Aref returned home drowning in his own thoughts, sinking into a vast sea of doubt and confusion that left him deeply distressed and estranged from everything around him. For a long time he remained buried in silence and shock, keeping away from everyone—even his beloved grandfather.
This period weighed on him more heavily than any burden that had come before it. What Abu al-Hikma had said earlier seemed almost trivial compared with what Aref was feeling now. Before his encounter with the researcher, he had been able to tell himself that Abu al-Hikma was simply a sarcastic man who rarely explained what he really meant. That was his habit: leave everything vague, hide behind ambiguity, and insist that his words were nothing more than jokes.
That little trick had allowed Aref to reassure himself—or perhaps deceive himself—and keep his doubts under control.
Until he met the researcher.
That brutal debate wounded his mind before it ever reached his heart. It drained away nearly everything he had left of faith, surrender, and obedience. The certainty he had once proudly carried now seemed to him like folly, madness, or some elaborate piece of metaphysical fantasy.
Aref desperately tried to save what little faith remained. It was becoming like ash scattered by the wind, or a feather tossed helplessly through a storm over a deep ocean of thoughts, doubts, and anguish. Around him, those thoughts had built an enormous wall, a barrier, almost a dam, separating him from the faith he had once proclaimed—and from the god he had once regarded as the wisest creator and fairest ruler of all.
He stopped attending the religious lectures he had once never missed. Instead, Aref buried himself in books and research papers about science and in the ideas of scholars and researchers like the man he had debated.
The researcher had given him some of those materials. He had kept them hidden in his possession and told Aref how he and his companions had managed to slip them into the library with the cooperation of the guards. They had paid the guards enough money—and then some—to let them bring in the books and manuscripts and keep their mouths shut.
The researchers needed the books to remain in the library while they were there. Whenever they left, they took the material back. They had also agreed with the guards to keep their visits secret from Antar and everyone in the palace.
The researcher's real hope was to spread these works among anyone who still had even a grain of room left in his mind for independent thought. Aref had been his first target because everyone knew how much he loved reading and learning. The researcher sensed that Aref might still be capable of choosing reason and thought over blind submission.
The arrangement was simple: the researchers supplied the material, the guards looked the other way, and Aref read.
The religious library itself was overflowing with books that glorified and sanctified Antar, praised the magnificence of faith in him, and celebrated total submission to his authority. Everything revolved around one central idea: belief in Antar, surrender to him, faith in his messengers, acceptance of his destiny and decrees, and submission to his punishments and rewards were the foundation of life.
According to the Antarian doctrine, one of the keys to success was blind belief in Antar and constant reading and recitation of his sacred books in all their different forms and sections. Antar had divided his holy book into several parts, each supposedly different in type, tone, color, and style, but all of them were treated as sacred.
Those books had filled the minds of Antrototo's inhabitants for years. They convinced them—or, more accurately, persuaded them through repetition—that this was the only straight path, the only correct road, the only way to live a meaningful life.
Without faith in the Antarian light, they were told, life had no value.
Their real life, Antar promised, would begin only after the postponed test whose results would be revealed after death.
He promised his followers that they would not simply disappear forever like animals and plants. They were special. They had been selected and honored above all the other creatures he supposedly created from nothing. And after death, they would be rewarded with another eternal life in a hidden world beyond Antrototo.
To enter that secret world, they had to obey him. They were not to think independently or seek spiritual closeness to anyone but him.
And woe to anyone who disobeyed.
Such a person, they were told, would taste a fate beyond anything he could imagine and would remain in everlasting punishment without end.
That was how Antar convinced his believing subjects. His hypocritical preachers thundered the message day and night, singing hymns of praise to Antar and reciting his supposed virtues toward the obedient servants who believed in him and accepted his authority.
Aref had once been among the earliest and strongest believers.
Perhaps it had begun with his struggle against doubts that had followed him since childhood. Perhaps, deep down, he had simply wanted to please his beloved grandfather.
Maybe he had spent years repeating everything he heard in religious lectures and everything written in Antar's sacred books until repetition became conviction.
Perhaps his faith had grown partly out of love for Nasr and a desire to make his grandfather happy.
Aref rarely admitted this thought even to himself. But now it kept returning, quietly, night after night.
