One year is enough

I am from a village called Hawara, where the stars are countless. Our people warned us, as a community, that the most important of them would not grow warts on our skin. And so I was, immersed in counting them... There, the sky was beside us, and the righteous and the wicked alike generally shared their faith without boasting... Hawara is the place of the ogress dwelling in the western cave, and the sheikh who frees the captive and heals the sick. Hawara is the scent of the herb clinging to my father... Hawara is the kitchen, the water jug, the rain, the lightning, and my mother's jasmine. But I was torn from that paradise and imprisoned! In prison, I experienced the worst kinds of living, but life has always been, for me, worth fighting for. I claim that prison was a true teacher; it taught me, without intermediaries, the mountain with its vast world teeming with angels and demons, and showed me the question of freedom. Now, we will certainly do so to the world that does not support it... We have found in this life, with its many shortcomings, that we must complete with our own efforts... with our own stories.