My dear friends, listen now to the situation in the city. A week after the public reception at the royal palace known as Ali Qaboos, a rumor spread through the city at dawn that the world's leader, along with all the ministers, soldiers, attendants, and women of the harem, had fled during the night. The rumor claimed that the dervishes would seize power, plunder the city, put everyone to the sword, and spill the blood of children. Groups of men returning from the bathhouse or the mosque, or simply curious onlookers who had ventured out that dawn seeking news, began visiting the homes of aunts, uncles, friends, and acquaintances whenever they gathered. They relayed their suspicions and conjectures as if they were reliable news, as if they had witnessed it firsthand. Each group expressed their fears and anxieties about the future, or the hopes they harbored in their hearts, in the form of good or bad news, acceptable or unacceptable, and they passed it on to the ears of others.