He tried desperately to drive the researcher's words from his head, but they kept ringing there with a buzzing that nearly deafened him. They felt like hammers falling onto his skull, pounding so hard they might drive his neck down between his shoulders.
He almost never left his room.
He stopped working on the research papers for the preacher Shaher, the preacher who proudly wielded the sword of "science" mixed with religion and religion blended with what he always insisted was a clever, scientific formula. Shaher repeatedly claimed that religion encouraged reason and learning and that God could not be worshiped through ignorance.
That was what Aref had believed only days before meeting the researcher.
But there was no going back.
Aref became so distracted and withdrawn that he barely ate. Some days he consumed no more food than might satisfy a small child. His grandfather did not know what to do with him. Nasr watched him in silence, anxious and bewildered.
Nasr was a perceptive, seasoned man. He could feel when something was wrong with his grandson, and he had noticed the change ever since Abu al-Hikma's last visit to their home.
The old man remained sad and quiet. Again and again he tried to talk to Aref, hoping his grandson would open his heart and tell him what was troubling him. Perhaps speaking the fears aloud would lighten the enormous burden on his shoulders—a weight heavy enough, it seemed, to crush a mountain.
But every attempt went nowhere.
The grandfather's efforts vanished like a feather caught by the wind.
Aref avoided his grandfather's eyes. He deliberately closed every door to conversation, pretending that he was simply ill and needed to stay in bed.
Even Hind, the woman he loved more than anything else, had become someone he avoided. He invented one excuse after another to escape seeing her. When she came with her mother to check on him, he hid from them, forcing Nasr to lie and tell them that Aref was asleep and feeling slightly unwell.
Eventually Nasr realized that something had to be done.
He decided to enter his grandson's room—or, more accurately, the isolation Aref had imposed upon himself—even if he had to force the door open.
He had to know what had happened to the young man.
What had caused such a sudden transformation?
Why had he withdrawn from everyone, abandoned the religious lectures, and stopped reading the Antarian sacred book?
Aref was his only grandson. Nothing in this world mattered to Nasr more than him.
The old man stood immediately and went to the room. He knocked several times in rapid succession. Anxiety and fear seemed to creep through the door like ants and reach Aref, who was buried in the scientific and philosophical papers the researcher had given him.
Aref had accepted the papers almost lazily when he returned defeated from his encounter with the researcher. Now he was reading them with an intensity that made him forget everything else.
After knocking several times, Nasr opened the door himself. He did not wait for Aref to answer as he normally would.
He entered slowly. Worry showed in his eyes and seemed to guide every hesitant step toward his grandson.
Aref suddenly looked up.
His grandfather stood before him like a wax statue left too close to a fire, the heat of anxiety and confusion slowly melting it away.
Aref sprang to his feet, startled by the unexpected intrusion.
He approached Nasr cautiously.
"Is something wrong, Grandpa? I've never seen you walk into my room like this. It isn't like you. Has something happened?"
Nasr shook his head and looked at him with an expression that mixed pain and a bitter kind of amusement.
"Has something happened? What could possibly be worse than what is happening to you right now? And do you think you are still the same Aref you have always been, so I should behave exactly as I always have?
"All I did was knock a few times and then come inside."
He turned toward the papers scattered across Aref's desk. He picked them up and leafed through them suspiciously.
"But apparently you were drowning in another world—the world living inside these papers. It has taken you farther away than any of us could have imagined.
"You have withdrawn from everyone around you. From me. From your beloved fiancée. Even from the religious lectures and the classes where you once sought guidance and faith."
Aref sighed for a long time, then released a breath heavy with anxiety and confusion. He sat down slowly, his voice carrying the grief of something enormous collapsing inside him, like a mountain of rubble falling apart piece by piece until nothing remained but dust.
"I think it's true, Grandpa," he said at last. "The truth has started to appear somewhere on the distant horizon. And little by little, it seems to be coming toward me.
"I had to search for it myself. And if I wanted to find even a small piece of it, I had to step away from everything that was distracting me from it."
Nasr looked at him uneasily.
"What truth? What are you talking about? What has happened to you?"
"The truth is that there may be no truth.
"The truth is that everything around us looks like a deception. A huge deception. A trick woven by nature and dressed in the absurdity of fate. We have been thrown into an endless maze of illusions, games, falsehoods, and tricks, all designed to make us believe in life and its meaninglessness at the same time."
