Knowing the monumental and unforgivable injustice I have visited on my beloved, I lack the will to put things right. I have held the whole world in contempt, on account of having misjudged you; I have shut myself away. Now I can see the truth. All the same, I have no choice but to condemn myself to everlasting solitude. Life is a game that is only played once, and I lost. There is no second chance.

...for the greatest betrayal, the greatest sin we can commit against the most blameless, is to abandon a loving heart, and for that I shall never be forgiven.

Why did I recoil from any new opportunity that came my way? Why was it that when someone tried to get close to me, my first thought was that they might hurt me?

They were having fun. They were alive. While I stood apart, locked up inside my own head, and watched – not, as I now understood, from above, but from below. It was not a surfeit of idiosyncrasy that had led me to shun society. I had pulled away because there was a part of me missing. But life was meant to be lived, as these people were doing. They were taking their share of life, and giving something back. What was I in comparison? What did my soul ever do, apart from gnawing away at me like a woodworm?

When they were in a position to love, they did not. Instead they ached for the unattainable – the opportunities missed, the salve that their broken hearts longed for – thereby mistaking their yearnings for love.

That’s how I understand only too well where men get their strength and ambition; there is no other creature on this earth that races after such easy success, and no other creature as proud, arrogant and egotistical, yet at the same time cowardly and set in his ways.

If we find we cannot get along, then we’ll just say goodbye and go our separate ways … Where’s the tragedy in that? The essence of life is in solitude – wouldn’t you agree? All unions are built on falsehood. People can only get to know each other up to a point and then they make up the rest, until one day, seeing their mistake, they turn their backs on sadness and run away. Would this ever happen, if they stopped believing in their dreams and made do with what was possible? If everyone accepted what was natural, then no one would suffer disappointment, no one would curse fate. We have every right to see our situation as pitiful, but we must confine our pity to ourselves. To pity another is to assume superiority and that is why we must never think we are superior to others.

I might have been unwise, I told myself, to take my life down a new path. For all I could see there was darkness. Wouldn’t it be easier to return to my old silence, my old numbing routine?

For as long as I could remember, I had – perhaps without knowing, or perhaps not daring to breathe the thought – been searching for someone. That was why I had been avoiding all others.

From the moment we came face to face, I lived in dread that my every glance and movement might reveal my true feelings.

If my works expressed anything personal, or exposed any personal particularity, I went to extreme lengths to hide them away, lest they ever see the light of day. If someone ever happened to find one, I would gasp like a naked woman caught in an intimate moment, and rush away blushing.

Perhaps what I will write will not be nearly as painful as what I have lived and it will bring me some relief. When I come to see how some of it was neither as simple nor complicated as I had thought, I might even find my ardour somewhat shaming … perhaps …

Something strange happened to me yesterday, and it sent me reeling back to that time I thought I’d left behind for ever. Now I know these memories will never leave me … One chance encounter, and I am cruelly awake, wrenched from the numb lethargy that has kept me going these last ten years. I would be lying if I said this could drive me mad, or be the death of me. People somehow manage to accustom themselves to what they first think insufferable. I, too, shall endure … But how? I look into the future, and all I see is a life of cruel torment. Somehow, I shall find a way to bear it … just as I have done until now … But I cannot go on with all this locked up inside me. There are things – so many things – that I need to say … but to whom? … Can there be another soul wandering this great globe who is as lonely as I? Who would hear me out? Where would I begin? I cannot recall saying anything to anyone over the past ten years. I have needlessly fled from society, needlessly driven people away. But what else can I do now? There’s no going back. It would serve no purpose. This can only mean that it was meant to be.

Do you still feel the need to hide so much from me? To me, you are the most precious person in the world … But even so, you want to see me the same way you see everyone else – as a nobody – and abandon me?’

I looked at this man who wished to leave nothing of himself behind, who, even as he moved towards death, wished to take his loneliness with him. And I wished him everlasting mercy. My own bond with him would last just as long.

How easily people can read each other! … And there I was, trying so hard to penetrate someone else’s mind, to find out if the soul hiding inside it was ordered or in turmoil. For even the most wretched and simple-minded man could be a surprise, even a fool could have a soul whose torments were a constant source of amazement. Why are we so slow to see this, and why do we assume that it is the easiest thing in the world to know and judge another? Why, when we are reluctant even to describe a wedge of cheese we are seeing for the first time, do we draw our final conclusions from our first encounters with people, and happily dismiss them?

It was more that he did not wish those around him to know who he was, and he was not, in any event, the sort of man who would be willing to exert himself to be known.

For how could a man so intimately acquainted with his surroundings, and so clear and sharp in his observations of others, ever know anger or excitement? What choice did a man like this have, in the face of small-minded attacks, but to stand firm like a rock? Our longings, our disappointments, our fits of rage – we succumb to them when something unexpected happens to us, something that seems to make no sense. Is it even possible to shock a man who is ready for anything, and who knows exactly what to expect from anyone?

When misfortune visits those who once walked alongside us, we do tend to feel relief, almost as if we believe we have ourselves been spared, and as we come to convince ourselves that they are suffering in our stead, we feel for these wretched creatures. We feel merciful. This was more or less the tone Hamdi took when he asked, ‘Are you still writing?’

And everything in this scene seemed content to be where it was. All was well with the world. All was in its proper place. There was, I thought, nothing more I could do.

The more I needed my friends, the more I longed to run away.

And here was the strangest thing: the more my situation worsened, the less I could be sure of surviving from one day to the next, the greater my shame and my reluctance to ask for help.