I sat for a long time on the hill of Rihanie on the morning that I said goodbye. I watched my comrades leave the house and take the usual route to Çatalhöyük. I was still watching them when they had long since disappeared into the hollow of the hill. - Now you could hear the echo of pickaxes and shovels in the distance. Now the basket-carrying boys were walking across the field. The sun was already high. They stopped for a moment by the large urn to scoop out a handful of water and quench their thirst. Then they went back with the empty baskets to have them filled with earth again. A chain of boys moved slowly along the edge of the hill, another chain came towards them. Their white headscarves shone...

In the far distance, I no longer recognized Çatalhöyük, it was one of a hundred heaps of broken glass on the plain.

Basket-bearing boys, I have forgotten what names you were called by!

Because I am not an excavator. I have no profession. I could have done all kinds of jobs. Lived in all cities. Been at home in all countries. But I do not make bargains: and the price of "The Good Life" was too high.

***

I remember all the warnings that were given to me and all of the advice. But they used a language I no longer understood. 

They accused me of wantonly putting myself in danger, of being happy to waste my energy on any adventure, and of being too hopeless to attempt any task of a "normal life". - Where is adventure in your minds?

Their words meant nothing to me. —What about the caravan trail behind the garden wall?

Then they warned me. “You are alienating yourself from our customs and habits. Think about it: one needs support, that is why morality was invented and authority ordained. Think about it: not with impunity... It is about you being happy.”

-Correct, being happy has the last word. And they should not despise it with impunity. 

***

But the earth is shaking. 

Fires are blazing in the west. The churches are collapsing. Their fields are devastated. Their children are killed under the walls of their own houses. Should happiness be tied to such a false peace? - It is drowned in tears, smothered in the lamentations for those who died in vain. - Poor souls! - But they do not want to listen. They do not want to see. Fear has gripped them, they only want to defend themselves. - What if the wall of your customs and habits no longer holds? - If your standards and goals no longer apply?

I received a letter in Baghdad:

“Enough! - We do not want to lose you to the Persian plateaus.”

But you cannot go far enough to forget their false standards and goals. I had to disappoint them! - Years passed and they wrote me this other letter:

“If one day you are found in a ditch beside a foreign country road - we will not even have the courage to mourn you. We will only shrug our shoulders: you did not want it any other way!”

The letter was the kind to which no one expects an answer. 

Their accusations were as dry as autumn leaves. - Wasn’t there a breeze outside? - Oh, to breathe, to breathe more freely! - But they have closed all the windows. They want to live in peace, and the battlefields of the new wars are too close: they are already bordering their gardens. And I have learned, now, how to be afraid.

*****