Nasr stared at him.
"What illusion are you talking about?"
Aref smiled bitterly.
"Life itself.
"Life may be nothing more than a trick, and there may be no single fixed truth inside it. It is like one of those fun-house mirrors children laugh at—the ones that make the short person look tall and the tall person short, the thin person fat and the fat person thin.
"The mirror distorts reality until every person sees the version that suits him.
"I've begun to realize that concepts such as justice, goodness, virtue, and even blind, absolute faith can turn into their exact opposites when pushed far enough.
"Something we call good can become evil when it is extended beyond its limits.
"And this so-called freedom religion gives us—telling us that we are free to choose between paradise and everlasting punishment—isn't freedom at all. It is an illusion. A fantasy. Worse, it is an iron chain that turns us into slaves while we stand there proudly watching ourselves being humiliated.
"We celebrate our own slavery.
"We call it divine mercy.
"We thank the Antarian god for it.
"What a joke fate is playing on us.
"Even geography can become a lie when you start twisting definitions. Extend north far enough and it becomes south. Stretch east far enough into the hereafter and somehow it becomes west.
"Everyone sees what suits him, from wherever he happens to be standing.
"And after all that, this god expects us to call himself absolute truth—the only creator, the only source of existence, the only one worthy of worship.
"But who would willingly accept being a deceived, humiliated slave living inside a manufactured illusion?
"Since when has slavery been an honor?
"Who gave him the right to declare himself God?
"And where would we find this god if he existed at all?
"And if he is not there, then who is he? And where?"
Aref slammed his hand onto the wooden desk.
The words hit Nasr like an electric shock. The old man stood frozen, his mouth falling open in stunned disbelief. It opened so wide that the gaps left by his missing teeth looked like dark little hollows in an ancient cave.
He could hardly speak.
The shock, worry, anger, and fear all collided on his exhausted face.
Then, suddenly, Abu al-Hikma appeared in the doorway.
He studied both of them, his small, perpetually amused eyes moving from grandfather to grandson.
"What happened to you two?" he asked. "Did something happen? I heard voices rising while I was at the open door. I knocked, but no one answered. Then I heard the argument, and when neither of you responded to my calls or knocking, I finally let myself in.
"And here I find you in the middle of what sounds like a verbal duel. What is going on?"
Nasr released a long breath.
Only then did he realize that, in his worry over Aref, he had forgotten to close the front door after seeing Hind and her mother out. He had become so absorbed in his grandson and in what had suddenly happened to him that the rest of the world had vanished from his mind.
He tried to recover his composure. He patted Abu al-Hikma on the shoulder with an exaggerated calm.
"Come in, Abu al-Hikma. You're not a stranger here. This house is your house. Come whenever you like."
He sighed and lowered his voice, almost as though he were afraid of confronting the problem directly.
"And perhaps you arrived at exactly the right time. Maybe you can ease the tension around here—or solve whatever crisis we have with one of your jokes or one of your strange little paradoxes. Perhaps the answer is sitting right inside your head."
Abu al-Hikma smiled.
"What is it, my dear friend? I'm always at your service. Tell me what's wrong. I'll be the best guide and the best helper you could ask for."
Nasr looked toward Aref, torn between pain and hope.
"It's Aref."
Abu al-Hikma glanced at Aref, who sat quietly beside his desk like a statue.
"What about him? He looks perfectly normal to me."
"He has turned his whole world upside down. His thoughts have changed from top to bottom. If you had arrived a few minutes earlier, you would have heard things that would astonish you.
"He is no longer the Aref we knew—the Aref we identified with faith, the Aref we knew and taught to be a believer.
"I no longer see the young man who never missed Shaher's lectures, who loved the way Shaher connected science to faith and religion. I no longer see the Aref who studied the sacred book we have here, the book our community worships.
"He doesn't even read it anymore.
"Since that strange, suspicious visit of yours to our home and the library, something in him has changed. Now he mutters words full of anger and rejection toward everything he once believed, as if he is trying to disown the person he used to be.
"And now he reminds me of the old Aref—the child. That rebellious, troublesome boy who questioned everything, objected to everything, demanded explanations for everything, and accepted almost nothing he was told.
"He would argue with anyone until the other person became too exhausted to continue.
