Death and the Dervish (Writings From An Unbound Europe) by Mesa Selimovic

that I had thought about him that morning and the night before. Maybe I thus did him an injustice, or maybe not. But he was not who was important: I was. I wanted to free myself from him, just as I had that morning. This was my second attempt to destroy him, to punish myself and to erase the trace that he had left. I had been too preoccupied with him, he had charmed me so much that I wavered within myself, even desiring for him to escape and remain free, like anuntamed river. His presence had offered a rare and unusual opportunity, one that needed to be preserved. That was what I thought, and I regretted it immediately. He had burst into my life in a moment of weakness, and was the cause and witness of a betrayal, short-lived but real. For this reason I wanted him to be the murderer; everything would thus have been easier. Murder is less dangerous than rebellion. Murder cannot be an ideal or an incitement; it evokes condemnation and disgust; it happens suddenly, when fear and conscience are forgotten. It is unpleasant, like an ugly reminder of the permanence of our base instincts, of which we are ashamed, as we are ashamed of our ignoble ancestors and criminal relatives. But rebellion is contagious; it can incite dissatisfactions that are always present. It resembles heroism, and maybe it is heroism, because it is resistance and dissent. It seems beautiful because it is borne by fanatics who die for beautiful words, who risk everything since they have nothing. Therefore it is attractive, just as anything that is dangerous can sometimes appear attractive and beautiful.
    My father stood in the middle of a room; he had opened the door and was waiting.
    I knew what I should have done; I should have gone up to him and embraced him, without hesitating or taking a moment to look at him. In that way everything between us would have been resolved in the best and simplest manner; I would have removed all of our inhibitions, and we would have been able to act like father and son. But it was difficult to reach out and embrace that gray-haired man, who was not standing for nothing in the middle of the room, fearing this encounter. We both felt awkward; we did not know how to behave or what to say to each other. Many years had passed since our last meeting, and we wanted somehow to conceal the fact that life had led us apart. We looked at each other for a few moments. His face was furrowed with age, his eyes fixed on me. He was not what he had once been. I had to reconstruct everything—his sharp, strained features,his powerful voice, the simplicity of a strong man who knew how to work with his hands—and for some reason I needed to imagine him younger and healthier, as he had long been preserved in my memory. God knows how he saw me, what he sought and what he found. We were two strangers who did not want to act as such. And most painful of all was the thought of how things should have been between us, and what we could and could not do.
    I bent down to kiss his hand, as all sons do, but he did not let me. We grabbed each other by the arms, like acquaintances, and that was best—it seemed intimate, but not overdone. Yet when I felt his arms, still strong, on mine, when I saw his gray, moist eyes from up close, when I recognized his hale scent, dear to me from childhood, I forgot about our awkwardness and leaned my head on his broad chest with a childlike gesture, suddenly moved by something that I thought had disappeared long ago. Maybe this very gesture excited me, or maybe hidden feelings were awakened by the old man’s nearness (he smelled of the lake and the wheatfield), or maybe the reason lay in his excitement, but I felt his collarbone tremble when I laid my forehead against it. Maybe my nature had taken control of me, or the miraculously revived remnant of what might have been my nature, surprising myself with an abundance of tears. That lasted only for a moment, and even before they began to dry I grew ashamed of that silly,