Some Particulars

“One-Head-Two-Ears” was behind the window. The seven-headed dragon at the bottom of every cistern lay in ambush. The jinn, with their woolly tails and their stone hooves, were hidden in the cupboard, and we — eyes shut — afraid, always had to blow all around us and, imitating, make sounds in a foreign tongue; with undoubting faith in the power of mumbled spells in the darkness of night, in the joyless, gloomy world, when we were children...