the dream returned again and again, like a malignant
illness that refused to leave him. Thoughts pursued him through sleep. Yara
appeared before him like a fresh flower or a dewdrop resting on a rose in the
early morning.
He saw her sitting at her old desk at work, laughing and
whispering, her eyes gleaming like two stars. He approached her and touched a
strand of her golden hair.
Hassan in the dream
(with Nizar Qabbani’s voice of love):
“If you drown in the river, my beloved, I will drown with
you.
If you burn in love, my beloved, I will burn with you.”
At night the pillow wept beneath his head, and stars floated
above his bed. He whispered to her, “If a million people love you, I am one of
them. If only one person loves you, know that it must be me. If no one loves
you, know that I am dead.
“When I met you, I made peace with the world. I forgave
those who had been absent and excused everyone who had left. Since I met you,
nothing seems worth anger—except one thing: your absence.”
In his dream, that was how Hassan spoke to Yara from the
moment she first resigned from work.
Then he saw himself suddenly grow cold and move away from
her, whispering in a trembling voice: “I am afraid of the things that touch my
heart, so I always run away from them—and from you. You are a sin, a curse of
the devil wrapped in the beautiful white garment of an angel. You are my only
naked truth, the cause of my ruin and God’s anger against me. I must run from
you. I will run, surely.”
Then he took a step toward her, sorrowful and confused. “Why
did you resign? Why did you leave work? How could you be so cruel as to throw
me into the depths of ruin? I told myself it was an ordinary separation. Its
effect would fade with time—or perhaps it would never fade. It was only a
normal parting. But the question that keeps tormenting me, however often I try
to expel it from my mind, is this: how did you manage to extinguish me when I
was always the one who lit your way?”
Scene Three: A Conversation with the Pillow
Hassan laid his head on the pillow again, brushing it with
his fingertips as though touching Yara’s soft cheek.
The Pillow (in a calm, mocking feminine voice):
“Why are you sweating, Hassan? Is it because of your fiery sermon, or your
feverish dream?”
Hassan (muttering): “Be quiet. You are only a
piece of cloth. Do not try to deceive me or bring me under your spell. I am a
believer, a pious and devout man of religion. I do not love or desire.
Impossible, impossible.”
The Pillow (confidently, with a blend of sarcasm and
defiance): “I may be a piece of cloth, but I am padded with your whispered
words and your loud, passionate dreams. True, I am cloth, but I am also soaked
with the tears you shed until they wet my stuffing. I am an eyewitness to what
you confess about her in your sleep. I feel your heart pounding wildly when you
imagine her. I hear your nocturnal whispers: ‘Yara...’ Do you not ask God to
protect you from the temptation of women? Why, then, do you secretly ask her to
tempt you?”
Hassan: “I do not
love her! She is an unbeliever. She does not wear the hijab, mocks my religion,
and attacks what I hold sacred.”
The Pillow: “No,
a thousand times no. You are the one who is lying, deceiving, and evading, just
as she does.”
Hassan replied with manufactured arrogance and weary
defiance: “The devil is whispering to me. It is her devil.”
The Pillow: “No,
my friend. It is your heart—the heart you chose to turn into stone, only to
discover that it is glass, shattered by her name. Remember the day she
resigned? You stood at the office door for five whole minutes, staring at her
empty desk. Then the fragrance she had left behind reached you, and you felt as
though you were in a temporary paradise.”
Hassan: “My heart
is a traitor.”
The Pillow: “I am
a witness. You are a traitor to yourself.”
The pillow seemed to quote Nizar Qabbani:
“Tell the one who pretends to be pious,
who performs devotion and chastity,
and fills the world with shouts against love—
tell him: come, let us share the great lie,
for you love women as I do.”
Hassan, his voice broken, asked his heart, “Do you know
her?”
His heart laughed at him. He could not understand why it
behaved this way or why it would not answer. It simply kept laughing, as though
mocking him.
The Pillow: “And
what do you tell yourself at night, when you are alone with me and with her
image, which never leaves your eyelids?”
For a moment the pillow fell silent, then Hassan whispered,
“If they knew, they would stone me with words before they threw stones.”
The Pillow: “Will
you keep whipping yourself? Will you keep denying that you are human before you
are a sheikh? Look into yourself as you look at the congregation from the
pulpit. What do you see?”
After a long silence, Hassan replied: “I see conflict. A man
who is harsh with himself to please his Lord, while his heart disobeys Him.”
The pillow spoke again:
“Love is nothing but a confession
that one woman can bring down a kingdom of men
and turn history into a blank page.”
Hassan sighed and pleaded, his breath burning: “If only she
were a believer... if only she wore the hijab...”
The Pillow (mockingly): “Do you love her hijab, or
do you love her? If she removed it, would she stop being Yara? Remember her
eyes when she challenged you, as though she were reading your thoughts from an
open book. Were those not the moments that made you love her? Her difference,
not her similarity?”
He fell silent. The clock showed three in the morning.
Hassan (barely audible): “I adore her.”
He said it at last, and a chain inside his chest broke.
The Pillow (with proud certainty): “At last, you
have confessed.”
Hassan: “But it
will remain a secret. A secret between you and me, between me and the night,
between me and God, who knows everything.”
The Pillow: “Do
you think denial can hide it? Have you not read in your own books: ‘Whether you
conceal your speech or declare it, He knows what lies within the hearts’? He
knows. He knows that you persist in denial.”
Scene Four: Morning
The call to dawn prayer sounded. Hassan rose, performed
ablution, and prayed. But today his prayer was different. As he prostrated, he
whispered:
“God... I know this love is forbidden. But Your knowledge of
me is greater than my denial. Forgive me—or punish me—but do not let my heart
split in two.”
He put on his white robe and turban and looked into the
mirror. He saw a man carrying a secret no one knew, a secret named Yara.
He went out to the mosque, where worshippers greeted him
respectfully: “Peace be upon you, our sheikh.”
“And upon you be peace,” Hassan replied.
Yet he knew that, since the previous night, a part of him
was no longer entirely their sheikh. Some part of him admitted, if only in
secret, that a woman he considered an unbeliever had taught him a harsh lesson
in love and passion—one he would never have learned throughout his life,
perhaps not even by its end.
In his bedroom, a small patch on the white pillow, left by
the tears he had shed that night, testified that even the hardest hearts could
melt when confronted with their own truth. As he rested on the pillow, the
witness to his heart, he kept asking it desperately whether he loved her. His
heart laughed, and his chest tightened around the secret. He continued to plead
and ask.
His heart answered with sincere longing: “You worship her
instead of the God before whom you kneel. Why do you resist, deny, and conceal
it?”
Still, he would stand in the pulpit and warn against looking
at women.
And at night, he would remember a gaze that had blossomed in
the eyes of a woman who did not cover her hair.
“I will remain here, on the edge of the chair,
waiting for a letter from you,
or a glance,
or an excuse—
anything that might serve as a beginning.”
End of reflection
OIL AND WATER
A conversation takes place inside a transparent glass.
In a tall crystal glass stand oil and water. The oil is
above, golden and thick, shining in the light like a contemplative mind. The
water rests below, clear and simple, moving calmly like a believing heart.
Oil (in a soft voice, trying to rise): “Why
do you refuse to mix with me? Are we not together in this glass? Are we not
partners in life?”
Water (calmly and confidently): “Indeed, we
share the same vessel, but we do not mix. That is the first truth you must
understand.”
A Clash Between Reason and Myth
Water: “But I am
the foundation of life. It is written, ‘We made from water every living
thing.’”
Oil (mocking, confident, and defiant): “That
is your first logical fallacy: overgeneralization. Some organisms can live
without liquid water and rely on moisture in their food. Science says that most
living things depend on water, not all of them. You love exaggeration because
you want to feel important.”
Water (rippling uneasily): “But I offer
comfort. When a person is thirsty, I am their refuge. When a believer performs
ablution, I make them pure.”
Oil (proudly): “And I offer light. When the
lamps of science shine, darkness disappears. You, by contrast, prefer people to
remain in the darkness of faith so they will not see the gaps and flaws in your
stories.”
Myths Under the Microscope
Water (astonished): “These are divine
miracles, not mere stories. You belittle them and deliberately try to diminish
their value. I carry the tales of prophets, the miracles of gods, and the
promises of paradise!”
Oil: “Stories
borrowed from the myths of Babylon and Sumer. Let me remind you what your
beliefs are without their embellishments and patchwork explanations:
- The flood story appears in the Epic of Gilgamesh a thousand years before the Torah.
- The creation of Adam from clay resembles an ancient Egyptian myth.
- The idea of seven heavens echoes a Babylonian conception of cosmic layers.
“You have nothing original of your own. You are merely a
distorted transmitter. You openly contradict science, so blatantly that even a
blind person could almost see it. Your problem, dear water, is that you boast
of proving something for which you have no evidence—not even evidence of a
possibility. You speak of it with absolute certainty and threaten those who
deny it, as though you saw it with your own eyes, without the slightest effort
at research or learning.
“Could there be greater arrogance and stupidity? Your
beliefs have become so brazen that you curse, insult, threaten, and intimidate
anyone who refuses to believe or submit to them, without offering any attempt
at analysis or logical thought. You forbid inquiry and forbid investigation.
With insolent stupidity, you declare that whoever uses reason falls into
heresy, threatening them with eternal Hell and suffering, while possessing not
the smallest proof of the punishment you promise—or of the bliss and rewards
you offer in exchange for their humiliation, servitude, submission, and
abandonment of independent thought.
“Is that not shamelessness? You praise anyone who follows
your sacred texts without thinking, as though they were livestock, animals, or
donkeys wearing a bridle that must never kick or resist. How arrogant and
tyrannical you are!”
Water (angrily): “But my book says, ‘The sun
runs toward its resting place.’ That is a scientific miracle!”
Oil (mocking, astonished): “And that is your
second fallacy: selective interpretation. You choose one verse and interpret it
however you like, while ignoring another statement in the Qur’an: ‘The earth We
spread out’—language that suggests a flattened surface rather than a globe.
Science tells us that the Sun is relatively stable while Earth revolves around
it. You pick the cherry, as the saying goes: you take the sweet fruit and leave
the rest. That is another fallacy added to your long list of evasions, repairs,
and contradictions.”
The Battle of Reason
Water: “But many
scholars bring you and me together. They are famous people, whom you know even
if I need not name them. They are symbols of the very science and reason you
praise, yet they are believers who support scientific claims with verses from
sacred scriptures of all religions. They appear constantly on screens,
channels, and social media, surrounded by admirers, followers, and flatterers.”
Oil (with disgust): “That is the greatest
disaster of all. When something spreads and everyone agrees with it, be certain
that there may be a serious error—or even a grave danger—at its heart. That is
herd mentality. When quantity overwhelms quality, you are in danger. Matters
should be judged by quality, as I do, not by numbers, patchwork, and deception
as you do.
“The names foolish people in your environment boast about
are often tools for fraud, the ruler’s right-hand men. It is the filthy
partnership between religion and politics, the same old distraction
game—indeed, the game of illusion and deceit. These hypocrites are not
scientists; they are patchers. They are like someone trying to mix oil and
water by force. They cite the Big Bang to confirm ‘Be, and it is,’ while
ignoring that the theory itself says nothing about a creator; it describes a
physical process. This is the straw-man fallacy: they construct an imaginary
theory, then attack it.”
Water: “But the
theory itself says there must be a first cause! Perhaps it is energy, perhaps a
force science will discover as it pursues the truth and investigates facts.
Scientists may labor for hundreds of years to make sure their research is
rigorous and honest, rather than relying on myths and stories as you do.”
Water (with certainty): “That cause science
has not yet discovered is God.”
Oil (mocking): “The fallacy of the chain!
‘Droppings prove the camel; footprints prove the traveler’—what a naïve and
crooked way to reason. If I ask you, ‘Who created God?’ you say, ‘God is
eternal.’ Then why could the universe not be eternal? Why do you need a mythical
intermediary to explain what you do not understand?”
“And let me add something else you may deny, have forgotten,
or deliberately ignore.”
Water (tense and worried): “What are you
getting at?”
Oil (standing tall, with the pride of a crowned
king): “I am proud to say that I remove bacteria and dirt produced by
living bodies, especially the human body we are discussing. Human skin produces
bacteria, fungi, and sweat, leaving effects worse than bad odor alone. If they
remain on the body instead of being properly cleaned, they can cause skin and
environmental health problems. Oily substances—especially oils—absorb and
remove dirt from the skin and throughout the body. They work like magnets,
collecting grime deeply and leaving behind the pleasant fragrance of genuine
cleanliness, which science has demonstrated.
“You poor thing, however often people try to clean
themselves with you or with other non-oily, non-greasy tools, you will not
remove dirt as deeply as I do. You have no color and no smell, and you cannot
cleanse grime with my thoroughness. Because you have no scent, unpleasant odors
can remain on the body if people rely on you alone.
“The disaster is that naïve believers venerate you
excessively, preferring you over everything else. Even if bacteria remain on
the body and bad smells spread, they do not care: the ritual requires you, and
nothing else matters. A foolish believer can stand before his god, performing
rituals while the smell of dirt clings to him and bacteria burrow into his body
like woodworm. As long as he has used water, he believes all is well.
“What if a believer abandoned you completely and used only
me? I would leave him clean, free of clinging bacteria and dirt, pleasantly
scented—and he could do without you altogether.”
Water (interrupting angrily): “No! His prayers
and rites would not be accepted without me. I am the symbol of purity. Without
me, his worship is invalid. Even the finest oils in the world, no matter how
expensive, cannot help him if he does not use me. I symbolize purity, life, and
sanctification.”
Oil (sarcastically): “And that is the
calamity, the contradiction itself. How astonishing you believers are! For you,
it is nothing more than blind veneration and rituals performed without
awareness, science, or reason. If you seek cleanliness and care about purity,
why reject my ability to remove dirt deeply from your bodies and insist on
water, which merely leaves the dirt where it is? If purity is the goal, which
is cleaner: a believer who performs his rites clean, fragrant, and free of
bacteria and grime without water, or someone who soaks every part of the body
in water and then stands like a fool to pray while covered with bacteria, dirt,
and unpleasant smells—yet whose worship is supposedly accepted and correct? The
odor does not matter, nor do bacteria and grime. Only you matter, water. They
even refuse to perfume you. What stupidity!
“They are not seeking genuine cleanliness. They seek
imaginary commands and rituals, which they perform by sanctifying you alone.
They are merely foolish, humiliated slaves. It is the height of superficiality
and contradiction, the logic of illogic: purity without cleanliness.”
Rich and Poor
Water (with emotion): “I am accessible to
everyone. The poor drink me, and the needy perform ablution with me. You,
however, are available only to the wealthy and privileged.”
Oil: “And here
lies the point. You flourish where ignorance, poverty, and disease flourish. In
the poorest villages, temples and mosques are crowded. In the most
scientifically advanced, technologically developed, civilized, and wealthy
countries, religious institutions decline and shrink. You are merely
consolation for the poor in their poverty and for the ignorant in their
ignorance—the illusion that the needy will receive what they desire and more,
but not now, in another world. You are an easy-to-reach, deceptive mirage. You
are the opium of the people, as Marx said: you numb them to their real demands
by promising paradise.”
Water: “I give
them hope!”
Oil: “No. You
steal their real hope. You tell the worker to be patient because paradise
awaits, while ignoring the factory owner who exploits him. You tell the
oppressed woman that her suffering is God’s decree, ignoring the injustice of
laws made by people like you.”
The Problem of Many Gods
Water (proudly): “But I call for one God!”
Oil: “Which God?
The jealous God of the Jews who commands the killing of children? The incarnate
God of Christians who dies on the cross? The God of Muslims who promises
seventy-two houris to the martyr? Every religion depicts a different god, and
each claims to possess the truth. This is the ‘god application form’ game I
mentioned, as though God fills out a different form for every religion.
“He is like an international con artist, skilled at changing
disguises and colors so no one can uncover him. He hides completely, then
demands that people submit, plead, kneel, bow, and worship him in countless
ways that contradict one another. He threatens eternal woe and torment for
those who refuse, punishments they have never seen and cannot even imagine.
What tyranny! What narcissism and vileness! Then, after all this, he describes
himself as self-sufficient and praiseworthy. Where is this self-sufficiency
when he desperately needs people to grovel, submit, bow, kill, and be killed
for him?
“To my mind, this is the height of poverty, need, and want.
He is less mature than a spoiled child who needs to be pampered—or perhaps a
psychologically wounded being who suffered deficiency, humiliation, rejection,
and contempt, and now tries to compensate for that deprivation through humans.
He claims that he created them only to satisfy his sick desires and
narcissistic ego.
