"I was once a Persian." He smiled. "But I've almost forgotten my country's manners. First I should offer you some refreshment, and only then turn to affairs. Normally I would offer _sharbat_, but I understand you prefer wine?" Hawksworth stared at him speechless. No pious Muslim would drink wine. That much he knew. "Don't look so surprised. We Persian poets often drink wine . . . for divine inspiration." He laughed broadly. "At least that's our excuse. Perhaps Allah will forgive us. 'A garden of flowers, a cup of wine, Mark the repose of a joyous mind.'" He signaled one of the men, and a chalice of wine appeared, seemingly from nowhere. "I once learned a Latin expression,'in vino Veritas." As a Christian you must know it. 'In wine there is truth.' Have some wine and we will search for truth together." "Let's start with some truth from you. How do you know so much about me? And you still haven't told me who you are." "Who am I? You know, that's the most important question you can ask any man. Let us say I am one who has forsworn everything the world would have . . . and thereby found the one thing most others have lost." He smiled easily. "Can you guess what that is?" "Tell me." "My own freedom. To make verse, to drink wine, to love. I have nothing now that can be taken away, so I live without fear. I am a Muslim reviled by the mullahs, a poet denounced by the Moghul's court versifiers, a teacher rejected by those who no longer care to learn. I live here because there is no other place I can be. Perhaps I soon will be gone, but right here, right now, I am free. Because I bear nothing but love for those who would harm me." He stared out over the balcony for a moment in silence. "Show me the man who lives in fear of death, and I will show you one already dead in his soul. Show me the man who knows hate, and I will show you one who can never truly know love." He paused again and once more the room grew heavy with silence. "Love, English, love is the sweetness of desert honey. It is life itself. But you, I think, have yet to know its taste. Because you are a slave to your own striving. But until you give all else over, as I have done, you can never truly know love." "How do you think you know so much about me? I know nothing about you. Or about why I'm here." "But I think you've heard of me." Hawksworth stared at him for a moment, and suddenly everything came together. He could have shouted his realization. "You're Samad. The Sufi. . . ." He stopped, his heart racing. "Where is . . .?" "Yes, I'm a poet, and I'm called a Sufi because there is nothing else to call me." "You're not really a Sufi?" "Who knows what a Sufi is, my English friend? Not even a Sufi knows. Sufis do not teach beliefs. They merely ask that you know who you are." "I thought they're supposed to be mystics, like some of the Spanish Catholics."