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while we are captive.”
    â€œAre you a poet?”
    â€œAll of us are poets, master.”
    â€œHave you suffered a great deal?”
    â€œWhat is life save a succession of pains that eventually accustom us to enjoying pain’s bitterness?”
    â€œWoe to anyone who does not acquire a taste for pain’s bitter flavor.”
    â€œMaster, your slave here present before you, has in his lifetime seen calamities that make the affliction of slavery appear insignificant.”
    â€œBut don’t people say death is easier to bear than slavery?”
    â€œDeath actually is easily borne, master. Death is easier to bear than anything else, even when slavery isn’t the alternative. So, what if we’re able to wager only the body and thereby assure life for the heart?”
    â€œThat’s a hard choice!”
    â€œLiving’s hard; dying is easy.”
    When the master did not respond, he continued, “It’s difficult to live, because we learn through pain. It’s easy to die, because we are made miserable by what we learn.”
    The master expressed his agreement in a pained moan like a mournful ballad. He did not leave to sleep until shortly before dawn.
    The following evening he sat with his captive and asked him to discuss calamities. So he told his master he had seen a land quake so violently that it swallowed what stood on its surface, a homeland trade one set of inhabitants for another, a windstorm blow hard enough to carry off people and their livestock and bring in other residents, a son raise his hand to stab his father, and a daughter disguise herself each night to couple in bed with her father. He told his master about the effects of an epidemic when it sweeps across the desert, about calamities occasioned by drought, the terrors of hostile raids, and many other afflictions.
    It was not hard for the man to discern in each misfortune he heard recounted a message from the spirit world. So he developed a taste for these evening conversations and persisted in sitting with his captive each night until they became boon companions. He told him confidentially one day, “Man should not fear a man who has suffered, because just as there is nothing to fear for a man who has suffered, there is nothing to fear from him.” That was before he put all his possessions at the captive’s disposition. In fact, it was before he made him master over his whole world, so that even the master was at the captive’s beck and call. He commented jokingly at the time they concluded this contract, “In our world, the owner is the slave and the slave the owner. So don’t imagine I freed you when I relinquished control over you. From now on, I’ll be a chain around your neck.” Thereafter he did not discuss anything having to do with his possessions, until he fell prey to an illness that quickly dispatched him. Then his household found in his possessions a piece of leather by which he left his captive half of his livestock along with a gift called freedom. So, emancipated, he returned to his homeland.
    He regained his homeland in the northern desert but found no family members, no fellow tribesmen, and no pastures. His family had perished, the tribe had been dispersed, and the earth had been scorched by drought. So he headed south and left half of his herd of camels – untended – to forage for any grass that had survived the lengthy drought in the sandy areas near the oases. Then he settled in the oasis and sold the remainder of his herd in the markets. He built a hut there and waited, gleaning information about his camels from wayfarers and caravan leaders and inquiring about the desert’s condition. The drought’s curse, however, continued unabated. So he thought he would defang calamity by amusing himself. He forgot that man always errs when he decides to amuse himself, because amusement – as subsequently became evident – is actually nothing