“And he did not stop there. Like a chameleon, he changed
shape and color within the minds of those who invented him, appearing
differently in every religion and ritual, contradicting each version with
another. Each group runs after its own belief, convinced it has the correct
version of this god, who surpasses even a flirtatious woman in his games of
concealment. It is as though he enjoys their confusion, differences, and
quarrels. How naïve the believers are!
“Then, according to their own claims, he creates a devil to
be his enemy and evil by definition, against that creature’s will, merely so he
can cast himself as good. He permits this devil to tempt people, roam the
earth, and strut about as he pleases, then claims to be angry with the devil
and those who follow him—as though it all happened against his will. Does he
not claim to be all-powerful and all-knowing? What contradiction! What
violation of logic and science—and what evil! Does this being deserve your
reverence, respect, or bowed head? Astonishing!”
Water: “Faith
gives the weary soul comfort and tranquility. Trusting in God means that He
manages one’s affairs and grants energy, relief, and hope. Faith gives inner
peace!”
Oil: “And it also
brings external war! How many wars have been waged in your name? How much blood
has been spilled under the slogan ‘God is greatest’? Science builds hospitals
while faith blesses soldiers, holy war, humiliation, submission, and the
abandonment of thought, inquiry, doubt, and questioning. You call for obedience
and surrender. I call for questions, logical analysis, scientific research,
hard work, and investigation. I doubt, therefore I exist. Doubt opens a gate to
imagination and inquiry; behind it lie truths waiting to be uncovered. It is a
gate that calls for research and science, the sharp edge that puts the dots
over the letters. Without me, the weapon of progress and civilization, the
universe cannot be set right, no matter how hard you try, or how hard your
beliefs and gods try.”
The Inevitable End
Water (in a despairing voice): “But people
need me.”
Oil: “To give
them hope in their miserable lives, while death lurks inside them at every
moment? Meaning does not come from fleeing into superstition. Human beings
build meaning themselves, through their choices, creativity, and love for one
another. Why do you think life needs heavenly promises in order to have value?”
Water: “Because
death is a separation...”
Oil: “Death is
final separation. There is no paradise or fire—only our atoms returning to the
universe from which they came. That makes life very precious, because it is a
single opportunity, not a trial run for paradise as you and your beliefs claim.
Life’s value lies in succeeding, developing oneself, learning to enjoy each
moment, and respecting honor, ethics, and law. These principles are for the
sake of ethics themselves, not false principles that make people wait for a
reward in exchange for obedience and fear of punishment.”
Final Scene: The Clear Separation
The oil remained on top and the water below. From a
distance, a viewer might think the glass contained one liquid. But anyone who
looked carefully could see the dividing line clearly: the golden color stood
wholly apart from the clear water—or what seemed clear to the naked eye. It was
the line between myth and truth, between illusion and reality.
Oil (confidently, from above): “This is our
fate. We may occupy the same vessel, but we do not mix. Science refuses to
become a foolish servant of faith, and truth refuses to submit to myth.”
Water (finally calming): “So... we will remain
separate forever?”
Oil: “Yes,
because mixing is impossible. Yet a day may come when all the water evaporates
and the oil remains pure—a day when people no longer need gods and are content
with their own humanity.”
Sunlight entered through the window and played across the
oil’s surface, forming tiny rainbows: pure physical beauty that needed no
mythical explanation. The glass remained a witness: some truths do not mix, no
matter how much people wish they would.
Conclusion: In
the end, the discerning observer understands that oil is above and water below.
Attempts to mix them are like trying to hold fire and ice in the same palm.
“Science does not need religion, but religion always needs
science to justify its existence. Humanity is divided into two kinds: those who
see the dividing line and accept it, and those who close their eyes and imagine
that things which can never combine have somehow become one.”
End of reflection
THE HONORABLE ONES
Scene: An Imaginary Day of Judgment
The sky was not golden, as believers had imagined, but grey,
like a philosopher’s mind. There was no throne and no river of wine—only an
immense hall, where God sat on a simple chair, reading from a transparent
tablet.
Believers from every religion stood in rows: Muslims in
white robes, Christians bearing crosses, Jews carrying their books. Off to one
side stood the atheists: scientists in laboratory coats, philosophers with
tired eyes, and ordinary people whose faces were calm.
The Dialogue: The Shock
God (his voice echoing like a sound inside a
cave): “I deliberately hid myself to test your faith, to prove that you
believed in the unseen.”
The Believers (speaking in one confident voice): “We
trusted You and Your existence with hearts filled with Your divine light! We
never needed any tangible, material evidence, or logical or scientific
arguments. We found You within our believing souls, in our hearts, prayers,
fasting, and worship. We felt Your mercy surrounding us in every circumstance.
We called to You and pleaded with You. Your presence in our hearts was the
greatest proof of Your existence. Faith alone was a blazing sun that
overwhelmed everything beneath it with its brightness. We needed nothing more
to see and hear You as though You stood before our very eyes. You are God; all
You need is a pure believing heart, filled with prayer, worship, bowing, and
prostration.”
God (with disgust): “No. You are liars and
hypocrites. You did not choose me, nor were you convinced of my existence for
the reasons you have just offered.”
The believers gasped. “What? You always called for faith!
How can You say this now?”
God: “I called
for honesty and inquiry. I am not what you imagined; otherwise, I would not
deserve to be God. I never wanted hearts that simply surrender and obey, you
cowards. Not for one day—not even one hour—did you love me. I watched you all
the time, deceiving me with honeyed words in your prayers and supplications,
trying to fool me with the crocodile tears you shed constantly.
“You fell in love with humiliation. Your wretched souls
found comfort in degradation. Fear was your only motive, the strongest force
that drove you to invoke me and plead with me. Not one day did you perform a
prayer or ritual in any of those accursed religions out of love for me or
conviction in me. You did it out of fear and greed. You miserable, humiliated
slaves feared the torment and threats of an eternal fire that would scorch your
faces and crush your skin forever. You coveted houris, food you had never
tasted, comfort and bliss without prayer or toil—an eternal paradise of eating
and drinking, a kingdom of righteousness, peace, and happiness. You longed for
rivers of honey, wine, and milk. The carrot lured you, and the stick drove you
to run: you fled the imagined blows and chased the treat dangling before your
eyes, like donkeys—or less than donkeys. The donkeys I created refuse to sink
to your level. They do not worship a god they cannot see and know nothing
about; they crave no paradise or houris, and fear no torment. In my eyes, they
are purer and higher than you.”
The believers’ mouths hung open in astonishment, as though
lightning had struck them.
“What a calamity! What are we hearing? Were You not the God
who deliberately concealed Himself? Were You not the One who said that faith
meant surrendering and obeying divine religion and sacred texts, without
questions, investigation, or inquiry? Were You not the One who said that the
heart was the seat of faith and thought, while the mind was only an instrument?
Did You not glorify blind faith? Did You not threaten us with fire and eternal
punishment if we did not believe in You, while insisting that we must not
demand to see You? Did You not say that we could not bear Your appearance and
that You had hidden Yourself to test our hearts and the strength of the faith
rooted in them? Did Your books not promise us green gardens, fruit, and
beautiful companions because we deserved them by never questioning You, since
You are not to be questioned about what You do? Did You not say, ‘Eat and drink
in happiness for what you used to do’? Have You changed Your principles after
deceiving us for all the years we spent imagining that we were pleasing You?
Now You call us cowards and greedy people. Did You not encourage us to become
exactly that? Was it not Your choice and command?”
God (interrupting, his face darkening): “I
never deceived you. You deceived yourselves. As for your foolish questions, I
have answered them. I told you that I deliberately concealed myself so I could
distinguish the genuine from the false, the coward from the brave, the person
of courage, dignity, and pride from the contemptible, servile soul that moves
only at the lash and is driven only by deferred desires and appetites promised
for the great Day.
“Those are your own traits. You imagined that I knew every
unseen thing, but I needed to see the results for myself. This was no trick; it
was the real test, the one that exposes the imitation and reveals the original,
the liar and the honest person. I needed to discover who would search, think,
and weigh matters consciously; who would respect science and logic, and spend
years searching for me—not because they wanted my paradise, food, or drink, nor
because they feared their skin and body might burn forever or be eaten by worms
in a lake of sulphur, but because they wanted to know me and communicate with
me.
“I wanted to be approached, discussed, questioned, and
loved—not my paradise or bliss. I hid to learn who truly wished to love me,
rather than those who feared me and approached me only to avoid my sting, as
though I were a poisonous scorpion or snake. You pleaded, trembled, and begged
for forgiveness, hoping to secure bliss and escape my supposed anger and
revenge. I hid to see who wanted the truth and genuine contact, rather than
paradise, wine, food, and drink, or protection from punishment.
“Do you call this love, believers? Is this what you
understood from my concealment through all these centuries and billions of
years? How limited your understanding, how excessive your greed and cowardice!
Answer honestly: did you ever search for me? Did any of you wonder why I was
absent? Did any of you exhaust your mind and brain in even the smallest attempt
to look for me, or to discover where the universe around you came from? Never.
You never tried. You closed your minds and thoughts until rust covered them and
they died. You buried them in the cemetery of faith, obedience, and submission,
without effort or hardship.
“You were born into families who followed a religion, so you
followed it without discussion. Then you convinced yourselves that you had
thought it through and decided that the religion inherited from your parents
must be correct. You argued and shouted at believers of other religions, who
were no less lazy, foolish, or naïve than you, claiming that you alone were
right and knew me as I truly was. Followers of each religion and sect fought
one another—not out of a genuine desire to find me, but out of fear of the
torment I supposedly threatened you with and greed for the bliss I supposedly
offered. I did not truly want these things from you. I wanted to expose you as
you were, to discover what lay inside your souls and intentions. The truth
poured out before me like a raging flood.
“Your tears came cascading the moment I threatened
punishment for those who worshipped me without seeing me, and the moment I told
you to worship me as though you could see me—even though you had never found me
before you. Was fear of me your greatest motive? Was greed for promised bliss
the force that stirred your ambitions?”
God (deeply moved, his voice filled with
sorrow): “You never wanted me for myself, not for a single day. You never
exerted yourselves to seek me. You feared me and coveted the riches of my
bliss, like someone trying to inherit a relative’s fortune: they flatter and
beg, show him excessive care, and draw close in the hope that he will leave
them as much of his property as possible. Sadly, in your eyes I was nothing but
a terrifying, narcissistic, wrathful, vengeful being who thought only of
himself and loved only those who grovelled and submitted to him, rewarding them
to satisfy his childish vanity.”
The Believers (stammering in confusion): “But You
encouraged us to do this. You tempted us with bliss and taught us fear. We
admit that we feared You, and we confess that we never tried to investigate
Your existence. We inherited religion and belief in You from our families, our
countries, and those around us. We feared changing what our fathers had
followed, lest Your curse pursue us and Your anger descend upon us, depriving
us of the pleasures You promised if we worshipped You as our parents had done.
“Even those among us who dared to change their inherited
religion did so because they believed they had found the true faith. They still
surrendered to You without proper questioning or inquiry. We heard of You in
more than a thousand forms and faces. We heard about Your punishment, wrath,
vengeance, and bliss in a thousand shapes in every religion, all contradicting
one another. We admit that we never sought You for Your own sake. We sought You
because You tempted us with rewards.”
God (angrily): “And now you admit it openly.
You never searched for me or made any effort. You spared your brains and
thoughts and searched only for the pleasures and desires you hoped I would
grant you. You sought yourselves and your own satisfaction. You sought protection
from torment and indulgence in bliss. How much you love yourselves, cowards!
“I now declare openly to all of you, believers of every
religion, sect, community, and god: yes, I tempted you, made promises to you,
and frightened you—not so that you might surrender to greed and ignorance, beg,
submit, and abase yourselves. Not so that you might seek to satisfy yourselves
by dreaming of paradise, houris, and pleasure, or fear that your sensitive skin
would be branded, burned, or charred eternally in a lake of sulphur. How
selfish, cowardly, and degraded you are! You love yourselves, contemptible
slaves. Nothing moves you except the whip and the stick.
“You performed the foolish rituals of every religion, in
every form and color, only because you loved yourselves, feared for yourselves,
and postponed your desires until that promised day. You have now rushed to me
not to meet or speak with me, but to receive prizes of comfort and indulgence.
You beautified the ugliness and absurdity of life just to obtain those
rewards—not for my sake. You arrived in terror lest I grow angry and punish you
for your sins. Each of you remembers his good deeds, charity, and kindness to
the poor, hoping I will be pleased and overlook his offenses. He smiles slyly,
imagining the bliss he has always desired.
“Could a soul be more base, contemptible, or vile? You now
confess everything, and I will answer confession with confession: I did all the
things you have described, tempted you and threatened you, to see your
responses and expose falsehood and deception for what they were.”
God turned toward the atheists, looking at them with respect
and appreciation, then addressed the believers.
“Look at them, you foolish slaves who love no one but
yourselves and are moved only by fear. Ask your own consciences: why did they
not covet what you coveted? Why did they not fear as you feared? Why did they
seek me rather than my paradise? Why did they sacrifice themselves willingly,
offering themselves as a perpetual offering to roaring fire—and even welcome it
in the name of truth? What moved them, if neither fear nor greed? Why did they
not inherit their parents’ religions as you did? Why did they reject them and
turn away from all religions? Why did my promises of pleasure not entice them?
Why did they not fear my fire, Hell, or my worms? Why did they care only for
truth, welcoming even the fire for its sake? Why are they ascetics in the face
of reward and seekers of truth, while you are cowards, fearful and greedy?”
The Believers (astonished, their words frozen): “But
they are unbelievers! They denied Your existence and challenged You. You
yourself called them infidels and deniers of Your blessings. They rejected You.
Will You praise them after they rejected You?”
God (mocking, yet confident): “They rejected
humiliation and degradation. They rejected the seduction of houris, pleasures,
rivers of milk and honey, gardens, and the kingdom of bliss. They rejected
submission and abasement. You believers have no dignity or pride; you seek only
yourselves and the satisfaction of your wretched egos. They are not as foolish
as you. Do you know why? Because they did not believe without thinking. They
searched for truth and reflected. They strained their minds not to beg for pleasure
and bliss or to protect themselves from Hell, but to discover me for myself.
“They wanted real communication with me: dialogue and
discussion for the good of the universe. They thought about the public good,
the improvement of life, the spread of knowledge, and labored in scientific
laboratories, developing medicine and treatments. They worked to improve life,
technology, and science, educating researchers who advanced the world through
their knowledge and civilization. They served humanity.
“When I deliberately concealed myself to see how they would
respond, they remained steadfast. They did not covet pleasures or lusts their
eyes had never seen and their ears had never heard, even though I tempted them
with promises of delights beyond anything they could find in this life, no
matter how far it advanced or how long it lasted. They kept searching. They
spent their lives inventing, protecting people from diseases and epidemics.
They did not weaken or give up; they did not desire what you fools desired.
They devoted themselves to improving and protecting life, making discoveries
and inventions, developing the world.
“When I saw how steadfast they remained, I tried to frighten
them with Hell and fire, threatening them in the books I had led you to believe
were true. Still they did not fear or weaken. They continued seeking me. When
they did not find me, they turned to improving life, inventing things, and
laboring through thought, analysis, and logic. They followed the honest
scientific path built on evidence, not myths and fables, in order to develop
and advance.
“Meanwhile, you stood like stagnant, stinking water, lazy,
hesitant, and inactive, doing nothing to build, develop, study, or work. You
claimed that life was fleeting and worth less than the wing of a mosquito.
Then, when you began to crumble like an old building whose foundations had been
eaten away by decay, you turned to them. You needed their inventions,
medicines, and knowledge. You boasted of living in their countries, yet
inwardly you wished them harm and shed their blood—or declared it lawful to shed—because
they were infidels. You lived at their expense. They were the rescuers, while
you contemptible people became mere consumers.
“While they searched, thought, questioned, reflected, and
sought me earnestly and honestly—without fear or greed—you wept and
supplicated, terrified for yourselves, coveting bliss and fearing punishment.
You remained like stagnant water until you stank, idle and cowardly, moved only
by fear and greed. While you trembled, they were searching, thinking,
inventing. They never coveted paradise, food, or drink. They did not fear an
eternal fire; they willingly offered themselves in the cause of truth and science,
knowledge grounded in honest evidence, logic, and precision—not in myths and
fables so absurd they blind the eye of the sun. Yet you followed those stories
arrogantly and foolishly, patching them together and forcing them onto your
religions in order to hide your embarrassment, conceal your religions’ flaws,
and cover your weakness and cowardice.