"That child seems to be back."
Abu al-Hikma smiled a sly little smile. There was genuine pleasure beneath his performance of surprise. He understood perfectly well what Nasr was describing.
He had known the grandfather and grandson for years. Their friendship was old, and so was his understanding of their personalities. It did not take much for him to see the whole picture.
Still, he pretended there was nothing alarming about it, partly to calm Nasr.
He smiled confidently.
"Well—"
"Come on, my dear friend. He is young, full of energy, caught up in the storm of youth. Every young person his age goes through some version of this stage—questioning, changing, turning ideas over, trying on different ways of seeing the world. That is simply what youth does. We who have grown older tend to forget that we once did the same."
Nasr objected, puzzled.
"But, Abu al-Hikma, we did not talk like this. We did not act like this. We had questions and objections, yes—but never with this kind of intensity."
Abu al-Hikma shrugged.
"Every generation has ideas of its own, and every age has its own standards. Don't compare one generation with another."
Aref straightened in his chair. He looked almost like a judge in a courtroom, except that he was also the only witness and apparently the only person who knew where the answer to this tangled case might be hidden.
"The entire idea has stopped making sense to me," he said, his enthusiasm mixed with a suppressed anger. "I used to see things through one set of eyes. Now I see them through another.
"It feels as though a fog has finally lifted from the sacred halo I had placed over everything. Another light has appeared in the distance—another flash on the horizon. And every time I think about faith, religion, and the god Antar, that light gets a little clearer.
"I used to look at all of this differently."
Abu al-Hikma tried hard to hide the pleasure in his voice. He cleared his throat, then sat in the chair opposite Aref's desk.
"Explain that a little more," he said, studying him carefully. "What exactly do you mean by the fog lifting?"
Aref sighed deeply, as though the breath itself carried away some of his grief and confusion.
"When I reassessed everything—this religion, this god, even the sacred book—I found that the whole picture had changed. It had flipped from one extreme to the other.
"It began to feel as though thinking itself were a crime against religion and against God. The moment you use your mind, faith evaporates and leaves nothing behind.
"Faith began to look like a mirage. An illusion. A fantasy. Maybe just a thin ray of hope mixed with optical tricks—something that looks real from a distance but disappears the moment you place it under the microscope of truth, science, and logic.
"Take Antar, for example.
"He convinced us through the sacred book—the book you read day and night. And remember, he divided that book into three major sections, claiming that each was revealed or inspired through the messengers he sent over the years, beginning with Noor and, before him, Nadem and his wife, who are supposed to be our first parents.
"We were expected to believe that Antar dictated words, sayings, teachings, and commandments to every one of those messengers through some hidden divine revelation.
"But the three sections contradict one another. Each treats itself as independent from the others. Worse, they disagree over some of the most fundamental questions of divine command and worship.
"It is almost as if the whole arrangement were deliberate—as though this god enjoys watching us become confused, enjoys watching us drown in a sea of twisted faith with a thousand possible interpretations.
"What we call religion now looks like a belief system built out of incompatible faces, identities, and rules.
"Antar looks less like a god and more like an international con artist—an expert in disguise who changes his color, name, title, identity, and appearance whenever convenient. A professional fugitive from truth and accountability, constantly changing masks to confuse everyone around him while pursuing one ugly goal: keeping people humiliated and under his control.
"Even his sacred book functions like another hiding place. He disappears inside its twisted pages and faded lines, among obscure passages that contradict one another. The more we try to decode the mysteries, the deeper we sink.
"And still we are expected to continue along this dark, dangerous, irrational road of faith, carrying mountains of fear about the unknown and the possibility of eternal terror, walking through a black tunnel hoping that somewhere at the end we might find a faint light to guide our exhausted minds toward knowledge.
"But it is pointless.
"Fear is the only thing moving us.
"Fear of the violence, betrayal, injustice, cruelty, and punishment of this tyrant who calls himself God. He gives himself titles such as the Almighty, the Avenger, the Proud One, the Exalted One.
"Why?
"On what basis does all this arrogance rest?
"Why does he disappear deliberately and suddenly and then tell us that the reason is simply that he is a god?"
Aref continued without waiting for an answer.
"We have even tried reading the entire sacred book and comparing it with what actually happens around us on Antrototo. We look at the natural world, then compare it with the explanations in the book, and we keep reaching the same conclusion: the answer we get from the sacred text does not explain the world as it really is.
