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I stared at thenightof the city
193
beginning, that its roots
go back beyond the births
of the protagonists.
Despite the depth of these
curious roots, our story
does have features that are
more or less from our own
age. For instance, the soul
of the clown, the trickster,
who wrote all these pages,
has no match in any other
age or time. Each age has
its own Devil and Angel,
and in every age the Devil
and the Angel play in a
manner that is different
to the way they do so in
all other eras. During the
game, they swap places.
The most curious thing
about the Devil is that he
has to play like the Angel
to win, and the Angel, to
avoid being exposed, must
– like the Devil – alter his
appearance and be seen
only through a haze.
Unfortunately,
this
story cannot be told
chronologically.
When
the security chief was
dismissed at the end of
the summer, one of his
colleagues smuggled some
important secret files out
of the department and
circulated them in political
confrontations with his
opponents to avenge
his underprivileged and
beleaguered friends.
How these files had
reached
the
security
chief in the first place, I
cannot fathom. I don’t
think His Excellency or
any other person read
them from start to finish,
especially
considering
that in the spring of 2007
they were occupied with
all the bother of hunting
down Islamic terrorists.
Besides, as you know, files
had acquired a unique
significance in our country