“When you were cowards, they were brave. Fear and punishment
could not defeat them in their pursuit of truth, science, and reason. While you
chased the pleasures of an afterlife, greed and desire drove you, and fear
tormented you. What a vast difference between you and these courageous,
determined people who renounced pleasures and lusts to seek truth and science,
benefiting humanity and the world!
“Fear shackled you, greed controlled you, and you lived
among myths, ignorance, and superstition. You thought only of satisfying your
appetites and desires by coveting bliss. The carrot tempted you and the stick
frightened you. You feared that your bodies would burn, char, or be roasted
forever, or be eaten by worms in a sulphur lake. So you begged, prayed, gave
alms, and performed good deeds—not for my sake but as a business transaction of
profit and loss. You never did good for goodness itself; you expected a wage
that would bring you nearer to houris, pleasure, green gardens, and lustful
delights. You wanted insurance against eternal fire and Hell, not a
relationship with me.
“You never sought me as they did. You never loved me or
wanted genuine contact as they did. You were greedy and afraid; they sought,
learned, and advanced. They were not cowards chasing bliss, houris, food, and
pleasures.”
Everyone fell silent.
God then pointed to an atheist astronomer.
“This woman spent forty years studying the stars, searching
for the order of the universe and asking whether a mind lay behind its beauty.
She found no evidence, so she refused to believe without proof. Yet every night
she looked up at the sky and respected its mystery.”
The Atheist
Astronomer (calmly and confidently):
“I wanted to know You, not fear You.”
God pointed to an atheist philosopher.
“This man wrote: ‘If God existed, I would refuse to worship
Him, because the evil in the world would make Him either powerless or evil.’ He
did not ask for paradise; he demanded justice.”
The Philosopher (with respect and dignity): “I wanted a
dialogue between equals, not flattery between a slave and a master.”
The Great Shock
God (turning to the believers): “And you...
tell me: why did you worship me?”
A Religious Believer
(confidently): “Because You deserve
worship, and because of paradise—”
God: “Stop at
‘paradise.’ Would you have worshipped me if there were no paradise?”
Silence.
A Christian Nun:
“Because You are love...”
God: “Would you
have loved me if your fate had been the fire, with no promise of salvation
through Jesus?”
She did not answer.
God approached a young atheist child who had died early.
“This child asked his mother, ‘Who created the universe?’
She answered, ‘God.’ He asked, ‘How do we know?’ She could not answer, so he
decided to investigate for himself. He died before finding an answer, but he
refused to believe without understanding.”
The Paradox: Who Is the True Slave?
“The believer worshipped me out of fear of Hell and greed
for paradise. The relationship was a business deal: ‘I worship You, and You
give me paradise.’ But the atheist rejected a narcissistic, psychologically
diseased god who loved only himself and thought only of himself—a god who grew
angry and took revenge, who claimed to be loving and saving while his actions
and circumstances overflowed with contradiction.
“The atheist rejected a blind god who could neither see nor
hear the universe’s crimes: murder, rape, and the deaths of innocents; people
dying by mistake, through coercion, injustice, and wrongful accusation;
children sick, hungry, and tormented through no fault of their own. The atheist
rejected a foolish god who claimed mercy, saying that his mercy encompassed all
things, while being as far from mercy as one could be—a god who tortured
eternally.
“The atheist rejected a god who accepts goodness only when
it is done for his sake, rather than for goodness itself. He rejected a
concealed, arrogant god who looked down on those he claimed to have created. He
rejected a god who created human beings merely to satisfy his own mood, to
enjoy watching them kneel and bow in humiliation or perform whatever rituals he
desired.
“The atheist rejected a god who delighted in humanity’s
confusion, leaving people lost among countless versions of his true appearance,
nature, and existence, across religions with a thousand sects and a thousand
communities. This god sat back and watched them quarrel, each claiming to know
his real face. The atheist rejected a con artist with a thousand faces and a
thousand contradictory copies. He rejected the fraud of religious leaders,
their alliance with rulers and sultans, their role as instruments of tyranny
and corruption, and their use of religion to silence everyone beneath its
accursed canopy.
“The atheist did good and acted ethically for goodness
itself, knowing there was no reward waiting in another life. He upheld ethics
and principles for honor and conscience, not for paradise, houris, heavenly
kingdoms, or fear of grave torment and fire. He despised a god who postponed
crimes, injustice, and corruption, closing his eyes and delaying judgment until
an unknown day, as though shirking his own duties.
“He rejected a god who allowed life to overflow with every
form of ruin, corruption, crime, treachery, and betrayal, even though that god
falsely claimed to have honored human beings above plants and animals. If only
humanity had matched animals in dignity and generosity! The atheist rejected a
powerless god who stood with folded arms and allowed evil to flourish, claiming
that an imaginary creature called Satan was his enemy—as though he were unable
to destroy this devil, or perhaps was his accomplice, helping him tempt people
and spread evil. The atheist was not frightened by threats and did not covet
pleasures or bliss. He offered himself as a sacrifice to truth, searching along
its winding, hidden paths with only the faint light of a candle to illuminate
his way.
“The atheist studied, researched, invented, and developed.
You believers needed his knowledge and inventions, and lived like rats
dependent upon them—parasites living at the expense of other creatures. You
were contemptible, cowardly, greedy, and base of soul. They, by contrast, were
people of truth, science, effort, development, progress, and determination.
Neither fear moved them nor greed tempted them. They were too noble to descend
to your level, you humiliated, miserable slaves.
“I am no commodity in the marketplace of beliefs. It would
be a disgrace for me, as God, to resemble the narcissistic, chameleon-like god
you worshipped across religions and sects. If I were that kind of god, I would
kill myself and end my life, for I would deserve no divinity. The traits you
worshipped were not the traits of a god but of a cowardly, contemptible,
narcissistic, evil, helpless, foolish, and stupid being.
“It would shame me to be the god with whom I deceived you,
merely to discover who was honest and noble, who was searching for truth, and
who was a coward seeking only self-protection from punishment and the
satisfaction of his desires. That is all you wanted. These noble atheists, by
contrast, sought me sincerely. They cared neither for enticement nor
intimidation. They did not chase the carrot or fear the stick. They wanted me
for myself and sought genuine contact with me, for the happiness, improvement,
and advancement of the universe, and for the spread of knowledge—not terror,
bloodshed, holy war, humiliation, servitude, bowing, kneeling, dependency, or
laziness disguised as trust in God while supposedly making every effort.”
A Believer (in a trembling voice): “But we believed
in the unseen! That is a virtue!”
God: “Believing
in the unseen without evidence is not virtue; it is surrender. Courage means
searching in the darkness even if you stumble, not pretending that you can see
the light.”
The Turn: The Fire Is Not for These Noble Seekers
God (confidently): “Therefore, I have
decided that the fire is the fate of cowardly, contemptible slaves. It is the
destiny deserved by your base souls, which sold truth and bought myths and
illusions out of fear, desire, and greed for everlasting bliss.”
A cry of terror swept through the hall.
A Believer (in horror): “Why? We believed in You!”
God (contemptuously): “Because you
worshipped yourselves. You worshipped your own comfort. You wanted to be saved;
you did not want me. You were merchants in the marketplace of religion. As for
the atheists...”
He gestured toward the fire.
“The fire you spent your lives worshipping me to avoid—the
fire before which you bowed, pleaded, and prostrated yourselves out of fear
alone—they accepted it as the price of honor. They declared with dignity and
pride: ‘If truth is fire, then let God burn us in it.’ This fire will now burn
your illusions, foolish slaves. It will destroy fear and greed, not human
bodies.”
Paradise: A Gift, Not a Reward
God smiled at the atheists.
“As for you, you never asked for paradise, so I give it to
you—not as a reward, but as a gift born of love. You wanted me for myself, and
so I offer you myself.”
The atheists looked at one another, unable to believe it.
“But... we do not believe in paradise,” said the astronomer.
God (smiling): “That is precisely what makes
you worthy of it. Paradise is not a place for the obedient, but for noble
seekers of truth. It is not for those who feared me, but for those who
respected me even when they rejected me.”
Final Scene: A Smile in the Face of the Storm
The atheists entered “paradise,” which appeared as an
infinite library, gardens devoted to scientific inquiry, and places for
philosophical conversation. The believers entered “the fire,” which appeared as
a vast mirror in which they saw themselves: fearful, greedy, and trading in
faith.
At the end, God stood alone in an almost empty hall and
smiled sadly.
“For thousands of years, they thought I wanted slaves. And
I... wanted friends.”
The hall disappeared. Only the merciless truth and honor
that does not die remained.
A Conclusion That Shakes Certainty
God had hidden not to test faith, but to test honor. The
shock was that those who believed themselves closest to him were the farthest
from his spirit, while those who imagined themselves his enemies were the only
ones who understood him.
Perhaps the true God is not one who rewards obedience, but
one who honors moral courage—even when that courage is directed against him.
The world is not divided into two camps, believers and
atheists. It is divided between the contemptible liar and the honest, noble
soul. The honest are those who seek truth, even if the fires of the world—or
the fire of an evil, narcissistic god—should consume them.
End of reflection
LETTING GO
In an empty room, Lian sits in a white space containing
nothing but a wooden chair, a window open to a grey sky, and a book by Cioran
lying open to the line: “Want nothing, and you will have everything.”
Lian (staring into the void): “How can I want
nothing? Desire is what keeps me breathing!”
Despair (appearing as a shadow on the wall):
“No. Desire is what strangles your breath. Look: everything you want moves
away; everything you pursue escapes.”
First Dialogue: A Lesson in Taoism
Indifference: “Do
not struggle to succeed; let things happen. Your goals will not be achieved by
chasing after them. Plant the seeds and let them ripen in their own time.
Whether they grow or not, you continue along your path. The Taoists say, ‘Let
life come to you.’ Do you know why? Because striving springs from the belief
that you are incomplete. But you are already complete—here, now, in this
emptiness.”
Lian touched the wooden chair. Simple. Solid. Real.
Lian (astonished): “But people say, ‘Ask, and
you shall receive!’”
Indifference (laughing softly): “That is a sales
pitch aimed at optimists. The truth is: stop asking, and what you need will
appear. There is a difference.”
Memories—or Rather, Disappointments and Their Deceptive Promises
First: Love.
She had loved a man she believed to be her destiny. She
pursued him, wrote to him, waited for him. He left.
Despair: “What
happened when you finally surrendered?”
Lian: “I wrote my
finest work. I discovered that the love I had been seeking was already inside
me.”
Second: Social
Success.
She chased a position, tried to please people, and sought
society’s recognition. She lost everything.
Indifference:
“And what did you find after all those successive disappointments and losses?”
Lian: “I found
myself inside them. My losses turned out to be a great profit I had not
noticed. Disappointment betrayed me only to build a tunnel within me, one
through which I could walk into my own depths and search for myself. There I
found the self I had lost. It was as though disappointment had cleansed me with
its tears and enriched me through loss.”
She smiled. “I found my freedom. I discovered that the only
recognition that truly matters is the recognition I give myself.”
Second Dialogue: Cioran the Teacher
Indifference:
“Cioran said, ‘Suffering is beautiful.’ Do you understand why?”
Lian: “Because it
is real?”
Indifference:
“No. Because it removes masks. The optimist wears a mask of permanent
happiness; the pessimist stands naked. And when you stand naked, you see
yourself for the first time.”
Lian: “But people
say despair, indifference, and wanting nothing are weakness and sin!”
Indifference:
“Despair is the true beginning. Despair of people gives you back to yourself.
Despair of success gives you freedom. Despair of love gives you your own self.”
The Transformation: From Pursuit to Revelation
Lian put the book down and took a breath.
Lian: “I feel
that something is changing.”
Indifference:
“Because you are letting go. You are letting go of the expectation of
happiness, the demand for love, the pursuit of recognition, and the need to
understand everything.”
Lian: “And what
remains?”
Indifference:
“You. Only you. And the world begins to come to you.”
The Miracle: When the Void Reveals Itself
Suddenly, things began to appear: an idea for a novel
floated into her mind; an inner peace flowed like a quiet river; and a clarity
emerged through which she saw life for the first time.
Lian: “What is
this?”
Indifference:
“This is revelation. When you let go of everything, everything appears—not as
you want it to be, but as it is.”
Bukowski’s Wisdom
Indifference: “Do
you remember Bukowski? ‘Don’t try. Sometimes not trying is everything.’”
Lian: “He was a
miserable drunk!”
Indifference:
“And he was free. Free because he let go: he stopped trying to be ‘happy,’
‘successful,’ and ‘loved.’ Then he became... Bukowski.”
The Discovery: Maturity in Despair
Lian opened a notebook and began to write.
Lian: “I write
now not because I want to become a writer, but because the words come. I do not
chase them; they arrive.”
The words flowed: profound, because they were not trying to
prove anything; honest, because they were not afraid; free, because they waited
for nothing.
Indifference: “Do
you see? True creativity comes from letting go, not from demanding; from being
filled by emptiness, not from running after fullness. You are living,
breathing, writing—not because you want something, but because this is what you
do, as fish breathe in water.”
Final Scene: The Wholeness of Deficiency
Lian closed the notebook and looked out the window. The grey
sky was beautiful. The sun set and the shadow disappeared, yet beautiful
suffering and the creative energy of renunciation did not vanish. They had
become her friend, her guide, her only truth.
Lian spoke with pride and confidence:
“I am well now. I have chosen myself, and when you choose
yourself, everything changes. I am well because I no longer care about the
words of those around me. I no longer listen to their opinions or care about
pleasing people at all. I no longer turn my back on my own happiness to make
them happy. I give opportunities to myself rather than wasting them on others.
“I am well because, no matter how broken I become or how
much I hurt, I keep moving forward with all my strength, resilience, and
balance. I have come to believe that people are nothing but blank pages,
sometimes carrying only a title. I no longer care about titles; I read the page
if there is anything in it worth reading—if it is not empty.
“When I chose myself, I stopped building my hopes on anyone
else. My strength lies in no longer waiting for someone to love me. I am my own
crutch, the one I lean on. I no longer compare my life with anyone else’s, nor
do I sail through the intentions of those around me. I refuse to keep playing a
role I once assigned myself, remaining silent because people depend on me. It
was as though I had to row alone against the current, while no one believed
that the winds battered me as they battered them. What have I to fear from
getting wet when I am already drowning?
“They assigned me that role, but now I have chosen myself.
My dreams used to be stolen every morning. Was it deception? An addiction more
dangerous than drugs? I was not living a life in harmony with my soul. Now I
am. I have chosen what resonates with me, what speaks in my voice, what bears
my imprint on everything, what sings and composes my own music. My decisions
are no longer driven by fear or by chasing the unknown; they come from the most
honest version of myself, from my identity and my distinctive mark.
“I no longer carry the burden of other people’s
expectations. When I chose myself, I understood my worth. I do not need an
evaluation from outside; I am the one who evaluates me. When I chose myself, my
inner world began to harmonize with the outer world. I accepted myself, and
life accepted me in all its forms and bent itself to serve me willingly, by
choice. Choose yourself, and life will choose you.”
End of reflection
THE CAFÉ
On souls that refuse
to be poured into molds
A Café in an Old Neighborhood
Noor sits in “The Lost Time Café.” Each table represents a different
human type.
Table One: The
Look-Alikes
Men in identical suits. Women with canned smiles.
Conversations that sound like repeated copies: “The weather... work...
prices...”
Table Two: The
Obedient
They laugh when they are “supposed” to laugh. They grieve
when they are “expected” to grieve. Every new birthday, some part of them dies.
Table Three: The
Conformists
They fear what is different and feel comfortable with what
resembles them. They believe that peace means silence.
Noor’s Discovery: I Am the Error in the Equation
Noor (to herself): “I feel like a marginal
note in a tightly bound book.”
She orders her coffee differently: no sugar, no cardamom,
just one drop of honey.
The Waiter (staring): “No one orders it that way!”
Noor: “That is
exactly why I do.”
A Dialogue with the Different Self
The Self: “Why do
you feel like a stranger?”
Noor: “Because I
hear melodies while everyone else hears words. I see distances while everyone
else counts things. I feel the weight of souls while everyone else weighs
bodies.”
Seeing Beneath the Conforming Surface
She begins to see what others do not.
The Handsome Man:
He laughs, but his eyes are crying. He tells a joke, but his voice carries a
scar. He pretends to be confident, but his hands tremble.
The Beautiful Woman:
She is gracious, but her heart is dying. She boasts, but her soul is begging.
She displays strength, but her bones are made of glass.
Noor: “The
conformists are not alike. They differ in the same way—like stars that all
shine, yet each one is dying in its own way.”