"I read serious scientific research. Again and again, I found conclusions that conflict with what the sacred book says. When I compared those findings with what we observe on Antrototo and with what happens in nature, the scientific explanations were the ones that held up.
"They are built through observation, research, testing, revision, and hard work. Even when science is uncertain, it admits uncertainty and leaves room for new evidence.
"The sacred book does none of that. It offers myths, legends, threats, promises, punishment, fear, and endless warnings for anyone who challenges its god."
Nasr moved aside and sat on the edge of Aref's bed. He spoke in a voice that tried to sound calm but could not quite hide its doubt.
"And how do you know these scientific studies are correct? How do you know they are as credible and rational as you claim? Couldn't they be incomplete? Couldn't their conclusions be wrong or inaccurate?
"Perhaps they are simply limited because they are the products of ordinary human beings, not a supernatural being who knows everything.
"Human knowledge is limited. It can be right or wrong. It can be incomplete. But your sacred book, according to your own belief, comes from the revelation of an all-powerful, all-knowing God beyond the limits of human intelligence.
"Nothing resembles him. Nothing compares with his knowledge, his certainty, or his divine power."
Aref smiled with obvious sarcasm.
"Nothing resembles nothingness either.
"Nothingness has no equal because there is nothing there.
"That's why no human being can compare with it."
He looked toward Abu al-Hikma. The older man struggled to suppress a laugh, pressing his lips tightly together to keep it from escaping.
Aref continued, the sarcastic smile still visible on his broad lips.
"At first, I argued exactly as you are arguing now, Grandpa. That is what happens when a believer wants to keep his faith alive at any cost. He has nowhere to go except interpretation, patchwork explanations, and, sometimes, outright distortion.
"I tried to save my belief by imagining that this hidden god was wearing some kind of cosmic invisibility cap, expecting us to bow before him like slaves—or like animals pulled by an invisible collar of faith without understanding, choice, or free will.
"I told myself what you are telling me now. I tried every trick I could think of to fool my own mind.
"I resorted to interpretation. I told myself that the strange, cryptic language of the sacred book must be metaphorical. Surely, I thought, every passage must agree with science and reason.
"After all, you had already given me the argument: science is produced by limited human beings, so perhaps our scientific understanding is incomplete.
"I conveniently ignored all the research, experiments, observations, and evidence that scientists had accumulated. I told myself the sacred text must simply be using metaphorical language—some elaborate literary miracle, some symbolic way of saying exactly what science would later discover.
"Science gives direct results, precise observations, measurable evidence. Sacred language, I told myself, merely disguises the same truths in metaphor.
"And because I had already decided that my sacred book must be true, I had no choice but to imagine the entire book as a gigantic metaphor—from beginning to end.
"I convinced myself that the book loved science, encouraged science, and agreed with science. It only used unusual symbolic language because that was the language available to it. Once the symbols were decoded, I told myself, the book and science would fit perfectly.
"But reality was waiting for me.
"The gap was enormous.
"The distance between what I had spent all that time telling myself and what the evidence actually showed eventually became impossible to ignore.
"Truth slapped my faith across the face.
"And it was a loud slap.
"Every time I examined those passages more deeply, I found no consistent metaphor, no hidden scientific code waiting to be unlocked. The interpretations offered by the people who claimed to decode the book were often amusing precisely because they had almost nothing to do with actual science.
"That was when I finally understood how far I had been bending reality simply to preserve my belief."
Abu al-Hikma could no longer hide his smile. A bright expression spread across his face as though Aref's words had pleased him enormously.
Nasr watched Abu al-Hikma with an uneasy mixture of suspicion and concern. His eyes moved anxiously between the two men.
Finally he spoke, his voice carrying the urgency of someone desperately trying to save whatever could still be saved.
"I honestly don't understand you. In fact, I don't want to understand you.
"But from what you are saying, it sounds as if you want every believing servant to abandon his faith, his religion, his book, and everything he believes simply because you think it does not stand up to science and logic.
"As though you have forgotten that we need religion. We need faith in a great creator who governs and directs our lives.
"How are people supposed to live without religion and faith? How is life supposed to hold together without them?"
Aref looked at him sadly.
