One day on the Berlin subway he looked around his carriage, at the prosperous passengers, at a man with a glittering diamond ring, at a woman with a mouth “fixed in a stiff semblance of a smile.” To Asad, they all seemed miserable. They were “without any faith in binding truths, without any goal beyond the desire to raise their own ‘standard of living,’ without any hopes other than having more material amenities, more gadgets, and perhaps more power.”
