The Beggar, the Thief and the Dogs, Autumn Quail Read Online Free PDF

all.”
    “You can return to poetry if you want.”
    “The talent has died completely.”
    “I don’t believe it. In my mind you will always be a poet.”
    What has poetry to do with this hulking body, with the preoccupation with legal cases, the construction of apartment buildings, and gluttony to the point of illness? Even Mustapha slumped on the couch one day as if he were declining visibly into old age.
    “What wasted effort,” he said.
    You replied with concern, “But the Tali’a troupe welcomes your plays, and they’re excellent works.”
    He gestured with his hand in deprecation. “I have to reconsider my life as you have.”
    “You’ve always counseled perseverance and patience.”
    He laughed harshly. “You can’t ignore the public.”
    “You’d like to start out again as a lawyer?”
    “Law died even before art. In fact, the concept of art changed without our realizing it. The era of art has ended, and the art of our age is simply diversion, the only art possible in an age of science. Science has taken over all fields except the circus.”
    “Really, we’re all going to pieces, one after the other.”
    “Say rather that we’ve grown up, and regard your success in life as an exemplary case. I think that amusement is a splendid objective for the world-weary people of the twentieth century. What we consider real art is only the light coming from a star which died millions of years ago. So we’d better grow up and pay the clowns the respect they deserve.”
    “It seems to me that philosophy has destroyed art.”
    “Rather science has destroyed both philosophy and art. So let’s amuse ourselves without reserve, with the innocence of children and the intelligence of men—light stories and raucous laughter and nonsensical pictures—and let’s renounce delusions of grandeur, and the exalted throne of science, and be content with popular acclaim and the material rewards.”
    That both pleased me and saddened me. I suffered from conflicting emotions and recollected in dismay the one still in prison.
    “Dear Baldy” applies the balsam of consolation to yourfailure with surprising skill. In the future he’ll strive on a lower level for the force you once had. While you, who once searched for the secret of existence, have turned into a wealthy lawyer sinking in gluttony.
    “If science is what you imagine, what are we but intruders on the periphery of life?”
    “We’re successful men with a secret burden of sorrow; it’s unwise to open the wounds.”
    “We belong, in fact, to a bygone age.”
    “For God’s sake, don’t open the wounds.”
    “Scientists are strong through their allegiance to the truth, but our strength derives from money which loses its legality day by day.”
    “So I say that death represents the one true hope in human life.”
    Omar looked gently at his daughter’s green eyes and said, “Buthayna, is it unreasonable to ask you not to give up your scientific studies?”
    “No, I won’t, but poetry will still be the most beautiful thing in my life.”
    “Let it be. I won’t dispute that. But you can be a poet and at the same time an engineer, for example.”
    “You seem to be preoccupied with my future!”
    “Of course! I don’t want you to wake up one day to find yourself in the Stone Age while everyone around you is in the age of science.”
    “But poetry—”
    He interrupted. “I won’t contradict you, dear. My friend Mustapha finds poetry, religion, and philosophy in science, but I won’t argue that position. I’m pleased and proud of you.”
    The large red disk of the sun was sinking, its force and vitality absorbed by the unknown. The eye could gaze easilyat it now, as at the water. Rosy dunes of clouds pressed around it.
    Do you really want to know my secret, Mustapha? In the agony of failure, I sought power, that evil which we’d wanted to abolish. But you already know this secret.

           
FIVE
    I n the fading glow of the sun, she