‘Listen to me very carefully. Nothing is the same. Nothing will ever be the same again. There lives in this earth a woman who can be my friend and my lover. Do you understand that? Do you understand what a marvelous thing that is?
. . . ‘You’re in love, my lord,’ Amin sneered. ‘Take a cold bath and it will pass.’
I stood up and grabbed Amin. I pulled him up next to me and put my face very close to his. ‘You know nothing,’ I told him. ‘You’re an ignoramus. Haven’t you the imagination to think what it will be like to love such a woman? At that moment, our two bodies and our two souls will become one. I would travel to the ends of the earth, I would die, my friend, in search of such a consummation.’
-Prince Mahmud, Seven Daughters and Seven Sons, Barbera Cohan and Bahija Lovejoy, 1982
So Many Thoughts 