Brion Gysin

An excerpt from the book  The Process

    Oh, now I know how you Nazarenes think about things! I know how you think about things like radios, suits! You never could forget that radio, either, now could you? I remember how it happened, perfectly well. One night about midnight - oh, long after the affair of the suit - you were toiling slowly up the stairs of your street, just as I - oh, quite accidentally - happened along down the steps. I could see you'd been drinking. You said: "Hi, Hamid!" and five minutes later we were both smoking keef and listening to Radio Cairo on the shortwave, inside of your house. In the morning, you loaned me the radio of your very own free will, I remember, and I swore on the head of my mother to bring it right back. But, who can weigh his words in the face of the Unknown? A policeman I know, a very good friend of mine on the train, dropped into my room in the fondouk and he fell in love with that little radio as soon as he saw it. I swore on the head of my mother the radio belonged to an American friend who trusted me like a brother. "Why, then," sneered the policeman, "he'll buy you another." I shrugged and forgot it, right then and there. "Mektoub," it was writtten: what else can I say? But you - you never forgot that radio, right down to this very day. That's the way all you Nazarenes are! You hold grudges for years where a Muslim forgives and forgets.