“We’ll imprison one another. We’ll get used to it. We’ll turn into moles, into bats, into scorpions.”
“We won’t even get out. We’ll come to love the silence and the darkness.”
“We won’t get out. We’ll stay here forever. We can’t live without eternity.”
“We won’t forget one another.”
“We’ll imprison our adversaries up above; we’ll banish them to the earth. And we’ll forget about them.”
“‘When they’re pulled from hell, they’ll be thrown into the river of life.’”
“They’ll be unhappy up above. They’ll cry: ‘Give us a little darkness. We were together with you!”’
“And we’ll say to them: ‘Find darkness for yourself. Create it yourself!”’
“How unhappy they’ll be! They’ll cry: ‘Release us! Let us come down below!’ And we’ll say to them: ‘That’s your own fault. You didn’t believe us.’”
“That’s your own fault. Remain up above.”
“Occasionally I’ll go up to the earth.”
“You always rebel.”
“You’ll be a mole-dervish. You’ll make sure that we never begin to see, that we never wander out of our dark world”
―
Meša Selimović,
Death and the Dervish
