Ends and beginnings

When I told my friend of the difficulty I was having in trying to bring this tale to an end, a difficulty that far exceeded any I'd known from my previous (literary) births, he said: "That's because you think of it as your last labor before your well goes dry."

He had called on me after a long climacteric "vacation of despair," which he'd spent outside the country, as befits that sort of vacation. Much to my delight, he commented on what he characterized as the "belated rejuvenation" he saw in my demeanor, even though my nimbleness had waned, and my confidence that I'd be able to ascend to the seventieth step of Methuselah's ladder wasn't what it had once been.

"You look," he said, "like someone starting his life all over again."

I said: "Is there any alternative?"

Emile Habiby
Saraya, The Ogre's Daughter