Trafika Europe 9/10 - UK in Europe

I stared at thenightof the city

it, exercised his black arts and infused it with his magic; the other engraved by Almighty God. He toiled over it, imbued it with his mystery and made it pure. All loves in the world are so. God does not abandon even an iota of love. Nor does the Devil back down. God is the owner of one half of every drop of love. The Devil owns the other. And when they drink that drop, poor human beings cannot tell whether they have taken poison or drunk of divine nectar. Do not look at me as if I were a disgraceful old man with trembling hands and a soul still full of worldly greed. I never was the slave of my soul, but if a person keeps the door of the soul too tightly closed, something else, some other secret, will come his way. The soul has its own way, its own

creatures and creations. What I had endeavoured all my life to slay crept from its dark cellar in the form of a human being, a young magician; a person who was both truth and imagination. It was myself and yet, at the same time, not myself. Yes, my son, you. You were born of him and yet, at the same time, not of him.’ In a great many long and jumbled passages, Mullah Hajar sought to interpret theemergenceoftheyoung poet and ghazal writer from his soul and, with great hesitation, wrote many pages about the strange, erotic experience connecting a fantasised version of Baharbanu with the fantasised half of himself. With a desire that should not have existed in an old man as he neared death, and with

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