“The stifling, humid heat that hung over the country like a wet sheet deprived all hope of sleep. The cicadas seemed to help the heat, and the screaming jackals helped them. It was impossible to sit quietly in a dark, empty house where there was an echo. So at ten o'clock in the evening I stuck my cane in the middle of the garden and watched which way it would fall. She pointed precisely to the moonlit road to the city of the Terrible Night. The sound of the cane falling scared the hare. He limped out of his hole and ran across to the old Mohammedan cemetery, where jawless skulls and round shin bones, heartlessly exposed by the July rains, glittered like mother-of-pearl on the rain-soaked ground. The hot air and heavy earth drove out even the dead in search of coolness. The hare, limping, continued to run; with curiosity he sniffed a piece of smoked lamp glass and disappeared into the shadow of a tamarisk grove..."