Epilogue

He couldn't close his eyes to dream, he didn't need to..his whole life was a dream, he spent his waking hours watching the distant paradise as it slept like a baby in her cradle, the space between them vanished as the night grew older, he could see the lights of Andalusia, the lights which showed him the way through the darkness of estrangement, of body..and mind.

As dawn washed the hills with thin shades of divine light, he boarded the first boat to take him across this barrier, this carrier of longing for his land, where he belongs; every cell in his body identified with an identical grain of sand on the beaches of Almeria, every blink his eyes made identified with the flip of a bird's wings in the gardens of Granada, every beat his heart made sounded in the valleys and plains of Seville, this was a reunion witnessed by all creation..silently.

He reached the promised land, his promised land..where rivers of milk and honey flowed..he swiftly jumped off the boat and ran like a child into his awaiting mother's arms..his mother was called Andalusia, and she was waiting for him behind that rocky veil..Gibraltar, as it sheltered his tired body. He was looking around..reassuring himself through his drunken sobriety..he couldn't make sense of this feeling..it was as if all his past had been erased..he was born right there..as he stepped on the shore, he was a newborn child..coming home for the first time, everything he had said and done before his birth..rebirth, was deleted from his system..this was the beginning..beginning is an only child..it has no siblings.

As days went by, he walked in the tired streets of the "late" Cordoba, and saw the signs of old age on the faces of even the young people, the air wasn't the air that once filled his lungs, Cordoba..the idea..was a distant past, funny how your past catches up with you sometimes, how it drives you to a better future, it's even more intriguing how everything from your past changes and you..remain the same, or so you think.

He never found her, he never found his freedom as he never found the promise he had set out to find, but he was content with his fate, for at last, he had become victorious over his own continuous defeats of doubts, and despite the inexplicable state of mind he had reached, he was finally home, home wasn't the one he was hoping to find, freedom tasted different..freedom wasn't there to find him, but the enduring effect that old man had left on him, Metropolitan, Jaffar, and the scar she had left in his heart would keep him going..as he witnessed the new chapters of Cordovan epics being written; Esperanza.