The Paradox: Unity Through Difference
Noor discovers that the people who are truly different are
the conformists who believe themselves alike. Every human being is an entire
universe, yet they reduce themselves to copies.
As for her, she is different in her solitude and united
through her difference.
A Philosophical Dialogue with Coffee
The steam rising from the cup seems to form words.
The Coffee: “You
are like the drop of honey in me. You do not belong, yet you complete me. You
are unlike me, yet you bring harmony. You are the exception that proves the
rule, and the rule reveals the beauty of the exception.”
Noor: “So being
different is not a flaw?”
The Coffee: “It
is the only virtue in a world that worships sameness. Resemblance is deferred
death; difference is a difficult kind of life. And I prefer life, even when it
is difficult.”
Climax: The Birth of the Different One
Everyone looks at Noor. They hear her silence, which is
louder than their noise. They see her stillness, deeper than their movement.
They sense her difference, more real than their sameness.
A man from the table of look-alikes approaches her.
The Man: “You...
are different.”
Noor (smiling): “Thank you.”
The Man: “No, I
mean... unsettling. You make me wonder: do I really want what I want, or do I
want what they want me to want?”
Final Scene: Leaving in Different Peace
Noor leaves the café. Behind her she hears a whisper.
The Waiter (to a new customer): “Would you like
coffee the way that girl ordered it?”
The Customer:
“And how was that?”
The Waiter (astonished): “She made her difference
seem like the most natural thing in the world.”
Now Noor walks through the streets and sees each face as a
story hidden beneath the mask of daily life. Every face carries a different
story, trading betrayal and disguise as though they were morning greetings.
Every act of conformity is a betrayal of one’s own story.
Signed: Noor—outside
the text since birth.
End of reflection
THE SACRIFICE
Scene
A terrible silence fills the space. She advances with
steady, confident steps toward the enormous statue before her. It is a statue
of a great open book, with a pen above it, as though writing words into the
air.
She approaches before the assembled crowd. In a silence
charged with awe and reverence, she kneels before the statue willingly, with a
smile. She raises her hands toward it, contemplates it in quiet devotion, and
bows her head. Everyone stands mute, bound by the solemnity of the scene. She
kneels and touches the statue, saying:
“I am yours. I have given myself to you. I have given you
all my dreams, disappointments, betrayals, and pain. I have offered every
tragedy and every tear, shedding them willingly and putting them all to work in
your service. Welcome pain; welcome suffering, and every disappointment that
remains in my memory and has carved itself there—or that may yet come—if it
serves you and enriches your capacity for creativity. Welcome.
“My chest receives every stab and disappointment with joy.
Here it stands before you, proud of its wounds, pain, and scars, all for you
alone. Every sorrow, every pain, every smile drowned in a sea of tears belongs
to you. These are the forces that urge me to take up this pen and inscribe upon
you every shade of art and creativity.”
She spoke as she examined and caressed the enormous pen
mounted above the book statue.
She could hear the astonished crowd whispering: “Madwoman...
she left her job just to write stories! What a fool! She will starve...”
But she was not really hearing them. She heard another
voice.
Dialogue: The Voluntary Sacrifice
The Book Statue (in a voice like the rustle of old pages):
“You have finally returned to me. I missed your words, the lines you write
inside me. I missed you terribly. I used to envy that job of yours, which stood
between us and kept me from the dewdrops your pen sheds—the drops that make my
fruit blossom.”
She: “I was never
away from you, not for a single moment. You were always in my thoughts and my
blood, in every turn, every bow, every whisper, every letter and word I heard
or read. My absence from you was for your sake. I was busy with you.”
The Statue (astonished): “Busy with me? How? Why? I
see blood on your hands. This time it is not ink.”
She looked at her palms.
She: “This is the
blood of my liberation, the price of my freedom. It is the blood of breaking
the chains that bound me. A job stood between us, its cursed claws trying
unsuccessfully to tear me away from you. This is also the blood of stability
and liberation from a failed, degrading, cheap marriage that tried to keep me
from you. It is the blood of every hardship and tragedy I endured, every drop
shed by my feet as they walked over thorns until they brought me here.
“I have brought you my very entrails and laid them on your
altar. Nothing and no one will ever separate me from you, for no reason
whatsoever. All this time I was thinking about how, when, and where I could
crush the cursed chains that stood between us. I wondered how to save every
drop of blood I shed as tears from the depths of my body, drop by drop, so I
could lay them in your hands and beneath your feet. I planned how to put them
all to work for you, how to welcome them properly because they would willingly
submit themselves to your service. I planned how to express my joy and pride in
them, since they would bloom into fruit and sweet springs flowing through your
garden.”
The Memory: The Slaughter of the Self
She quickly recalled moments she had engraved in her memory,
turning them into a unique necklace of creative pearls to offer as shining
lines in the enormous book.
The Hateful Chain:
The wretched creature who wanted to bind her freedom under
the repulsive title they call “husband” had said, “Writing will not feed you.”
But she had answered, “It feeds my soul.”
One night, he burned one of her manuscripts. She watched the
flames consume her words and felt as though her own entrails were being pulled
from her body. In the morning she packed her bag. After a bitter struggle and
enormous effort, she won her freedom through a final divorce, which she wore
proudly like a medal of honor set with the crown of liberty.
The Job:
At the office, her colleagues whispered, “Look at her... she
talks to imaginary characters!” One woman added, “My husband says to beware of
her. Divorced women envy married women!”
She merely smiled. She could hear the small words being
killed by petty jealousy.
Gold Gone:
She sold the last piece of jewelry she owned. The jeweler
looked at her in surprise. “Why give it up? You said this was the last thing
you owned. Is it for something urgent—a dangerous operation or an incurable
disease?”
“To buy my freedom,” she replied.
Losing freedom would have been more terrible than any
disease in the world. She sold her last ornament and bought ink, paper, and
months of time. The jeweler stared, stunned, as questions and astonishment
roared like a flood in his eyes.
A Deeper Question: Why Do You Sacrifice?
The Statue: “Why
are you doing this? Humans ask for security, money, and love. You may lose them
all. Are you willing to lose everything for me?”
She: “If it
pleases you and helps your brilliance and creativity, I welcome the loss—and
offer it as a gift.”
The Statue (tenderly): “You offer me your wounds
and pain as gifts you have made for me? You spill your blood and bring your
entrails, placing them willingly, lovingly, and proudly at my feet and in my
hands?”
She took a small notebook she had kept hidden among the
folds of her ribs. With dignity and pride, she placed it in the hands of the
great book statue, kneeling before it.
“This is a notebook filled with words stained by my tears.”
Salaf: “This
page... I wrote it on the night I won my freedom, the night of the joy I had
worked so hard to reach. I remembered everything I had endured under that
accursed, detestable chain that tormented my sleep and bruised my wrists. A
chain they sanctify and revere, though it is far from sacred. They call it
marriage, but to me it was a funeral procession carrying my corpse. I
suffocated in the grave where I had been imprisoned, holding my breath and
silencing everything within me as I searched for a way out. I finally dug
through it with a needle and emerged on the day of my divorce, breathing in the
pure air of freedom.
“Here is another page. I wrote these letters with my blood,
tears, and smile on the day I was devoted to my work. I had never practiced the
cheating and deceit others took for granted. Sincerity was my nature. Yet I was
surprised by stabs of betrayal I had never expected. I hated the job because it
did not represent me, but I remained sincere. I kept the wounds inside my chest
and locked them away like a precious jewelry box. Then I placed the key in your
hands. You opened the box, and those wounds became drops of ink, flowing from a
pen that bloomed into lines across your sacred body, pure and untouched by flaw
or defect, my beloved companion on the road, companion of words and of the
journey.
“Without you, my features lose their shape, my meaning, my
form, my heart, my thought, my awareness, and my self. Without you, I am not
even present to myself. I do not know who I am or what I might be.
“Here is another page,” she said proudly. “I wrote it when I
discovered that I belonged to a people who must rise up and rebel—a people who
hate patriarchy. I wrote it when I realized I was a feminist, or had always
been one without knowing it. I wrote these pages when I saw masculinity,
betrayal, and selfishness slipping like poison into honey, hidden between
glittering words, false promises, deceit, disregard, humiliation, and meanness
from every male being I had foolishly believed would be my refuge.
“I thought, naïvely and mistakenly, that I would find
shelter in one of them. Instead, I crossed the gate of destruction without
noticing. I was like someone fleeing the burning sands only to fall into a
blazing fire. The fire burned away false feelings and turned them into
scattered ash, exposing their fragility, dishonesty, and weakness, revealing
them as a malignant disease with no hope of cure. I trampled that ash beneath
my feet and ran, breathless, to you, my only love, begging you to forgive my negligence
and my distance. I pleaded for golden lines with which to write this page of my
life and lay it before you, so that it might bleed and cleanse me beneath your
feet.”
The Statue: “And
you want me to remain the knife that tears your entrails each time the moment
for writing arrives, so that you bleed lines and lines, decades of your life
burning upon my pages. But are you not preserving your pain this way?”
She (joy mingled with bitterness): “Hurrah!
This fills my heart. The pain that flowed from me has always been your fuel.
Every tear that falls on paper becomes a word; every dagger in my heart becomes
a chapter in your immortal pages. My happiness lies in your flourishing. I turn
my pain into a bridge over which you may pass calmly and securely. I came into
this world for your sake, to nourish you and supply the fuel that makes you
shine with the light of knowledge. You are the message I send to the world. Go
on, travel across my body and sorrow; I will turn them into a bridge so your
message can reach everyone. You are the faithful postman. Walk across my body:
every pain, sadness, anger, moment of joy, and tear will become your safe
bridge to the world.”
The Statue: “My
precious one, you nourish me at the cost of your own wounds.”
The Tapestry: From Blood to Ink
She: “I am no
more than a priestess or a nun in your sanctuary. I am a fabric willingly woven
from blood into ink, flowing across the pages of your eternity. I receive the
blessing of words. Let the fools around me say whatever they like. I neither
see nor hear anything but your call, you who gave me a real life within your
folds and granted me immortal breath in the breeze that moves through your
lines, sentences, and words.”
Conclusion: A Literary Prayer
A priestess in a temple without walls.
A sacrifice dancing upon her own altar.
She stood before the enormous book statue and bowed in
submission and devotion.
“You are food that feeds upon ever-greater hunger. You are
thirst that only more thirst can quench. The true sacrifice is not an offering
to imaginary gods. It is the sacrifice made by those who walk over their pain
and sorrow and build from them a bridge of golden letters and words, whose
light reaches the whole universe in a letter perfumed with your fragrance. I
sacrifice myself because the blood of sacrifice flows like perfume beneath your
feet.”
End of reflection
DOUBLES
In a corner of the city, where lights danced beneath the
night sky, I saw those specters—or perhaps only shapes, half-creatures,
fragments of beings, hints of something that might exist—circling around me.
They were things no explanation could explain and no expression could fully
describe. I felt like a starving person who catches the scent of food: it
enters the nostrils, seeps into the body and the folds of feeling, and makes
the hungry one feel full, almost stuffed, though all they have taken in is the smell.
The smell of food without the food itself. I felt like a fish searching for a
river that had dried up long ago.
Then their shadows appeared before my eyes, ghosts wearing
white veils—or perhaps liquid mercury: visible, glittering with promises from
afar, yet impossible to grasp. The instant you approach and reach out to touch
them, they flee.
One shadow appeared. I rose at once and moved toward it,
stretching out my hand. From a distance it waved, as though calling, “Here I
am. Come closer. Come to me. I am your dream, your goal.” I was naïve enough to
believe it would save me. I rushed toward it, eager to trust its promises, only
for it to stab me treacherously in the back. Blood poured from the wound. Then
I discovered that it had been a mirage, a counterfeit dream promising love and
claiming to be the other half that would complete me. From far away it smiled a
yellow smile that I mistook for paradise. When it finally revealed its face, I
found hell itself: a mask dropped, poisonous fangs exposed. It had wanted only
to devour me for a while, then throw me away like scraps of spoiled food. It
was not my other half at all, but an empty half, devoid of everything except
the desire to torment me.
Another shadow drew near. I could see it clearly, extending
a hand dressed in the garments of friendship and loyalty. I smiled: friendship,
after all, is dearer, more precious, and more dignified than love. I hurried
toward the specter, believing it real, only to find that friendship had been
enmity in disguise. Betrayal, lies, one face before me and another behind my
back; jealousy and hatred veiled in the costume of friendship. It vanished and
evaporated like water turning into vapor, and everything returned to how it had
been, as though nothing had happened. I was left without friends. I told
myself: beware an enemy once, but a friend a thousand times—for one day fortune
may turn, and the friend may know best how to hurt you.
I consoled myself and tended my wounds. The shocks
accumulated; I hid the bruises that had risen across my soul and settled inside
me.
After a while—hours, days, perhaps weeks—another shadow
appeared, another new specter. This time I did not take it for a specter. I saw
it as certainty, as an enduring and eternal truth. It stood before me, smiling,
carrying a dazzling gift. I reached out and opened it. Inside were happiness
and passion, shining and calling to me in voices I could hear unmistakably.
Both told me I was happy—so very happy. I leaped, danced, and rejoiced. I felt
them coursing through my blood and racing along my veins, whispering with
perfect confidence that I belonged among the fortunate.
Then, without warning, everything disappeared. It evaporated
and went with the wind. What I had felt became a pile of wreckage: burned,
brittle, crumbling before me in submission and humiliation, drenched by a flood
of tears. I looked around, but the being that had stood so vividly before me
was gone. I called it, screamed at the top of my voice, imagining it might have
gone somewhere nearby. Surely it would return. I waited, and waited for a long
time. It never came. Sometimes it waved from far away, then withdrew again. I
discovered that it was not what I had thought it was: only a suggestion, a
passing impression, like air freshener or perfume that fades after a little
while, leaving nothing—absolutely nothing. It was never the thing itself, only
the illusion of its presence: an empty half, waiting for something to complete
or fill it.
I decided to follow reason and thought. I said no to my
naïve, untutored heart, which had never learned life or tested its claims. It
would never mature, I thought; it was foolish and reckless, in love with
madness, forever wandering the roads with its feelings and emotions. What an
idiot! I had to leave that senseless fool behind. I marched forward with
strength, determination, defiance, and stubborn resolve, certain that I was
approaching sound judgment and full awareness—that reason must surely be
superior to such a foolish heart.
I came closer, studied reason, and felt its features with my
own hands. It too was a shadow, like all the others; no more than one specter
among a whole procession of them. It reached toward me with a hand of iron,
closed its shackles around me, cut into my wrists, and stopped my breath. A
foul, heavy stone pressed down upon me and imprisoned my free spirit inside. I
fled, realizing that it too was a mirage, a delusion—nothing more than a grave
prepared, furnished, and equipped so that I could be buried alive until
biological death finally claimed me.
From a distance I studied them all. They stood in ranks
beside one another: pale shadows, ghosts wearing white veils stained with the
blood of deceit, evil, betrayal, cruelty, and ruin. Every one of them had
crossed my life, waved from afar, and tempted me with the promise of being my
only hope. Each had turned out to be a fist made of blood, fire, and iron.
They stood before me in a formation like a wall, each
supporting the next, dancing under the moon as though inviting me toward still
more misery. I looked at them for a long time with contempt and revulsion. I
understood that I could not learn new lessons on this road without paying the
price in advance: everything has a price. Every new idea betrayed an old one;
every different road required sacrificing another, familiar road that had been
false.
It was painful to discover that I had always dealt with
incomplete halves and intangible shadows: half-lovers, half-spouses,
half-friends, half-relatives, half-siblings, half-children. Nothing in my life
had been real or lasting. I had thought those empty halves and ghosts had
forgotten me, when in truth they had never remembered me well enough to forget
me in the first place.
Strangely, my philosophy of life had grown sad while my face
remained cheerful. I love mornings, yet never miss the long nights. My heart
boils while my actions remain cold. To become worthy of my suffering, I will
withdraw as far as I can so that I may grow stronger. I will be different, even
if I remain alone forever—why not? Solitude is the fate of great souls. I will
follow my own road, even if I make mistakes; that is better than marching with
the herd. I was burning, while someone arrived to complain about the smell of
ashes. I will not heal in the place that made me sick; I must leave it at once.
I will drink my sorrow and become drunk on it. I will find something worth
living for, something worthy of all this. I approached life with my heart, and
the smallest details wounded me. We are born from ecstasy and end in death
through pain.
End of reflection
HYMN OF EXTINCTION
Life is only a small stage where the same scenes are
repeated until they lose all meaning. Absurdity is the sole truth: human beings
chase illusions of success and immortality while everything, in the end,
crumbles into ash. Triviality is not a flaw but a condition of existence;
honesty lies in facing the absurd without masks.
