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came up to us, this one too real to appear in a dream, a huge man. The two men, one of whom carried a smallish axe, stopped at the foot of a wall and tied my hands: they said the pasha had commanded that I should be beheaded at once if I would not become a Muslim. I froze.

    Not so quickly, I thought. They were looking at me with pity. I said nothing. At least don’t let them ask me again, I was saying to myself, when a moment later they did ask. Suddenly my religion became something that seemed easy to die for; I felt I was important, and on the other hand I pitied myself the way these two men did who made it harder for me to abandon my religion the more they interrogated me. When I tried to think of something else the scene through the window overlooking the garden behind our house came to life before my eyes: peaches and cherries lay on a tray inlaid with mother-of-pearl upon a table, behind the table was a divan upholstered with straw matting strewn with feather cushions the same colour as the green window-frame; further back, I saw a sparrow perched on the edge of a well among the olive and cherry trees. A swing tied with long ropes to a high branch of a walnut-tree swayed slightly in a barely perceptible breeze. When they asked me once again, I said I would not change my religion. They pointed to a stump, made me kneel and lay my head upon it. I closed my eyes, but then opened them again. One of them lifted the axe. The other said perhaps I had regretted my decision: they stood me up. I should think it over a while longer.

    Leaving me to reconsider, they began to dig into the earth next to the stump. It occurred to me they might bury me here right now, and along with the fear of death, I now felt the fear of being buried alive. I was telling myself I’d make up my mind by the time they finished digging the grave when they came towards me, having dug only a shallow hole. At that moment I thought how very foolish it would be to die here. I felt I could become a Muslim, but I had no time to form a resolve. If I’d been able to return to the prison, to my beloved cell I’d finally grown used to, I could have sat up all night thinking and made the decision to convert, but not like this, not right away.

    They seized me suddenly, pushing me to my knees. Just before I laid my head on the stump I was bewildered to see someone moving through the trees, as if flying; it was me, but with a long beard, walking silently on the air. I wanted to call out to the apparition of myself in the trees, but I could not speak with my head pressed against the stump. It will be no different from sleep, I thought, and let myself go, waiting; I felt a chill at my back and the nape of my neck, I didn’t want to think, but the cold at my neck made me go on. They stood me up, grumbling that the pasha would be furious. As they untied my hands they admonished me: I was the enemy of God and Muhammad. They took me up to the mansion.

    After letting me kiss the hem of his skirt, the pasha treated me gently; he said he loved me for not abandoning my faith to save my life, but a moment later he started to rant and rave, saying I was being stubborn for nothing, Islam was a superior religion, and so on. The more he chastised me the angrier he became; he had decided to punish me. He began to explain he’d made a promise to someone, I understood that this promise spared me sufferings I would otherwise have endured, and finally realized that the man to whom the promise had been made, an odd man judging from what he said, was Hoja. Then the pasha said abruptly that he had given me to Hoja as a present. I looked at him blankly; the pasha explained that I was now Hoja’s slave, he’d given Hoja a document, the power to make me a freed-man or not was now his, he would do whatever he liked with me from now on. The pasha left the room.

    I was told that Hoja was at the mansion too, waiting for me downstairs. I realized then that it was he I had seen through