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“I am afraid that I may die tomorrow without knowing myself. My life experiences have taught me that a frightful chasm separates me from the others. The same experiences also have taught me when to remain silent and keep my thoughts to myself. Nevertheless, I have decided that I should write. That I should introduce myself to my shadow―the stooped shadow on the wall that voraciously swallows all that I put down. It is for him that I am making this experiment to see if we can know each other better. Since the time when I severed my ties with others, I want to know myself better. Absurd thoughts! Fine. Yet these thoughts torture me more than any reality. Are not these people who resemble me, who seemingly share my needs, whims and desires gathered here to deceive me? Are they not shadows brought into existence to mock and beguile me? Are not all my feelings, observations, and calculations imaginary and quite different from reality? I write only for the benefit of my shadow on the wall. I need to introduce myself to it. I thought in this base world, full of poverty and misery, for the first time in my life, a ray of sunshine shone on my life. But alas, instead of a sunbeam it was a transient beam, a shooting star that appeared to me in the likeness of a woman or an angel. In the light of that moment that lasted about a second, I witnessed all my life's misfortunes, and discovered their magnitude and grandeur. Then that beam of light disappeared into the dark abyss for which it was destined. No. I could not keep that transient beam for myself.” — Sadegh Hedayat