In desolate night streets, where lights shatter across wet
pavements, an inner voice emerges: “Everything passes away, and every attempt
to hold on is a trick.” Charles Bukowski wrote about people collapsing beneath
the weight of their days: drunks and defeated souls, people who know the game
is lost yet continue to play. For him, life is no heroic epic, but a sequence
of desperate attempts to survive boredom and emptiness.
“Don’t try,” Bukowski had asked to be written on his
gravestone. He did not pant after success, seek fame, or raise a banner of
hope. Instead, he exposed how fragile human beings are before the absurdity of
existence. In truth, we live in a world that sells us cheap illusions—love,
money, celebrity—while the only certainty is that we are slowly consumed,
dissolving into a merciless silence.
And yet Bukowski believed that writing, art, and even a
moment of honesty with oneself could offer a small resistance to the absurd.
Life is little more than a cheap theatre, repeating its
scenes until the actors no longer wish to perform. Each morning we wake to find
ourselves in the same roles: we run, work, laugh, and then collapse in silence.
In Bukowski’s eyes, existence is not an epic but a string of futile efforts to
flee the void. The void remains, smiling mockingly as if to say, “Nothing you
do means anything.”
Success, love, fame—all are illusions sold in life’s
marketplace. The only certainty is that we are slowly used up, like a cigarette
burning in the hand of a desperate addict. Still, something small remains: a
hidden resistance, an honest moment with oneself, a poem written, a line
spoken, or a mocking laugh thrown into the face of the absurd.
In a narrow room whose walls were blackened by cigarette
smoke, Charles Bukowski sat in a battered wooden chair, pouring liquor into a
glass that was half full. Across from him stood his philosophy, personified as
a woman and heroine of the dialogue. Before an open window, she watched the
night swallow the city.
Philosophy:
“Everything seems absurd, Charles. People chase religious illusions, worship
meaningless myths, and imagine that death is the beginning of another life. But
I see death as it is: extinction, eternal silence, nothingness beyond it.”
Bukowski: “Yes.
Nothingness is the one truth we cannot deny. All those prayers and rituals are
desperate attempts to decorate the void. I have written about it often: the
filth of life, the streets that swallow you, the women and men who collapse
beneath the weight of their days. Absurdity is not an idea; it is daily
reality.”
Philosophy: “But
don’t you think absurdity itself grants us freedom? Once we recognize that
nothing awaits us after death, we are free from every fear and false promise.
Albert Camus said that confronting the absurd is the beginning of revolt. I
rebel through my writing; I refuse to remain a prisoner of illusions.”
Bukowski:
“Revolt? Perhaps. But I see it more simply. Life is harsh and full of
disappointments, and writing is merely an attempt to stay alive amid the ruins.
I seek neither meaning nor salvation. I write because I cannot remain silent. I
write because words are the only way I can breathe.”
Philosophy: “And
I write to proclaim the death of the gods, to say that a woman is not a man’s
shadow or a servant to sacred texts. I write to prove that I exist, even if my
existence is brief, even if it ends in extinction.”
Bukowski:
“Extinction does not frighten me. I have seen death in the faces of drunks, in
the bodies of the homeless, in the eyes of women who have lost everything.
Death is a natural ending. The absurdity lies in trying to conceal it behind
stories of Heaven and Hell. But you write to expose that absurdity, and that is
good. Perhaps this is the only meaning available to us: to cry out at the void
before it swallows us.”
Philosophy: “Your
words are a cry in the face of emptiness. Yes—that is what I want. To leave a
trace, even if it is only words on paper; words declaring that we knew the
truth and faced it without fear. To live without illusions, without waiting,
without false hope.”
“To absurdity, then—and to extinction, which makes us write
as though every word were the last,” Bukowski said, raising his glass.
End of reflection
PRECISE CONTROL
In a quiet room, a man in his nineties sat before a large
mirror, holding a cup of tea in his trembling hands. He tried to sip slowly.
Each breath came with difficulty, and every time he lifted the cup to his lips
it seemed as heavy as a stone in his exhausted hand, worn down by time and long
nights.
The old man:
“Where are you, strength I once knew? Where are the muscles that carried the
rocks of life?”
The failing body
(in a faint voice, like a whisper of wind): “I carried you for a long time.
Every step you took, every breath you drew, every tear you shed, every laugh
that rose from your throat—I gave you all I had.”
The old man gazed at his reflection as though a great hammer
had suddenly struck his head and shattered his chest.
The old man: “But
they told me you were exquisitely designed, a miracle of precision, that an
immense power had mastered your making. All my life I trusted that you were
extraordinary, filled with wonders, intricate details, and complex cells
arranged in a perfectly engineered biological system. Didn’t I say so at every
turn? Yet for years now you have betrayed me, slowly pulling the ground from
beneath my feet. What is wrong with you, body? Are you lying to me, or
challenging me? Are you denying everything I used to say and remind people of?
Now you have come to disappoint me. I never knew you to be like this.”
His voice carried a hidden pain. “Now my bones ache, my eyes
grow weak, and my heart beats more slowly. Is this what perfection looks like?
I used to believe that every weakness in you was a test, and every wrinkle in
my skin a record of wisdom. But now I wonder…”
The body answered bitterly, almost mockingly.
The body: “I
never lied to you. You are the one who deceived yourself. Aren’t you the
venerable scholar who speaks in the name of science and tells believers that
their bodies are a divine gift, a perfectly made masterpiece? Weren’t you the
one who tied precision of design to scientific proof and divine power? You
lectured believers, praising the miraculous construction of my body, glorifying
and marveling at the omnipotence and extraordinary wonders I supposedly embody.
They grew more devout and applauded you. I never deceived you; I never asked
you to say any of those things about me. You wanted them to believe, so you
planted in their minds the idea of a mythical being somewhere beyond, a
magician who could say ‘Be’ and bring forth a body with intricate folds and
invisible complexities.
“For years I tried to show you the truth. I rang the alarm
and lit a lamp for you, but you closed your ears. As you grew older, I tried
again and again to tell you what you had led believers—and yourself—to imagine:
that I was supernatural, made by the Best of Makers. How naïve! Are there other
makers with whom we might compare this one and hold a contest to choose the
best?”
The old man coughed violently, nearly losing his breath,
then exhaled in pain.
The old man: “So
now you punish me for my sin? Have you brought me old age, frailty, sickness,
and exhaustion to take revenge because I ignored you and rejected the warnings
you sent as the years passed? Was my youth with you only a beautiful illusion,
a story we told ourselves so we could endure?”
He continued, shaken: “I am beginning to feel that I lived
through a great deception, and you were its central character. You once seemed
so strong and solid: running, leaping, shouting with a voice that filled the
air. I thought you were stronger than this. I never imagined that growing old
would make you turn your back on me. Why have you let me down when I praised
and glorified your precise, perfect construction? Why lay the consequences of
your weakness on my shoulders?”
The body: “I told
you repeatedly: you were always deceiving yourself. I did not turn away from
you overnight, and I did not betray you. I tried to be honest and logical. I
warned you with illnesses, coughs, and weakness, but you would not listen. You
listened only to your myths. Your sole concern was making those naïve believers
trust you as a man of science, persuading them that science and faith were
inseparable lovers. In truth, they are far apart, each following a different
road. Yet you mixed sweetness with bitterness, white with black, myth with
scientific inquiry, experiment, and proof. You crushed their minds and ideas
together in your colorful laboratory, then forced me into a frame painted with
legends and heavenly miracles. I was compelled to remain silent, though I tried
repeatedly to speak and stop your lies. You took part in a vast deception, a
conspiracy against the minds of ordinary people who trusted you. Now some of
them face sickness and death beneath the very body they were told was miraculous,
unmatched in its creation. You must pay for your lies and drink from the same
deceptive cup.”
The old man looked bewildered. “I felt your warnings,
especially as I grew older. I wondered why weakness crept over me even though I
cared for you, watched what I ate and drank, and tried to keep you safe.
Sometimes I thought you were challenging me or even hated me, as if you wished
to rebel. I sought heavenly protection to overpower your rebellion. I prayed
that my strength would be preserved, and begged that time would take nothing
from me, but time took everything. The more frail and sick I became, the more
stubbornly you seemed to resist.”
The body: “Why
imagine that a power exists to prevent the laws of the universe? I am part of
nature’s sequence. I was never supernatural or perfectly engineered, whatever
you proclaimed so confidently. I am no more than an entity like a flowing
river: I begin as a small spring, move forcefully toward the sea, then grow
calmer, widen, spread out, and finally meet the ocean, losing my identity as I
dissolve into it. Why persuade yourself that someone hears your words and
prayers? If your prayers worked, if the all-powerful being you imagined truly
had that power, why are you now so frail? Look at your sagging skin, sunken
eyes, heavy lids, and thick glasses. Your eyes barely make out what is in front
of them. Look at your bent back, which once straightened through exercise but
could not remain strong forever. Look at your knees, shoulders, bones, and
slackening muscles, all of which you praised as evidence of exact design.
“Consider your eyes: over the years, how many accidents have
you had because your peripheral vision is almost gone? I tried to remind you
that these two balls are only imperfect organs, containing a dark area that
cannot see and must reconstruct an image from what little reaches it. Look at
the weakness that has overtaken every part you once praised. Even the organs of
urination and defecation occupy the same place as the organs you associate with
desire and pleasure. Where is the artistry in that? Is it beautiful to put
rubbish where flowers grow, or to plant fragrant flowers inside a stinking bin
containing a rotting carcass? Where are wisdom and omnipotence in this
arrangement? I struggled not to laugh through my tears as you cared for me. I
watched you protect me like someone trying to preserve a piece of ice under the
lashes of a burning sun. What a contradiction. You kept deceiving yourself, you
foolish impostor.”
The old man:
“Then there is no maker who fashioned me with such precision? No hand that
shaped my details? Have I been trying to carve upon water?”
The body: “I do
not know everything. I know only that I was born from a meeting and that I
decline toward death. What lies between birth and death is your story: the mind
you carried, the heart that beat within me, the spirit you believed lived in my
bones. I did not come from an omnipotent maker in the way you imagined. If I
were as perfect as you thought, I would not have reached this state of
sickness, decay, and weakness; your hands would not tremble, your back would
not bend, and your feet would not drag with such effort.
“My strength has failed because, from the beginning, I was
the natural product of evolution from a common ancestor shared by humans and
other animals. Have you never noticed our similarities? Even the curve at the
base of your spine, where a tail once was, is a remnant of our evolutionary
past. Nature shaped the body with limited endurance and the ability to carry
out biological processes for a finite period. It did what it could; it could do
no more, because nature is not omnipotent and never claimed to be.”
The old man tried to rise, coughing furiously. “Are you
saying I was a monkey, that I once had a tail and stooped forward? No! I will
not believe you. I have been human from the beginning, honored and set apart
from animals.”
The body: “Enough
of this empty arrogance. You humans imagine yourselves above other creatures,
while your own legends have persuaded you that everything in nature was made
for you. The reality is different. Plants bear more fruit than they need for
their own survival, and you came searching for food because hunger drove you.
You ate what was available and slaughtered animals, imagining it had all been
provided exclusively for you. You are only one link in nature’s cycle, just as
other creatures are links in it. You, too, will decay and return to
nature—perhaps as a tree, a palm, fruit, or water. And I wish you had lived
with the dignity of an animal. Tell me plainly: who kills, steals, covets,
bears grudges, and seeks revenge? Who lies and destroys the earth—you or the
animal? Who is nothing without a document proving identity—you, or the animal
or plant? Even as you struggle with death, you cling to the same foolish human
arrogance built on illusions. An animal does not live by myths of creation or
imaginary prayers. It is too dignified to descend to your level.”
The old man slowly rose, leaning on his cane, defeat
trailing from his lips.
The old man:
“Then there is no God, no perfect design, no higher wisdom?”
The body:
“Perhaps the wisdom is the law itself: birth, growth, weakness, and death.
Perhaps perfection lies in this natural sequence, in a journey that needs no
external creator because it gives rise to itself.”
The old man offered a sad smile. “Strange—you give me a new
philosophy even as my faith collapses.”
The failing body:
“Because I am you, and you are me. We shall keep going together, right to the
end.”
“Who am I? What am I?” The old man left the room, his steps
slow but steadier, carrying with him a question larger than any answer.
End of reflection
A PAGE IN THE CROWD
A sheet of paper fluttered free, ink scattering across it,
among the countless pages piled on a desk so crowded with documents that it
seemed swollen and motionless. The page shook itself, as though brushing ink
from its wings, and droplets and letters wobbled down in every direction.
One of the other sheets cried out, “Will you stop fidgeting,
you troublesome page? Why are you always restless and complaining?”
The wandering page:
“I am exhausted, worn thin by the endless words written across what was once my
clean, white surface. The cursed pen in that wretched clerk’s hand—and in the
hands of that foolish female clerk—has hurt me. They pass me from one hand to
another as though I were a ball tossed between idiots. Their shouting has worn
me down, and their repetitive, tedious words have deafened me. Oh, how those
stamps have battered my body! I was once brilliantly white; now their stamps
have blackened me, and their bureaucratic language and absurd procedures have
cursed me. I long to be a pure, blank page again, free of stamps, laws, and
regulations.”
The other pages answered in one voice: “This is not your
fate alone. It is ours too. Human beings use us as tools and write whatever
they please upon us. We accepted our fate and submitted to what is. Why can’t
you? We always see you complaining and announcing your wish to leave us.”
The page replied with despair mixed with sorrow, boredom,
and bitterness. “Yes, I must leave. Stay if you wish, but I cannot remain.
Human misery, their disasters, and their routines have worn me out. I hate the
voices of those foolish employees. This civil registry truly is full of
‘records’ and restrictions, as the ugly names they give us suggest—names
suitable only for foolish people like them: a marriage record, a birth record,
a divorce record, a death record. Oh, if only they would all die at once and
free me from the restrictions with which they have shackled me! What have their
constraints to do with me? I miss my purity, my whiteness, before they
imprisoned me with you in this overstuffed file, behind bars that have long
choked my breath and broken my ribs in this eternal, cursed prison.”
The other pages replied: “We suffer as you do. We endure the
heavy fingers of clerks pressing their routine words and rigid laws into us.
Their regulations delay people rather than help them, bind them, and stop their
lives in their tracks for the sake of bureaucratic procedure. We suffer,
witness, and hurt just as you do. The difference is that we have accepted our
fate. We know we were made for this heavy task and cannot escape it. There is
no use crying over spilled milk: we cannot change the system or the nature of
these clerks. We cannot change the routine that binds them and has cut into
their own wrists.
“Our difference is that we do not make the desperate
attempts you make every day to slip away from our pile. Each time, a clerk’s
hand catches you and returns you to your eternal prison. You quiet down,
soften, and fall silent, only to try again, again and again, without the
slightest benefit. You waste your time chasing a mirage. These boredom-filled
routines and chains are the fate assigned to us, so that people may write
across our surfaces. Where would you go? What if a few drops of water or ink
fell on you as you tried to escape? You would end up in the trash, a lifeless,
crumbling corpse. We will not risk our lives because of your recklessness. Even
if we left, where would we go? To other people who would write their nonsense
upon us in another registry office or government department, another place full
of routine and its foul smell seeping from files, archives, and desks. Do you
imagine you will reach a museum, a nightclub, or a celebration where someone
will place you in a golden frame and sing and dance to make you happy? Wake up.
You are nothing but a sheet of paper.”
The page, stubbornly:
“No! You are wrong. You are resigned. I can escape these people, these wretched
clerks, killed by office routine until they have become distorted creatures who
move according to regulations and know neither mercy nor compassion. They
obstruct other people’s affairs and control their lives over an administrative
detail or a legal clause. No, a thousand times no! I can no longer bear being
an instrument of tyranny, restriction, injustice, and humiliation in the hands
of these miserable fools. They have turned me into a sharpened knife that cuts
the chest of every poor person who must pay whatever they own to obtain me.
They are wretched people, nothing more than a collection of papers themselves.
Without paper, their existence is not recognized.”
The page looked astonished. “Have they really become so
cheap that their worth is measured and their lives’ affairs halted because of
me, even though I am only a sheet that a few drops of water could ruin—or
printer ink, or a dried-out pen? I am tired of being an instrument of torture
in the hands of these cursed clerks.”
