Now, at the end of all roads, it seems to me that I did not choose Persia - I could  have chosen any other country just as well. Just listen: Afghanistan, the Aral Sea, Bukhara, Svaneti, Ormus, Punjab, Kashmir, Turfan - and Pamir (Kirghiz for "solitude") - the roof of the world. I told myself that the wonderful plateaus of Persia were also the roof of the world - why not? - To the contrary, the name with which we have now christened this valley is irrevocable:

I suppose I found a climate here that suits me. Although I had to put up with malaria fever, as well as with a few other things. I have returned to Persia three times. So I did want it... My freedom... I now understand this word, and say it although it causes me great sadness. Don't worry! Sadness in this country thrives like pomegranate trees. And I have learned to use other words too. - Words are precious, they are tools of magic. - I know what I’m talking about, although the magic I use now is of a different, peerless kind. 

I knew a little of it when I first came to Persia, and never expected it to be an easy pleasure: the smell of opium in the chauffeurs’ bars made me sick, my acquaintance with the vice was like a second expulsion from paradise, enjoyed with bitter remorse; I recoiled as if from a snake bite. But one only measures the temptation once, one only regrets once. I got used to a remedy whose terribly growing power I had no idea of, which offered my thirsting impatience the relief of rapid visions. 

Reality had become unbearable to me - that unmediated encounter with the world which I had sought so passionately, loved so passionately! - That reality which rejects every human hierarchy, mocks all calculations, evades the aridity of our systems, whose abundance we always have before our eyes, whose wealth is tangible, whose loving embrace we long for, a hundred times in vain, touching but once, only once, in a state of grace!— Voluntarily deprived of all protection, defenseless, looking tirelessly, I allowed myself to easily become confused. The rocks came towards me and struck me down unexpectedly, the rivers lay in wait for me with the slow force of their clay-yellow water masses, gray rock, basalt against the blue sky was hopelessly painful, the plains were not even hostile, just too big.

I was dismayed to see the glittering splendor of golden mosques rising above the palms of Shah Abdul Azim, the roofs of Kum, the white desolation of the salt desert of Kavir made me stagger, a lone camel, followed by its foal, walked towards the horizon and patiently trudged round tracks in the sand. It dragged the trickling path behind it like a ship drags its milky waterway. Then the dizzying climb of Shalus exhausted me, the bold curves that reached deep into ravines to cross a bare, steep, sun-carved slope in a sudden turn. And the foamy lightness of the mountain air, which I am now accustomed to breathing, made me tremble. I exchanged it for the feverish fumes of Mazandaran, I got to know a devastating melancholy fed by the humidity of the jungle. Returning to Tehran, I found the narrow streets saturated with heat like ovens. In the evening I left the gate and rode around the crumbling city walls. I saw vultures fluttering with heavy wing beats over the cemetery plain, I saw many caravans on their way to Veramin, I heard their bells ringing. And always the monotonous lamentation of donkeys.

Under the brightly tiled archway of Veramin, soldiers were playing dice on a spread-out cloak. - I already knew the incredible play of colors of the setting sun that seemed to dissolve, that seemed to die as it sank towards the dusty breath of the great plain. I rode fast. My horse was named Bacht. - Finally I could take no more.

***

I was well aware that I was beginning to learn to see. The terrible exposure, that exposed me to innumerable images as if they were physical attacks, was the same as the magical gift of establishing a real relationship with these images, of simultaneously absorbing their colors, shapes and masses, simultaneously their movement or stillness, simultaneously their content of joy or sadness, simultaneously their muteness, their language, their song, their oppressive proximity, their intangible remoteness, and the memories that they awaken, the premonitions they could convey. I knew that in this state of receptivity I would not miss a single bird's cry over the Caspian Sea and that its hoarse wildness, its rising lament, its loss in the wind would bring back to me the lost, wind-whipped melancholy of that coast. I knew that the sunset, in riotous colors, over the pale plain of Tehran, smothered in dusty heat, would from now on always mean to me the marriage of heaven and earth, with all that it contains of silent expectation, splendor and the gleam of a beloved's eyes, painfully persistent tenderness, rebellion, deadly sweetness, together, crying, sleeping pressed heart-to-heart in a nighttime tent. I heard the lonely boy's voice on the bridge of Isfahan, floating over the water, and I heard the floating, sinking, rising, as if on bird's wings, calling of the mullahs  who, at midday, in white turbans and white robes, leaned over the parapets of slender minarets, surrounded by pigeons, while the shining sky and the azure domes shot trembling arrows at one another in the heat.- Indeed, I knew that I was not just seeing pictures, hearing sounds, taking them in and making sense of them as I pleased; I knew that all of this belonged to me absolutely: that there were no more obstacles between me and the visible, audible, perceptible, tangible world. But I also no longer knew how to protect myself against it - the currents flowed through me and touched my heart. That was the beginning of magic, the return to reality - ready to receive a revealed truth (as one had received the sounds, the images), one already felt the thrill of its great proximity.

But although I should not have felt alone - since I was surrounded, enveloped by the hidden energies of the earth - I sometimes found myself, returning from deep contemplation, alone on the edge of the busy city. While I was starting to decipher secret inscriptions, read traces and give new names to my discoveries,— at the same time, I seemed to be losing my understanding of human language. I felt rich, overcome by abundance, yet a donkey’s bray, a falling stone could make me jump, as if I had not just now been in the world, as if I had been outside of it, on a wrong path -, and was only now forced to deal with the things around me, to turn the attention of my senses to the donkey's bray, to the falling stone. In order to gain my freedom, I had given up all habits, forgotten all memories, renounced all protocols and niceties- now a street vendor could run me over, the rolling of a cab could frighten me, and a harmless conversation among guests in a furnished salon drove me mad: for I could not reconcile what I now heard around me with that other view of the world which had just been present to me and which I considered to be genuine. But in order to regain this presence, to assure myself of it again, I had to gather around myself again and again that absolute silence, undisturbed by any falling stone, and remain in a lonely bareness which sometimes seemed unbearable to me - although it was precisely then that my sober and empty heart became receptive, had room for previously undreamed-of powers and it was precisely then - and only then - that I was seized by a feeling which was equally different from joy or pain, related to the astonishment of love, only one step away from it. - But at the same time I knew that I would never reach it. That my state of intense, constantly renewed waiting was like a foolish obsession. That I spurned my daily occupations with the excuse that there were more important things to do. And that exhaustion would not fail to appear.

***

And I ask you now - I must ask, while I am still sure of your presence, while all is not yet lost: is this the final consolation? Is this the last rite,— so bitter-tasting? 

Does the fear of love and the fear of the most extreme things ripen under the same sky? - The exhaustion, the terrible persistence of the rapture that you give me, the silence that your gentleness imposes on me and the grief always on the threshold -. I will never leave you! - So why am I crying, why is this cry so desperate? - We are alone in this room, the walls are floating, nothing disturbs the silence, nothing binds us to the heavy earth.— Ah, I’m in terrible need! I want the soothing of your hands! —Don’t answer me, don’t answer me!

*****