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This one’s for Barbara,
in which we manage to simultaneously reiterate
certain points of difficulty,
while once again starting anew.
I will tell you therefore a story of life and death, of dreams unforetold and places no able man has ever seen. My tale shall hold within its bounds the hidden secrets of beasts and the true nature of men, and it shall range from the distant day before there was a Baghdad to a time far after every one of us is gone from this earth, and ifrits and magicians are thought of as nothing more than childish fantasies.
Not, of course, that my humble excuses for storytelling are in any way exceptional. But I digress.