It sighed wistfully. “Ah, if only I could fly away and rest
on an artist’s wooden board, beneath the hand of a gifted painter who could
transform my white surface into a flourishing garden or an image alive with art
and imagination. If only I could rest on a writer’s desk, where a storyteller
might fill me with tales, feelings, ideas, deep philosophical reflections, and
the noblest messages. If only I could lie in the hands of a philosopher or
thinker, whose fingers would lay knowledge, profound ideas, and tender feelings
upon my blank surface until I became a literary icon, a hymn to thought. Or if
only I could be placed in a laboratory, beneath the instruments of a scientist
whose discoveries might change the world—not hold it back—and whose inventions
and research could move civilization forward. Then I would feel proud and
joyful. I would no longer be worth only a set of lifeless rules and
regulations. I would become a symbol of creativity, an embodiment of thought,
art, or culture; a symbol of enduring knowledge, the strongest weapon in the
world. Or perhaps I could simply become blank and pure again, like a newborn
child, moving among flowers, playing and leaping, looking at the world with
wonder and happiness. What a beautiful thing that innocent, childlike
simplicity would be! At least then I would be clean and free of the curse of
those foolish clerks. I would escape this foul, useless file and break the bars
of this loathsome civil registry. I would fly far away. It is all or nothing.”
While the employees remained submerged in paperwork, rules,
routine, and shouting, flogging the other pages with their pens, stamps, and
signatures, the wandering sheet seized its chance. It slipped quietly between
the piled-up pages, unseen by the clerk at the desk, and flew away—still as
pure and white as snow. It fluttered beyond the civil registry, ignoring the
cries of its companions and refusing to answer their calls. It kept flying
through the open air until it could settle wherever it wished, however it
wished, and choose for itself the hand that would write upon its tender white
body. What would be written? How, where, and when? The page became a
manuscript.
End of reflection
THE LAST CUP OF COFFEE
In a small café on the edge of the city, where the wooden
tables were worn and time had left its marks on the walls, a writer sat before
a cup of coffee from which a faint curl of steam rose, like the last breaths of
life. Suddenly Albert Camus appeared, his face tired and his eyes full of
questions, and took the seat opposite her.
Camus (quietly,
as though whispering into the void): “The only truly serious philosophical
question is whether to kill yourself or drink a cup of coffee. Everything else
is detail. We are born into a meaningless world and confront an unforgiving
absurdity. Do we choose eternal silence, or do we choose a small moment of
warmth?”
The writer
(staring into her cup before looking up): “I refuse suicide—not because it is a
sin, as they say, but because it is surrender. The absurd is not defeated by
escape, but confronted. I write to declare that I am here, even if my existence
is fleeting, even if it ends in extinction. This cup of coffee is not
salvation; it is a declaration that I will hold on to life, if only for a
moment.”
Camus (with a sad
smile): “Yes, the absurd does not disappear, but it opens a door to revolt. To
choose writing instead of silence, coffee instead of the precipice—that is true
rebellion. We possess no ready-made meaning, but we can create a moment of
beauty amid the ruins.”
The writer
(placing her hand around the cup as if embracing the whole world): “Coffee is
not merely a drink. It is a symbol of refusing to vanish too quickly. I write
to say that a woman is not a shadow or a servant to sacred texts. I write to
prove I can face the absurd without illusions, without Heaven or Hell, with no
promise to await—only this cup warming me now.”
Camus (raising
his head as though addressing the sky): “Then let us drink our coffee and leave
suicide to the precipice waiting for us all. The absurd will remain, but we
will face it with our words, our revolt, and one last cup of coffee declaring
that, if only for a moment, we chose life.”
The reflection contains the description, emotions, and
symbolism intended by the original note: the café, the cup, the precipice, and
the philosophical dialogue. The note then asks whether the title should remain
“The Last Cup of Coffee” or be shortened to “A Cup of Coffee” for greater
directness. The title is reaffirmed as “The Last Cup of Coffee.”
End of reflection
SLEEP PARALYSIS
The question remained silent, yet screamed inside her—a
muffled cry groaning beneath the whips of time, decisions, events, and even
wishes. It kept trembling on her lips, whispering deep within her, even when
she tried to ignore it: What if this quiet road were the one that led to the
deepest kind of love, to the innermost reaches of the self, to the calmest
territory of inner peace?
He stood before her, cold as a frozen statue, and answered
with scorn.
He: “You are
cold. Arrogant for no good reason. You have withdrawn so far from the world
that you understand nothing about it. You are conceited, domineering,
sharp-tongued, and probably wrong about nearly everything. Whatever beauty you
once possessed has faded—or at least lost its effect. The youthful spirit is
gone, along with the desire you thought was a weapon you could one day use to
compensate for what you lacked. Or so you imagined. How shallow and foolish you
are!”
She remained composed, watchful, and quietly confident. She
turned her back on him in complete disregard.
She: “I did not
want to lose myself. I built a fortress to protect me from your evils—or
rather, from your ignorance and stupidity. I did not close the door on the
world or raise this stronghold between us except to protect myself and preserve
the inner peace your masculinity and foolishness had devoured. How many times
did I ask you to be careful with my feelings? How often did I tell you that
once you lost me, you would never see me again, no matter how much time passed?
When my heart and feelings close, they never reopen. But your meaningless,
overbearing masculinity made you blind and deaf to me. You interpreted
everything I did, every reaction to your stupidity and coldness, however you
pleased. You branded me with the ugliest labels and belittled me, especially in
front of others. In reality, you were concealing your own inadequacy and
helplessness—the inferiority you always felt in my presence—by criticizing me
and making cheap, desperate attempts to diminish me in my own eyes and in the
eyes of others.
“You built a mask out of your delusions and then became like
someone who tells a lie and eventually believes it. Behind that mask you hid
your sense of inadequacy, your helplessness, and your foolishness. You were
never a whole man, never confident in yourself, and you never understood me. A
glass barrier stood between us. If I tried to break through it, it would slice
my veins. I could see you behind it, but I could not reach out without being
cut. It was a frightening, cold wall of thick, sharp glass.”
His voice tightened with resentment and revulsion.
He: “You should
be more honest and transparent. Admit that you never wanted me, that you never
missed me as a woman should miss a man, that you never loved me in the first
place. If you had wanted to, you could have broken through the barrier. When a
woman wants something, she acts; your cunning is great and your schemes
endless. But you chose to let that barrier grow, become larger, colder, and
sharper. You liked having it there. You wanted the distance. Now you complain
and reject me while accusing me of stupidity and neglect. You are a fraud.”
She stood, her bitterness stiffening into resolve.
She: “I said I
was protecting myself and building a fortress. I did not choose it freely. You
forced me to build it, without even realizing what you were doing. And I am
glad it happened. I consider myself fortunate that this very barrier opened new
horizons for me.”
He stared at her, incredulous and mocking.
He: “You are
proud of what you have become? Happy with the barrier that brought you to the
threshold of loneliness and emptiness? Are you deceiving yourself, trying to
raise your own worth so that you do not have to admit that you failed, that you
are weak, that you could not build a complete life or a family? Do you hide
behind a mask of pride and liberation, pretending to be proud of the wall that
separated you from me? What a fool!”
Her confidence was edged with revulsion, impatience, and
weariness.
She: “You will
never understand what I mean. Your ability to comprehend is limited; your
narrow outlook will prevent you even from trying to understand me. My strength,
you fool, lies in the solitude you mock. It is a kingdom whose every corner I
built through struggle and sacrifice, until I finally escaped your cruel rock,
which had blocked my breath and hidden the light and air from me. I built a
kingdom out of my solitude, a world that gave me strength and authority. I
explored the deepest recesses of myself and broke the cursed chain that had
always cut into my wrists. I hated it from the very first moment, because it
robbed me of myself and overwhelmed my whole being. Every night I looked into
the mirror and saw a deep crack no one else could see—a fracture in my soul, a
division within my being—and asked in sorrow: Who am I? What am I? I could no
longer find myself. My own self had become lost to me in your barren desert, a
wasteland full of hyenas and deadly snakes, sunk in darkness beneath a scorching
sun.
“Even a desert can sometimes inspire, but not yours. Your
desert is repellent and desolate, covered in thorns beneath a shroud of
pitch-black darkness, foul in color, smell, and touch. It is a wilderness full
of monsters that devoured my identity and nearly destroyed my existence. My
strength lies in my solitude, in the door I slammed shut against your dark,
loathsome presence, which had weighed upon me. I will never open that door to
your storm again. You would make me a miserable feather at the mercy of furious
winds, foul with the stench of carcasses, filth, and refuse.”
She turned toward him, disgust written across her face. “Do
you know what those foul smells are? They are the stench of the relationship
that once bound me to your cursed chain. That time is over. It will never
return, whatever the cost. It was a relationship that sent me spinning in a
vicious circle, looking for the missing link in a failed social order made
entirely of false masks. I always felt I was living in a farce, playing a role
that was not mine. The false role, burdened by the shackles of that cold
relationship disguised as virtue, was never meant for me. The partnership was
filthy with hypocrisy and deceit, as though we were acting in a ridiculous
television series or a badly written play, with feeble dialogue and a
threadbare plot.
“You fool! Did you mistake my strength for weakness, my
solitude for escape or defeat? No. A thousand times no. My solitude is royal
strength; it has made me blue-blooded. It has raised me above every woman who
remains a humiliated captive, imprisoned in a tangled, distorted relationship
or a failed performance. I am a free queen in an age of slaves.”
He could barely contain his anger.
He: “So you
decided to live alone, to dispense with me—and with all men? You boast of your
solitude and your own kingdom, calling yourself blue-blooded?”
She: “A man like
you cannot understand. While others—women and men alike—try to fill themselves
through external contacts and social approval, I turned inward. I made contact
with myself and discovered who I was. I searched my depths and brought out
treasures of wisdom and knowledge, then polished them into a jewel of
literature, creativity, and writing. I shaped a message in my own blue blood,
the royal blood of freedom, put it in a bottle, and cast it into the vast ocean
of life, certain someone would find it and carry it forward, shouting its words
aloud.”
He smirked as though exposing her.
He: “But that is
not how you used to feel. You once dreamed of love and made it your god, the
ruler of every decision. You told me of your adolescent dreams: without love,
you would choose no one and might not even choose to live. Love, you believed,
would lead you to your other half and to paradise, and you would sacrifice
anything for it. Wasn’t love the eternal crown of your kingdom? Now you are
trying to deceive me, pretending to have shed your romantic skin. No one can
escape their own nature or change their blood. You still seek love. Be honest:
you never accepted it from me because you wanted it from someone else. I was
never your dream boy or the man you had imagined. You projected your sick
fantasies onto me, then accused me of everything and turned life into
rejection, hostility, and conflict.”
She: “You said it
yourself: that was when I was an adolescent. You have admitted it was once. The
past tense matters. That naïveté ended; it will not return. Even if others
cannot change their skins, I have done what you call impossible, you weak
traditionalist. You have always followed the herd, flattering hypocrites to win
their favor even when you despised them. You wear a false face and march with
the crowd. You choose whatever identity pleases your society so that everyone
will approve of you, rather than the identity that pleases you.
“You were never my man. Neither you nor any other man has
ever been, or ever will be, mine. You were a shackle that cut my wrists. My
only—and greatest—mistake was that I once gave too much and dreamed too much. I
gave until I exhausted all my old wounds. I have not rejected love, nor stopped
believing in it, as you claim. I have rejected what others call love: cheap,
possessive attachment, false and self-serving, shackled by desire and appetite.
It is a sickness, not love; an illusion, not truth; a deceptive mirage, never a
certainty.
“Love is an ocean too vast to be contained in this filthy
relationship, this partnership surrounded by hypocrisy, restrictions, boredom,
and coldness. From its first day the relationship yawned like a frail, sick,
cold old woman longing only to die and rest. I put that wretched, exhausted old
woman out of her misery because her endless wailing had narrowed my chest,
split my head, and stolen my sense of self. I killed the old woman that was
this toxic, soul-destroying relationship. Even love—or what you call
love—becomes a chain and a disease when forced into that narrow, ridiculous
frame, whether inside a hateful partnership or outside it.
“Love is far greater than that. It is love of an idea, of a
principle, of exploring the depths of the self; love of freedom. Love is a
message, a cry sent out to the world and to humanity. It is remaking the world
through your ideas, leaving your mark on the universe and declaring, ‘Here I
am.’ Love is refusing to surrender and fighting for your purpose. It is
spreading truth—or at least its outlines. It is lighting a candle in the minds
of those around you, in the darkness of life, so they can reshape their own
thoughts. That is love. I arrived at this understanding after freeing myself
from my old naïveté and then breaking the cursed chain you claimed would
fulfill some of my dreams.
“I drank from that rushing river, believing it was sweet,
only to fill myself with water that could neither quench my thirst nor heal my
wounds. With you, I was like someone fleeing the scorching sun only to take
refuge in fire. How miserable I was when I was caught in your web—or in someone
else’s. You all sat on my chest for too long. I watched the days of my life
pass through a storm of emptiness and terrible silence that exhausted me,
devoured my selfhood, violated my freedom, and nearly destroyed me. I stood by
in shock, fighting windmills, trying to steady my confusion and comfort my
sorrow, patting the years of my life and my future on the shoulder as they
nearly disappeared beneath the lashes of your ignorance, stupidity, and
masculine obstinacy. A vast gulf between your person and my own self, identity,
and thought tore me apart. Then it was time to leave—and return to myself.
“How wretched and foolish you men are! You are creatures of
folly. Your place is among backward crowds, tribal societies, and the
underdevelopment of the Third World. We—the free women who have liberated
ourselves in an age of slaves—belong among civilization and progress. See how
wide the distance is between my station and yours, you fool. You sold me a
great lie, which I believed and lived inside for years. But now, at last, I
have awakened. My whole being has risen in revolt. I am removing from my chest a
heavy, dark stone that paralyzed me and threatened to erase me. I have learned
the secret, and there will be no going back. My solitude is the chief executive
of my freedom, mind, and awareness. I make my own decisions now, without
needing to consider how they affect another party. I am president of my own
republic.
“You exhausted my memory and filled it with every kind of
worry and ruin until I nearly aged or died of grief, watching myself burn like
a tiny candle in your pitch darkness. I was like someone planting seeds and
watering barren land where no crop could grow. My mind grew old inside your
toxic relationship. Now it is young again, full of freshness and vigor,
building a bright future whose light you always tried to extinguish. I was
asleep; now I am awake. I no longer care whether you stay or leave. In truth, I
want you gone and I will work toward that end. My solitude saved my life, and I
will not abandon it for any creature. I am courting myself, speaking with
myself, and living again.”
He searched desperately for words with which to conceal his
flaws. “How cruel, arrogant, and domineering you are!”
She interrupted him firmly. The scene shifted to a cold
intellectual space lit by the dry light of truth. She stood upright, while he
clung to the fading shadow of male authority.
She: “Stop, man.
Do not summon your old vocabulary; its illusions have expired. You were a
failed laboratory experiment in my life, and I emerged with definitive results:
the love you sold me was a chemical substance that evaporated quickly, and the
traditional marriage you offered was an attempt to enslave a person under the
name of ‘home.’ I tried to be loyal to you. I tried to ignore my mind and
humble myself before my heart, hoping to find a human being in you. Instead, I
found a wife expected to serve by day and act as a vessel for your desires by
night.”
He: “But I was
the man! Didn’t I give you safety? Didn’t my religion provide authority and
protection? Nature says you are the weaker part and I am your support. Why
reject the nature in which women were made? I was not betraying you; I was
exercising a natural right given to me by society and history.”
She (with a cold
laugh): “Nature? What kind of nature sanctifies inferiority? Your patriarchal
religion, which elevated your degraded status, is merely a myth manufactured by
backward societies, especially in places where ignorance flourishes and minds
are shackled by legends and delusions. But today I have awakened. Once you—and
your religion—left my life, the air became clean again and the colors returned
to my soul after fading beneath your shadow. The farther I move from you, the
more whole I become. My happiness becomes complete only as your presence
diminishes within me.”
He fell into a pit of fear and collapse, realizing that he
faced a woman whose resolve could not be broken by worn-out emotions. She left
him behind, wreckage from a bygone era.
Her final words:
“Go back to your tribes of ignorance and superstition. Your place is in the
depths; mine is at the summit, where true sovereignty belongs to those who
possess reason and freedom.”
End of reflection
THE GAP
In a thunderous expanse of silence, a wolf stood tall, a
creature with a sharp, instinctive nobility in its eyes, facing a human being
swollen with pride in his own species and convinced of his superiority over all
other living things.
