from the zahir

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..."Marie, let's suppose that two firemen go into a forest to put out a small fire. Afterwards, when they emerge and go over to a stream, the face of one is all smeared with black, while the other man's face is completely clean. My question is this: which of the two will wash his face?"
"that's a silly question. The one with the dirty face of course."
"No, the one with the dirty face will look at the other man and assume that he looks like him.
And vice versa, the man with the clean face will see his colleague covered in grime and say to himself: I must be dirty too. I'd better have a wash."...

...There are two kinds of world: the one we dream about and the real one...

...That is why it is so important to let certain things go. To release them. To cut loose. People need to understand that no one is playing with marked cards; sometimes we win and sometimes we loose. Don't expect recognition for your efforts, don't expect your genius to be discovered or your love to be understood...stop being who you were and become who you are...

...I don't know why i so want to find Esther, now that my love for her has illumined my life, taught me new things, which is quite enough really. But I remember what Mikhail said: "The story needs to reach its end", and I decide to go on...

...I ask the sky same question, the same questions I used to ask my mother when I was child:
why do we love certain people and hate others?
where do we go after die?
why are we born if, in the end, we die?
what does God mean?...
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generally it is the story about the man finding something that he thought he has already had. true love i would say. his wife, who had almost 10 years lived together with him, dissapeared but he had no clue at all what was going on. the 'strange' experiences that he had to take in searching for his wife force him to put the destiny as the answer.

it is a nice story. the exploitation of the simple truth makes it even more interesting. and as it is expected, the author introduces almost all part of the worlds spread over europe, america, and asia to establish the strong connection with the various audiences. and that approach works perfectly well for me. knowing that some settings are familiar also increases the curiosity to the unvisited settings revealed in the detail of the story. all in all it is worthed to read when you have enough spare time.