Arbi and I opened up to each other, talked about how we could get on in life, cut out the bad habits, the parties. We even went and talked with the imam about it, wanted to talk away all our sins. But the imam didn’t want to hear about every single mistake we’d ever made. He told a story, that one about the father who takes his unruly son to a wise man who then asks the boy to pull up a small plant. All right. The boy grabs it and pulls it up. Then the wise man asks him to pull up a slightly larger plant. OK, a bit harder, but fine. And in the end, he asks the boy to pull up a tree. “Don’t
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