The human (with
pious arrogance, approaching cautiously): “Why are you looking at me like that,
wolf? Get out of my way. I have a weapon, and I am not afraid of you. If you
imagine for a moment that you can devour me or attack me in this silence, you
are mistaken. Not only do I have a weapon; I am human. I think, analyze,
understand, and reason. My mind enables me to avoid any danger. I am nobler and
higher than you. Do not let pride mislead you into thinking you can frighten me
or that I am inferior because I am vulnerable. God has favored me over all His
creatures and subjected you, an animal, to serve me. One bullet could kill you,
and I could make use of your fur and skin in countless ways. Move aside, and
stop staring at me with that foolish defiance. I am superior because I am
human, the finest of creatures, and God made you to serve me. Know your place.
I am God’s vicegerent on earth and master of this planet.”
The wolf (in a
deep voice, sharp as a hard thought): “I did not stand in your way to harm you,
devour you, or belittle you. I stopped to look at you and ask where this
difference between us came from. Who made this vast distance, this bottomless
gulf that placed you above and me below simply because I am an animal? I wanted
to investigate it for myself: what distinguishes you from me, and makes you
deserving—according to your own account—of higher rank, honor, and dignity?”
The human laughed loudly, contemptuously.
The human: “What
a ridiculous joke! What stupidity, to turn the order of things upside down. Are
you so foolish that you block my way to investigate the difference between us?
Does it require an explanation? Look at yourself and look at me. I walk on two
feet; you walk on four. However high you lift your head, it remains close to
the ground. You wag a tail; I have none, because I am more exalted. I am human,
formed from noble clay, descended from Adam, the father of humankind. No one
knows your origin or how God created you. The scriptures say nothing about it,
while they tell how I was fashioned from pure, clinging clay and given a breath
from the divine. Perhaps you were made from water, a demon, or something else;
the texts do not explain.
“I build up the world with knowledge. I construct homes,
schools, and universities. I learn, speak, express myself, explain, teach, and
study. I can become a scientist, doctor, teacher, or any number of useful
things. You, meanwhile, walk on four legs wagging your tail, eat raw meat or
scraps tossed by the roadside, and search for food among flies, filth, and
garbage. I dine in luxurious restaurants, sleep on fine beds, and sit on soft
sofas. You lie on roads or piles of dirt; at best your home is a shabby hut, a
distant cave, or an animal pen. After all that, you ask what separates us? The
difference is as clear as the blazing midday sun.”
The wolf regarded him with a calm, knowing smile.
The wolf: “Is it
fair, merciful, or even logical that the God to whom you owe such gratitude
should leave you wandering in ignorance after all your knowledge, analysis,
studies, and research? Why should you know so little about the other
creatures—the animals like me who share your world? Is it reasonable that your
God never explained how I and other animals came to be? Why does this question
remain unresolved among your books and legal opinions?
“And is it merciful to create creatures like me only to let
us meet our ends as strays in the streets, scavenging one another or begging
for scraps from garbage? Is it mercy for an animal to live every day, every
minute, beneath a butcher’s knife wielded by the very human who claims to be
superior? Have you never wondered why your merciful God did not simply create
trees that bear meat, or some equivalent nourishment, so that you could eat
without slaughtering us? Is He incapable of doing so, or is it too difficult
for Him?
“You claim to be educated, literate, and capable of reason.
Yet why does your supposed God allow animal blood to be spilled and the earth
to be flooded with the remains of creatures you slaughter every day? Why permit
their carcasses to rot, their remains to attract flies, and their stench to
spread? Have you ever considered why living things feed on one another, as
though nature were a cycle in which all consume something else? Humans feed on
animals, animals prey on other animals, and some live on plants. Snakes and
birds devise tricks to trap other birds. Do you eat because you must, or
starve. Where is your God when you kill stray dogs or hunt bears for their fur?
Did He create these creatures to suffer? Could He not have given them
protection from life’s cruelty?
“Nor has He even protected you, the human being you claim He
honored. Where is He when children with cancer die in hospitals? How can a
supposedly benevolent God allow children to die in wars and famines, or people
to be killed unjustly by stray bullets or quarrels in which they had no part?
Where is He when a woman is raped by vile men of your own species while He sits
in the heights of heaven and watches in silence? Is He powerless, or so cruel?
What of car crashes, train disasters, and serial killers who dismember innocent
people merely to satisfy hatred and revenge?
“You call yourselves the noblest species, yet you kill out
of spite and hatred, take bribes, and humiliate yourselves for money. Some of
you murder and dismember another human being, stuffing the pieces into bags for
greed, theft, or a base desire. Your God has not guaranteed care even for the
humans He supposedly chose and favored above all worlds, much less animals and
plants. What kind of God is that? And on what grounds do you boast of your
species when its behavior exposes such shame?
“Do animals kill for revenge? Do they bear human grudges,
envy one another, or chase money? We need no money or clothes to cover our
nakedness—or, more accurately, to hide our scandals. We have no shameful
secrets to conceal. We are not mere papers and documents held by the state,
without which we supposedly do not exist. Is this what divine honor means for
you: becoming a sheet of paper, a bundle of documents? What a strange honor! I
and the other animals do not need such things to establish our existence. You
study us in schools and universities, know our species and habitats, and
classify us without identity cards or proof of registration. If being reduced
to paper is honor, then congratulations to us animals for not being human.”
The human, visibly tense and faltering, replied that he had
never asked these questions. His holy book—whether the Qur’an, Gospel, or
Torah—explained what mattered to him. Why waste time thinking about the
nonsense of an animal that could not understand such matters? He trusted that
God was wise and knowledgeable, with a reason for every event. God had
commanded submission and obedience, and human beings existed to worship Him,
while humans were appointed to cultivate the earth and remind others of divine
greatness.
The wolf laughed sarcastically.
The wolf: “Does
your trust in this supposed God turn you into a creature led like livestock?
You surrender to His words as an animal surrenders its neck to the butcher’s
sharp knife, or as a flock follows a shepherd without question. Is that trust?
What a miserable trust, one that diminishes your ability to think and
understand, erases your dignity, and turns you into a meek slave who lives only
to bow, kneel, and plead before an invisible being you have never seen or
heard. Is it truly trust, or a legacy of ignorance and myths?
“Do you deny that you inherited your religion from your
family? Every human child is born into a religion that contradicts and competes
with others. Each inherits its beliefs and submits to its texts without
discussion. Each group claims to be right and calls the others misguided. You
run a religious marathon, panting after a mirage—a deception passed down by
priests, clerics, and contemptible allies of political power. They played with
your minds and promised another life after death so you would not demand the
real life you have now, the only one you are certain to experience.
“Look me in the eyes and answer: is that honor and trust, or
humiliation, submission, delusion, and falsehood? While others have moved
forward, your societies remain trapped in illusion. I see nothing in you that
proves you are superior to me. Perhaps I am nobler: I do not hate, murder,
steal, or rape. I am not a piece of paper. At least no false god has deceived
me, and no cleric has persuaded me that I am better than other beings for his
own profit or that of those in power.
“I am the wolf whose nobility and loyalty you yourselves
celebrate, using my name to praise courage or independence. When you describe
intelligence, you call someone a wolf or a fox; when you describe stupidity,
you invoke the poor donkey that carries your burdens without thanks while you
beat it to make it go faster. When you praise a strong, distinctive will, you
tell someone to be an eagle and not move like the herd. If you are so superior,
why do you constantly compare one another to us? We need no identity papers,
money, speech, education certificates, or official records for our presence to
matter. Yet you still imagine that you are infinitely important simply because
a priest has played with your weak mind.
“You are a creature among creatures, like animal and plant,
part of nature’s cycle. Biologically, you die, rot, and become a corpse
returning to the earth. You have damaged this planet more than any other
creature: you burn forests, cut trees, kill animals, and spill blood. Your harm
far exceeds your benefit. And you do not even understand how you came to be.
You imagine you were molded from clay and given a father named Adam. What a
fantastic tale! Even a child might doubt it, and a skilled novelist would struggle
to make the plot convincing. You do not know how I came to exist, either. You
are ignorant, gullible, and naïve, your mind burdened by mountains of inherited
religious myths. You have become a foolish creature who believes in illusion,
moved by a stick and tempted by a carrot that does not exist, living on false
promises and imaginary bliss, with eternal torment in a sick imagination.”
The human, furious and stunned as though struck by an
electric shock, stammered: “What are you saying? Do you deny that I was created
from clay and that Adam was my father? If you boast that your existence needs
no papers or education, can you tell me where I came from if I was not formed
from clay and Adam never existed? And if you mock me because I do not know how
you, an animal, were created, can you tell me how you and I came into
existence? If you claim to be truthful, answer me.”
Theological Debate: The Absurdity of an Absent God
The human
(hesitantly): “My faith says a Creator gave us minds with which to judge and
set boundaries for you.”
The wolf (with
cutting logic): “Let me explain through the logic of the pig and the donkey. If
there were a perfect and just God, why create a creature only to humiliate and
despise it without cause? Why call the donkey’s voice the ugliest of sounds?
Why demean the pig and forbid its flesh? Such conduct would not resemble a
perfect God, but a petty narcissist who needs to humiliate His creatures to
sustain His own supposed pride. The existence of an innocent pig, condemned and
insulted through no fault of its own, is a severe challenge to the idea of a
just God—or suggests that your creator is no more than a malicious liar. Do I
hate these creatures? No. I see them as victims of you and of your illusions.
“And here is the surprise you did not expect from someone
you call an animal: your supposed creation from clay and your imaginary father
Adam are myths, inherited from religious stories. I have not lived inside those
illusions; no one has deceived me with them. You and I, like all living beings,
evolved from shared ancestors. Do not make the foolish claim that this means
your origin or mine was a modern monkey. That is a mistake in your own
description. Our ancestors shared genes; branches separated and evolved into
different animal lineages and into the human lineage. Those ancestors had a
mixture of features: a tail, a bent back, and arms hanging forward, like the
four-legged creatures you insulted a moment ago. Over time, natural processes
shaped bodies to live in different environments and move upright where that was
advantageous. Look at the curve at the base of your spine, where a tail once
extended—the very tail you used to mock me. Look at the similarities between
humans and other animals in appearance and behavior. Did all these similarities
come from nothing, or are they evidence of evolution in living things,
including human beings, physically, mentally, and socially? Early Homo sapiens
and earlier humans shared features with other primates, including chimpanzees,
because of common ancestry—not because humans are descended from modern
chimpanzees. A chimpanzee is one branch; humans are another. You even fail to
use accurate words because religion has clouded your understanding.
“All living beings, you and I included, change and adapt to
their environments over generations through natural selection. Nature is
sparing, choosing what fits; useful inherited differences can accumulate and
improve a lineage’s chances of survival. These changes happen slowly across
generations and can, over time, give rise to new species. You have made this
unfortunate planet miserable through brutality, recklessness, and unjustified
arrogance.
“But the larger question remains: if a god exists, can you
explain why he left you ignorant of where the animals sharing your planet came
from? Why do your books not clearly tell you what animals are or how their
lineages began? You live beside animals, sometimes raise them in your own
homes, boast of your education, and call yourselves the most advanced beings on
Earth, yet you cannot answer a simple question about their origins. Why do they
have no father like your supposed Adam? Did God lack the ability to explain it,
or was He unable? Is He responsible only for fashioning clay, pottery, and
stone? Did He avoid the subject because it was embarrassing, or simply leave it
without an answer?”
Sweat gathered on the human’s face. His words tangled on his
lips.
The human: “I…I
do not know how to answer. All I know is that God has wisdom in everything. He
determined the limits of our minds and spared us the burden of questioning. He
has His own order as God, and we are His servants. Not every act needs to be
explained to us. It is enough to know that He is all-knowing and wise. Why
should I exhaust myself searching into His creation? He knows His creatures and
His actions better than I do.”
The wolf (with
bitter irony): “Exactly. That is what your supposed God—created in the image
fashioned for you by priests, rulers, and religious authorities—would want: for
you to become blind, hearing only the echo of your imagined master, unable to
speak except in praise and certainty about a wisdom you cannot demonstrate.
This god has killed your thought while leaving you alive. He has crippled your
awareness and understanding, surrounding them with an impenetrable fence
against analysis, comprehension, and doubt. He has made you a captive, a
humiliated servant of an illusion and a myth. Rust has accumulated on your
mind. Your imaginary god has killed thought and turned you into a human machine
awaiting commands. And the tragedy is that this master may not exist at all; he
is a crude fictional plot that neither a child nor an adult should have to
accept without question.
“If you offered us animals or plants a choice, none of us
would choose to descend into the delusion that imprisons you. We would rather
remain animals or plants than become a member of this hateful, violent,
criminal, arrogant, and deceived species that calls itself the highest of all.
You are the lowest in cruelty and wrongdoing.”
The wolf paused, then returned to the central question of
suffering. If an omnipotent, merciful being governed the world, why did
predators have to kill to live? Why did creatures suffer from hunger, illness,
and violence? Why were humans abandoned to disease, war, accidents, rape,
murder, and disasters? The wolf’s argument was not that animals were innocent
of every act of violence, but that the human claim to unique moral superiority
and special divine favor was unsupported by the very world the human celebrated
as perfectly ordered.
The human tried to retreat into revelation and submission,
saying his scripture had given him all the answers he needed and that the
divine will was beyond question. The wolf challenged this answer as inherited
obedience rather than independent reasoning, arguing that the certainty each
religious community claimed for itself was usually acquired by birth and
upbringing, not by examining competing claims.
The wolf, in closing:
“Look at dolphins and whales, and at the intelligence of trained dogs that
serve you with a loyalty you often do not deserve. Many animals show forms of
intelligence that surpass yours; given the chance to learn and communicate in
human ways, they might outdo you. We do not need a religious illusion to
prevent us from slaughtering one another, because our nature is nobler than
your arrogance. You are not the most exalted. You are among the most
destructive, absurd, and conceited beings in existence, deceived about both
your origins and your morals.”
The human
(lowering his head as the scale of his error dawned on him): “I never imagined
that an animal’s arguments could be more logical and honest than everything I
studied and was told. Now, wolf, I see in your eyes a nobility, intelligence,
and dignity that surpass those of many humans. Your gaze burns away their
pride, leaving only crumbling wreckage scattered by the wind.”
The human withdrew with his head bowed in shame, defeated by
arguments grounded in science and ethics, and forced to confront the
possibility that the animal was nobler than he had ever admitted.
End of reflection
BIRTH CERTIFICATE
Name of the newborn:
A creative writer and author
Nationality: Living being
Place of birth: The unhappy planet
Earth, threatened with extinction and ravaged by a savage creature called
humankind
Date of birth: The day of liberation
from social constraints, inherited illusions, and religious and communal
beliefs; the day of freedom
Month: Breaking free of chains and
rigid molds
Year: Revolt against the
superstitions of religion and society
Religion: No religion. No gods. No
myths or legends of any kind
Father: Principle
Mother: Freedom
Family: Scientific, literary,
artistic, and cultural creativity
National identity number: Every
number marking a goal reached, an aim achieved, or another step taken toward
greatness and success
The traditional birth certificate burst into mocking
laughter.
Traditional Birth
Certificate: “What nonsense are you writing on yourself, you foolish sheet?
You are not a birth certificate; you are ignorant and delirious. No one will
ever read these words, and no one will recognize them. You will remain unknown
forever.”
Free Birth
Certificate: “And who are these fools whose recognition you think I need?
Do you mean the clerks who move like mindless machines, unable to breathe or
think, or like biological statues that happen to speak? They mean nothing to
me. It would be no honor to be recognized by them—or by anyone else. It is
enough that I have discovered my true self, explored my depths, and defined my
own being. What do I have to do with conventional fools like you? Tell me: what
are you so proud of, and on what grounds do you accuse me of stupidity and
naïveté?”
Traditional Birth
Certificate (with arrogance and confidence): “I am an official document,
recognized and certified by the state and the civil registry. My details are
the details all human beings need; they rely on me to conduct their affairs.
Without me, the universe would come to a standstill. Is that not reason enough
to boast?”
The free certificate looked at it with scorn. “The nonsense
written across your face is useless to me. No state or government recognizes my
words, and no official business depends on them. Only you need to place
yourself before your eyes and admire yourself, while I fill your heart and soul
with freedom. Nobody needs you, nobody cares for you, and nobody seeks you
except when they must. You serve no one’s life; no one actually wants you.”
Free Birth
Certificate: “Enough of your ignorance and folly. You are not worth a
clipping from a fingernail. What do you boast of? What achievement gives you
honor? You own nothing of what is written on you, and you deserve no credit for
what these imprisoned, humiliated people require. They need you only because
they are confined within life’s chains and lie behind its bars. They do not use
you out of love, but out of necessity, and their hearts are filled with
resentment toward the stale routine that clings to your hollow words.
“Your details are merely biological facts. Those whose
names, fathers, and mothers are written on you did not choose them. They did
not choose their country or a religion full of myths and delusions. They did
not choose their parents, birthplace, or date of birth. I am certain that, if
you asked them—and if they could act freely—many would tear you into shreds.
