“I know exactly what you mean, Habi, and I will tell you exactly how you feel. You feel you have a precious thing, and that is your close friends. You feel you are very lucky to have them and you feel it is good to care for them and to keep them but you are disappointed to discover that your care for them is not absolute, is not unlimited as you had believed. You now see some limit to your love. You dislike that limit.”

“And it hurts me so much to feel that limit, Auna,” Habi added.

“You feel it is tolerable that anybody can be better on condition that Habi was not the worse,” Auna continued. “It would even be acceptable if everybody would remain bad if Habi could not be any good. Those are the limits. You cannot understand why you feel that way. You are disturbed and disappointed to discover you have kind of rules or conditions for loving and caring for your beloved friends. You wish your love was unconditional and absolute. You want to feel it is complete. But you only find incompleteness. And there is not much you can do about it. All you can do is to feel bad about yourself for what you believe is impure love.”

Habi, thoughtful for a few seconds replied, “Could I have ever expressed it better than that? Exactly, Auna. I am so sorry.”

Auna, not paying much attention to Habi’s apology, continued, “And you wonder why. Why your care is impure. Why your good wishes are conditional. Why you have difficulty facing and coping with implications or threats that you might be any less when compared to your dearest friends.”

Habi, growing impatient and enthusiastic for explanations blurted, “Yes, Auna, yes, Auna. Why? Why?”

Auna, keeping the pace of the build-up he was making, asked, “Why was it tolerable for anybody to be good but not tolerable to be good enough to outrun you?”

Habi, now taking part in the build-up too and further emphasizing his sufferings, “It is a contradiction that I just can’t settle. It is an ambivalence that I just can’t live with.”

“But truly, Habi, I don’t see any contradictions. I think it’s quite normal to feel that way. It’s quite normal to pursue betterness.”

Habi, surprised by this, asked, “Even if that betterness is at the expense of your close friends?”

“You have a closer friend, Habi. You have a more intimate companion, more intimate to you than me, Noah and Watuna.”

“And who’s that?”

“It’s Habi. It’s your very self. And you cannot escape.”

“Escape what?”

“Your intimate fears that look after the intimate companion in you, your sick worries that mother the journey of your very self in this world, your worries that accompany you to canopy the days of your life, your worries that you might be left alone with no company, your worries that you might be left behind and abandoned in a lonely Tikita on your own with no company save saber-teeth. You cannot escape. Have you ever heard of a horse that could run so fast that it could escape the whips of the rider on its back?”

Still not getting exactly what Auna was after, Habi asked, “What do you mean?”

“That there are limits Habi, limits that others should not exceed. I do not blame you. No one can blame you for trying to keep your place on the big boat.”

“Limit? Big boat? What is all that, Auna?”

“Habi, why did you come here to Hikanda?”

“To live with all the others, with all those Hikandians. Haven’t I told you?”

“You came here for the number. Isn’t that the word that you always use to refer to your Hikandian life? ‘Living with the number and with the assets of the number?’ Isn’t that what you always say?”

“Yes, I came here to live with the number. I need the companionship of all those other humans to survive better.”

“And every human needs it too. No sane man would choose to do it on his own after he had come to know about the number and about its assets. Don’t you always say humans need each other so badly?”

“Indeed they do.” 

“More than you might imagine.” Auna added. “It’s as if that we, humans, are all so stuck together on the same boat on a vast ocean like the one that Watuna has been telling us stories about. We need to help each other if that boat is to stay afloat. But I tell you what. There is a limit to that need, Habi.”

“And what is that limit?” Habi asked.

“There is a personal danger zone. No one, no matter how dear to you is allowed to enter that danger zone.”

“And what is that danger zone?”

“It is your seat on that boat. It is your rank on the list of survivors.”

Habi remained silent waiting for Auna to proceed and invited him with his surprised eyes and raised eyebrows to continue.

Auna continued, “If someday that boat got too heavy with its inhabitants or if the grains became too scarce and insufficient for their many mouths, someone would have to be sacrificed from that starving human boat.”

“Sacrificed? What do you mean, sacrificed?”

“The many would sacrifice a one or a one-by-one into the ocean, into a world deprived of the number and its assets, into aloneness with its inherent dangers and risks.”

Thoughtful and starting to get the meaning, Habi added, “Into a Tikita speckled with so many curved teeth.”

“That is every man’s worry on the boat and that is your worry too. And knowing that the least useful and hence the least needed might likely be ‘the one,’ you will never just sit and watch your beloved self left behind and outrun by others, any others, in the entire human race.” 

Excerpted from Tikitian Imprints © Copyright 2012 by Hatem Eleishi. Reprinted with permission by Goose River Press. All rights reserved.