He and his six brothers, he says, fled to Uganda when the Muslims killed his parents in the war. They lived by hunting in the bush. Now all his brothers are famous. So he says. Why not believe him, until it becomes important?

Perhaps there are men raised in peace and lucidity, with no phantoms on their tails, who see nothing in a storm cloud but convection currents and water vapor. In any case I would not change places with one of them. What grandeur there is in my life blossoms out of my own mean beginnings. What times of peace I know are a thousand times more precious

The girls are rehearsing, hands linked in a line, singing a chant and making little runs across the sand. The men insist on posing for endless group shots, faces set in the sternest expressions, except for Minderbender, who fools about constantly in his khaki shorts, ruining the fake authenticity and making it real.

A window flew open on the past, on half-baked impressions left by Bible tales and Christmas carols which I had discounted then as silly fables and superstitions. Such things had no place in the crowded streets and classrooms of my childhood. They were only possible here, under this sky, in this light and on this land. This was Bible country, and on

I had launched myself on a journey to circle the globe, but I seemed to be on another journey as well, a great voyage of discovery into my own subconscious. And I trembled a little at the thought of what monsters I might encounter there.

I was becoming a carrier of the dreams of men. I gathered themlike pollen, fertilizing as I went. But I had not yet quite realized my power, nor its transforming effect on people, and I still thought they were as I saw them.

I have also had time to learn a confidence I never knew before, and surely my own confidence in the face of strangers must, in turn, increase their confidence in me. Then there is also the fact that I am proud of what I am doing. There is no denying it. I try to be modest, to say anyone could do it. But they don't, and I feel I have managed to pull

For three days and two nights I drift up the Nile along Lake Nasser. The sunrises and sunsets are so extraordinarily beautiful that my body turns inside out and empties my heart into the sky.

"I suppose I can always try," I say.His smile is the one reserved for troublesome idiots."Yes. You may try."