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By Root 1167 0

and was one of the astomii, with a nose as big as your hands. Didymus made a house for himself of ox-skin and the great long bones one sometimes uncovers on the slopes of the Axle of Heaven. Every day I went to him, for I was deathly curious about the single soul in all the world who did not love me—though that did not last long. Soon enough I pounced upon him and kissed his face and he scratched my skull where I had begun to molt and show my new snowy coat beneath the blue. When I had grown and another family was busily swelling up with Nimat’s next child, my friend often blushed when I greeted him in the fashion of the panotii when among intimate family: wrapping my legs around his waist to sit in his lap, closing him up entirely in the expanse of my pale ears. He whispered to me, in that sacred space my body makes, that it was not right that we should sit so, that it was bold and shameless.

I was confused. Why should there be any shame within a family? You are Nimat now, and one of mine. It is not my fault your Yeshua had such small ears and could not teach you proper manners or sit in your lap.

No, he said roughly, that is not what I mean. A husband and wife might embrace thus, but not an unmarried woman and an old man.

I did not understand him. He did not understand me. So I did as I liked.

Didymus liked best to tell his stories, of his brother, and their friends, and Yerushalayim in the autumn-time, when they ate goat together around a long table, and talked together about the nature of the world, and the nature of the soul.

What is a soul? I said.

A soul is what makes a man a man, he told me, and not a beast. It is the immortal substance of a man, that will live forever.

I will live forever, I said, and leaned my cheek against his.

Didymus did not really believe me. In his world, people live a short time and then die, like the first pioneers who settled the capital of Nural. In his world, when you bury a person in the earth, they stay there, and turn into bones, and do not grow at all.

Lamis, Who Visited Her Grandmother’s Tree Every Saturday and Talked to Her About Government and Cream-Making: No! No, Butterfly, say it couldn’t be. That’s too terrible, to die and stay dead!

Ikram, Who Trembled: Don’t cry, Lamis. We don’t live in that awful world.

Another time, I asked him: Do I have a soul?

Didymus Tau’ma said: I don’t know, Imtithal. I wish my brother were here. He could tell you. But I am only a man, and I do not know what you have, where my soul is.

And I could feel all his body beneath me rigid and tense, and I wanted him to be at ease, so I warbled a little, my favorite song, and fluttered my eyelids against his cheek, and he began to weep within my ears, because strangers are mystifying and sometimes incomprehensible.

Didymus lived with us for many years, until he was terribly old. We tried to tell him about the Fountain, but he insisted that he was happy to be so near to seeing his brother once more, and did not wish to lengthen their time apart. His hair turned white; his skin withered up like a walnut. He learned to make ox-tea. He built a little chapel where he could worship his god and prepare himself to meet his brother. He asked us to join him, but we did not wish to, taking comfort as we do in the universe as it is: subject only to our own love and seeking after wisdom, and governed by no jealous divinity.

And then, one day, he lay down and did not get up. He called me into his hut and I lay on him, lightly, since he could not move, and covering his face with my ears for the last time. By then, he loved the closing of them around him, the secret space they make. This is what we said to each other:

“Listen to me, Imtithal.”

“I listen.”

“I have been happy here. It has been a good life. I have known joy.”

“This comforts me. I do not want you to die.”

“Yet, I must. But before we part, I wish to tell you, and know that you will tell everyone: there are paths from my world to yours. Men will take them. Perhaps not soon, but one day they will.”

“I will be so jubilant, to meet others