Chapter Twenty-Five
Let him who gives me a shadow not hold me.
You know the breadth of a star
is not equal to the embrace of the ray.
Let me go, blue holy light,
my shadow is in torment on the black earth.
Am I drunk, or is my road drunk?
The snow flows, the earth is white and black.
The word ‘I’ is a wanderer like I,
you are eternal as an icy, cracked puddle.
Did we trip over our shadow
or did the mirage melt in the icy pupil —
a roof, holding up a lamp, when the house moved.
-Belgi
After Haroun ran away in the late spring with two other young men from Khorezm, the imam Abdulaziz assigned his own overseer to Yosir and Umar. This young man, who was known as Saeed, had recently arrived from Chechnya, and by local standards he was extravagantly talkative.
Every st