They did not choose the things written across your face. You have drowned them
in the curse of an existence they did not request, perhaps did not want, and
whose terms were imposed before they could speak. They endure you reluctantly
and resentfully. That alone should make you bow your head in shame. What have
you offered them except inherited conditions, unfulfilled wishes, unwanted
countries, and families they might have wished to leave? You imposed all this
upon them through temporary biological chance. It ends with another yellow
certificate announcing the decay of their bodies and their return to
nothingness.
“You have offered them humiliation and bitterness. Even the
happy ones have never felt indebted to you. You deprived them of the freedom to
choose their own identities and imposed a temporary existence they never asked
for.”
Traditional Birth
Certificate (dismissively): “And what have you given them, after that grand
speech hurled at me like a shell?”
Free Birth
Certificate (with pride and confidence): “I have given them everything that
exists: freedom. I have offered them another life above their biological one. I
have given their memory a form of immortality, transforming them from temporary
organisms with limited agency and choice into beings able to choose a true
identity—the one they select for themselves, not the one imposed on them.
“I have given them an enduring life. They can remain present
even after death because they have chosen their own names, names that express
their selves; they have chosen the place where they created and contributed,
rather than the place where they happened to be born. They have chosen their
own birthday: the day their freedom was born, the day they defended their ideas
and left their true imprint on Earth, the day their voices reached others
through ideas, books, scientific discoveries, literature, and thought that
changed the world. That is the birth certificate they made for themselves, one
that grants an enduring life, freedom, and a self they can be proud of.
“I am a profound cry reverberating across the universe, a
bright and powerful imprint that commands admiration and respect. You, by
contrast, are only a sheet that time folds away and everyone forgets, turning
yellow as soon as the brief need for you has passed. They were forced to need
you, and only temporarily. Their need for me gives them the immortality they
chose and pursued, through which they found their selves and achieved their
goals.”
The traditional birth certificate folded in on itself, bowed
its head in shame, and withdrew, dragging the tails of defeat and regret behind
it. It lay in a desk drawer in some government office. The free birth
certificate remained upright like an eagle, its wings pouring brilliant light
over the universe—the light of knowledge and civilization. People stood
transfixed by its beauty and power, watching from afar, dreaming of it, and
turning their eyes toward it in the hope of finding a new birth and refuge: the
true identity they had long been searching for.
End of reflection
TWO WINGS
I heard the sound of my own cries for help as I lay inside a
dark, foul-smelling, bottomless pit, wrapped in its dense darkness like a
filthy black cloak. The stench seemed to seep from every fold: oppression,
servitude, exploitation, disgust, and revulsion. What suffocating narrowness!
What anguish I endured! Night had fallen, and the shadows of cursed shackles
closed around me. I was alone, exhausted and burdened with chains that drained
my strength, broke me apart, and demolished me from within. I no longer felt
like anything but a wandering ghost, a colorless, meaningless thing—as though I
were nothingness within nothingness, sinking into a sea of extinction and a
mirage of humiliation. Each day and night, a heavy, hateful, faded shadow
settled over me, like a foul black stone, stinking and weighty, stubbornly
pressing down on my breath until it nearly extinguished it. Still I called for
help from deep within that cursed pit, hoping someone might come and throw me a
rope, or even a thread of hope, a ray of light to illuminate the darkness of my
extinguished soul.
After many thoughts and desperate cries, she came to me. She
hurried to my rescue and listened to my plea. She did not hesitate or falter;
she rushed forward, reaching out both hands to pull me from the foul abyss and
the sinister darkness that had almost destroyed me. She quickly lowered a rope
and pulled with force, determination, and stubborn resolve until she lifted me
from the depths of the hell in which I had been trapped. With every movement
upward, with every inch of the rope, I recovered my breath in a single rush.
Life returned to me; its fragrance flowed through my body, and I inhaled the
intoxicating, sweet breezes that gradually wrapped around me.
Panting, I told her, “My dearest, you are the only one who
came to save me. No one else rescued me but you. You flow through my blood. I
love you, my dearest, with a love that a thousand books and references could
not adequately praise or repay. You are the sun that illuminates the universe,
the true sun; everything other than you is impenetrable darkness.”
She laughed with delight, smiling broadly, and answered with
confidence and assurance.
“I love you too, my dear. I never hesitate to answer your
call or help you, whatever effort it costs me. I love those who love me and
value those who value me. I belong only to the one who welcomes my breezes
within them, the one worthy of me, the one prepared to lose everything precious
in life for my sake. When such a person calls, I will never be late. I will
come at once.”
Then she spread her two broad, enormous wings. With
confidence and joy, she turned toward me, carried me upon them, and flew far
away, soaring through the sky.
“Come,” she said, “you and I will go to the Land of Dreams.
It is the most suitable place for us. We can live there together in an eternal
life, undisturbed by anyone.”
I asked, “What is the Land of Dreams? I have never heard of
it before.”
“It is my place and yours, our own land. Perhaps we were
brought into this life only to find it. It is a land spacious enough for us and
for the plants, birds, and animals. They are your loved ones, and you have
always spoken to me about them.”
“Yes, I love them deeply. Do you know why?”
“Why?”
“Because I see you embodied in them. You live vividly in
their lives. I see you clearly in every step these creatures take; your
generous shade covers their existence. Even if you are not absolute or perfect,
what you have given them is enough. They receive your breezes in a sufficient
measure, and that is why I love them. In truth, I love you, because wherever
they live, wherever they go, I find myself looking for you.”
She sighed, and a dense cloud of sorrow crossed her face.
“I could not—or rather, I cannot and will not—shade the
lives of those others: those wretched beings weighed down by chains of
humiliation and slavery. Those fools who boast of their own servitude, who take
pride in being lowly slaves, bent beneath harsh laws that restrict their
movements and nearly count their breaths. Their souls are filled with malice,
evil, spite, and hatred. I came to despise them and recoil from their stupidity
and resentment. I never wanted to be part of their lives, because they do not
deserve me and are not worthy of me. Their humiliating, submissive lives force
them every day and night to bow their heads to the ground before illusion and
mirage. These fools even boast of their own foolishness and degradation. They
surrender willingly, surrounded by expensive walls and shackles made of fear,
humiliation, oppression, and cruelty. So I turned away from them and fled, as a
healthy person flees from the plague.”
I sighed too, releasing a long breath hot with sorrow and
weariness, and replied, “I am exactly like you. I too have grown to hate them,
retreat from them, and keep my distance, as though I did not belong to their
species. The only things that connect me to them are outward appearance and the
base instincts that control both them and me. But in truth, I am not one of
them. I have always felt foreign among them.
“They are what they are because they are human: a hateful
species, among the basest living things, the least free and most enslaved.
Human beings are full of malice and greed. Temptation shades them; deception,
fraud, and evasion protect them. Their ugly ambitions emerge in the form of
rancor, and their evil drips from them. They are nothing but paper. Without
paper, they are nothing. Each individual is a sheet bearing a name, a sex, a
date of birth, and a home address, plus another sheet for work, identity, or an
official card. They need names to introduce themselves to one another, money,
and countless other things. They are nothing more than a collection of
documents, and these papers are what summarize and certify their existence.”
I spoke with distaste, breathing out a hot sigh that met her
sorrowful face.
“How wretched they are, how miserable their condition! They
are shackled with chains and fetters made of paper, and without those chains
they have no recognized existence. What a wretched and foolish existence—a life
that scarcely exists at all! Nothingness and extinction are more dignified,
more complete, more unified, and freer than this. What a pitiful, contemptible
existence. Worst of all, they boast of their humiliation. They take pride in
being slaves: slaves to earning their daily bread, slaves to paper restraints,
slaves who bow beneath burdens too heavy to bear. They are slaves to evil that
takes hold inside them, dripping its poison into their souls until they become
killers, criminals, thieves, bribe-takers, forgers, fraudsters, and liars. Or
they become slaves to an imaginary being whose existence they merely presume,
pleading with it out of fear, hoping for its approval and reward, terrified of
its punishment.
“They have accepted humiliation, even celebrated it. They
have sanctified it in the form of sacred illusions. They love their degradation
and boast of it to the point of disgrace. How could you, so complete and
elevated, so proud and dignified, consent to exist among these ruffians? How
could I embody myself in a species that calls itself the highest, the most
favored, the noblest—when the reality is so far from that claim? Sadly, they
submit to liars and frauds who hide behind an imaginary veil of virtue and
pretend to possess the truth, though they are nowhere near it. The gulf between
truth and perfection, on the one hand, and the fictions they claim on the
other, is immense. Yet people praise and applaud those impostors, celebrate
them, and take pride in them! How foolish and wretched this species is. It is
moved only by a stick: fear drives it, a whip guides it, and a carrot tempts it
forward as it hurries in obedience, afraid of punishment and greedy for a
reward.”
I looked around. In the Land of Dreams, I saw only animals
and birds, spreading their wings and devouring the breadth of the sky. I saw
trees and plants, and breathed in their fragrance until my smile widened and
filled my cheeks. I answered her:
“This blessed land is inhabited only by these beautiful
creatures. They need no papers to prove their existence. They are known without
documents, and their value is greater than paper shackles. They do not kill,
steal, hate, or commit crimes. If one of them hunts or kills, it is to obtain
food, not out of hatred, revenge, or malice. They are not sent to prisons or
tortured in detention centers. They are not bound by papers that make them
nobodies when those papers are absent. They roam as they please. No curfew is
imposed upon them. They come and go without a watcher or judge, yet each is
answerable to itself and bears responsibility for its own actions. They are not
forever treated as suspects or accused of something. They are far greater than
that.
“Look at the birds in the sky, flying above with
transparency and purity. Then look down at the bottom, at humankind walking on
two feet. Shackles and restrictions surround them and everything they touch.
They are imprisoned in their clothes, their bodies, their greed, their hatred,
their resentment—and in the whole system of their lives. Birds soar in the open
air above them; and where above is above, below is below, because the lower
place is the one that suits human beings.
“Animals and plants do not need clothes. Without them, they
are not naked; when they remove them, they are not immoral. They are not
guilty, perverse, or debauched for failing to wear garments. They do not need
special specifications for clothes, because they do not need them at all—not
because they are inferior, but the opposite: because they are freer, less
constrained, and more elevated. They have risen beyond the need to dress.
Without clothes, they are whole and complete, lacking nothing. This corrupt species,
by contrast, is called incomplete, indecent, shameless, mad, or perverted
without its garments. Clothes are not merely another paper; they are also a
piece of fabric that conceals them. They hide their sins, their lowliness, and
as much of their evil as possible. They are yet another chain added to their
many chains.
“So where are they in relation to me, and where am I in
relation to them? What evidence gives them the right to claim a higher place?
They are bound creatures. No matter how much they build, cultivate, or
construct, I see them as lower and less worthy. Yet they persist in their
foolishness with conceit and empty arrogance, like a hollow drum that produces
nothing but a harsh, irritating noise while imagining itself the highest, most
advanced, most important being in existence.”
She looked at me with confidence and asked, “Tell me: which
is happier, freer, and more elevated—the wonderful creatures here in the Land
of Dreams, or that cursed species in the Land of Nightmares and Catastrophes?”
I smiled with an inward sense of calm and peace. “You ask
me, yet the answer is in your eyes and dripping from your lips.”
She carried me upon her great wings and flew with me over
the broad, open spaces of the Land of Dreams. “You are the only one I chose and
preferred from among that hateful species, the only one I selected to remain
with me always.” She continued to glide through the vastness, patting me with
her wing and rocking me gently, like a child sleeping peacefully in the arms of
a tender mother.
She was the freedom I had chosen and preferred—and each of
us was the right choice for the other.
End of reflection
VANISHING
Lately, he had taken to turning away and showing her his
back. She knelt before him, pleading, reminding him of all their past
happiness, victories, and joys. Her voice broke into sobs, and tears fell to
her lips.
She: “What has
happened to you? What has come over you? You were never this cruel, and now you
insist once again on disappointing me, turning your back with such harshness.
Tell me what I have done to you. What wrong have I committed? Do not leave me
like a feather tossed about in the wind, battered and played with by the storms
inside my head. I am nearly going mad. I cannot understand why you have become
like this, why you keep letting me down, again and again.”
He still faced away from her. He sighed, and his words came
fractured with sorrow.
He: “It is over.
My companions, my equals, and I have decided to leave you and withdraw for
good. You can find happiness somewhere away from me—and from them. There are
many paths to happiness.”
She: “But you are
the only one responsible for my happiness. How can I find another way without
you? You and your companions are the central axis around which life revolves.
Life is a collection of days; days are made of hours, hours of minutes, and
before them, seconds. Where am I to find happiness if you and your companions
abandon me? You form a team called the week; weeks turn into months, months
into a year, and years into years upon years. At their root, all of them are
made of you. Before my eyes, you shape my life—a collection of days, months,
and years. How can I find happiness away from you? Tell me, where should I
travel in this difficult road, darkened by nights that seem to stretch on
forever, when life itself, if only you knew, is short?”
He answered stubbornly, with a sharp edge to his voice.
He: “You can find
happiness in something else: a hobby you love, music you listen to, or even a
practice of meditation.”
She sobbed, pain tearing at her wounded spirit.
She: “I have
tried. I have tried desperately to keep sadness away. I have tried to find
happiness without you, to ignore you, forget you, even remove you from my
calculations, as if you had never existed. But all my attempts have been in
vain. Do you know why? Because you refused. With stubborn determination, you
denied me every other door to happiness and threw me, against my will, onto the
stage of life to act this ridiculous play with you at every moment—as though
you took pleasure in tormenting me.
“How can I find happiness elsewhere if you refuse to allow
it? How can you ask me to do so when you have no intention of letting me? You
know perfectly well that if you are cruel to me and take happiness away,
nothing else can give it back. Why do you evade me and persist in deceiving me?
Why do you pretend to be innocent, wearing the fleece of a gentle lamb while a
savage beast hides inside you, tearing at my soul, identity, and feelings with
its claws until they are ripped to shreds without mercy?
“She moved closer and gently stroked the back he still
turned toward her, feeling it with her weak fingertips, pleading: “What has
happened to you? You were not like this. Why have you changed? You were never
so cruel. I used to stir your pity, and even when you were harsh, you would
turn toward me tenderly, caress my hair with your gentle whispers, pour
happiness into my tormented soul, and let me drink from cups of joy until I
imagined I would be quenched forever, the happiest creature in existence. Especially
when I was a child. Do you remember?”
He continued to turn his back. With a long, painful sigh, he
replied:
He: “Does an
illusion do any good? You were the one who was mistaken, not me. You should
never have believed in the illusion of happiness. The thread of illusion is
short—shorter than the thread of a lie, and more treacherous, deceptive, and
quick to disappear.”
She: “Ah! What
other choice did I have but to believe? You gave me no choice and no freedom.
You stubbornly shut every door in my face. I tried so hard to open them, hoping
to find my lost happiness and the passion that died between the teeth and claws
of your cruelty.
“You have turned life into a game that you insist I must
always lose. You forced me onto this hateful, absurd stage of life—with all its
filth, ugliness, arrogance, opinions, and cruelty—without a reason or even a
single explanation. All you gave me was a free ticket to a journey filled with
pain, suffering, fear, disappointment, betrayal, anxiety, conflict, and
strained relationships, even with those closest to me. And you did all this
with such cruelty and stubbornness, then expected me to thank you for the
abundant suffering you gave me for free, without my ever asking for it!
“You even demand that I struggle against waves of emotional
pain, savage feelings, negative thoughts, and anxiety that gnaws at me like a
merciless giant. How can I fight this torrent, this foul flood that forces me
to fall into a deep abyss where anger, tension, fear, anxiety, distress, and
boredom pile up, tossing me back and forth like a ball in the hands of
competing waves?
“Death has been lying in wait for me from the very first
moment of my birth. I was born into your hands, into this existence and this
life, and you seized me at once and threw me onto life’s stage. You promised me
happiness, but I saw nothing of it except a passing illusion that vanished
moments later, like perfume whose trace evaporates before the certainty of
nothingness and extinction.”
He continued along his path, moving farther away without
turning to acknowledge her complaint, as though he had not heard a word. He
walked until he reached the great door and slammed it shut behind him with such
force and cruelty that it boomed like an explosion.
She rushed after him, running and calling out, begging him
to show mercy. She tried to open the locked door or break its sealed bolts,
which had been secured by that thunderous slam. She kept screaming, crying for
help, pounding at the door with both hands until she fell unconscious to the
ground.
This time, she never woke again.
End of reflection
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