"That is exactly what I used to think, Grandpa. That was the argument I used against anyone who challenged me.
"I entered every discussion as though I were stepping onto a battlefield. I simply did not realize that I had already lost before the battle began.
"The researcher's words crushed me. His logic drove its sword into my throat. Between them, they killed my faith from one side to the other. The supposedly pure blood of religion—blood I once believed was pure—spilled uselessly and disappeared like a mirage.
"It died in front of reason, awareness, and science.
"Look at religion closely and you find a collection of beliefs and rituals connecting human beings to something metaphysical, something hidden beyond nature—something we cannot see, locate, or independently verify.
"It starts to resemble nothingness, a mirage, an unseen assumption.
"Yet some scientific research suggests that parts of the brain are involved in religious experience—the response to fear, uncertainty, threat, and the need for psychological relief.
"Whether that mechanism is activated strongly or weakly, the important distinction is this: the specific beliefs are not literally stored inside some little 'religion center' waiting to be switched on. What may exist is a human capacity or tendency toward religious experience—a need people can develop, strengthen, practice, and eventually treat as sacred.
"That need can become so deeply trained that a person mistakes it for an essential law of his nature.
"And at that point, the precise identity of the god becomes secondary.
"It may be one god or many.
"It may be a god, an earthly ruler, or a heavenly authority.
"It may be worshiped daily, monthly, or once a year.
"What matters is the psychological effect of believing that a metaphysical being exists and governs reality. The belief can provide a temporary sense of comfort, inner peace, and meaning.
"And I am not talking about one particular religion, sect, or denomination. I mean religion more broadly.
"Our own sacred book is an obvious example. It is divided into three sections, each fighting with the others over fundamental points of belief. Each group claims its version is the most complete and correct and accuses the others of altering the words, commandments, and laws.
"Perhaps their god was unaware of it.
"Or perhaps he allowed it deliberately.
"Maybe the entire confusion was planned.
"What makes it more absurd is that all of them claim their religion came from the same wise, living, eternal god.
"Yet each group describes that god differently. Each one imagines Antar according to its own needs and gives him a unique collection of qualities.
"Maybe the divine ruler enjoys it.
"Maybe he deliberately wanted multiple versions of himself.
"Sometimes he looks like a divine king. Sometimes like a mysterious spirit. Sometimes like a hidden force.
"He behaves almost like a professional con artist—a disguised thief constantly changing clothes, running ahead of the law, and insisting that he does not need the money he is obviously stealing.
"In the end, every belief system seems to deliver the same psychological product: temporary comfort and a sense of supernatural meaning."
Abu al-Hikma jumped back into the conversation with his usual mock-serious expression.
"But, my boy, surely you agree that our Antar is the real god among all these different gods, faces, and descriptions found across the three parts of the sacred book?"
Aref turned toward him.
"There you go again, Abu al-Hikma. You just admitted that there are multiple versions of a god, each with different qualities and different faces depending on which section of the sacred book you read.
"And that is without even counting the other religions we have heard about throughout Antrototo. Other peoples claim that their religions describe Antar too, in one form or another.
"Yet those versions were never revealed in our sacred book. They supposedly discovered him on their own, created their own image of him, and worship him according to their own beliefs.
"And Antar apparently remains perfectly happy as long as they worship him in some form.
"Whether their version comes from inside the sacred book or outside it, he seems content—as long as the worship keeps feeding his divine ego.
"What kind of god is that?"
"A god who changes faces, images, forms, and even ideas? And after all that, he still has the nerve to insist that he is one god and that there is no god but him? How can that possibly make sense?"
Abu al-Hikma raised both hands.
"That isn't what I meant, my boy. I mean that perhaps the god we worship—the version and form described in our sacred book—is the true and ideal model of the one real God. The other versions and descriptions might simply be extensions of him."
He suppressed a smile, holding it in like someone holding his breath.
"Think of them as the aftershocks of an earthquake," he added. "They are part of the event, but they are not the earthquake itself.
"So perhaps the true god appears under different descriptions and in different beliefs, but all those versions are only pieces of a greater whole.
"Especially since, for years, he has hidden from us. Ever since he became a god, he has claimed that we could not tolerate his divine appearance. He supposedly feared the shock of seeing him as he truly is because, according to his own story, we were created with weak human bodies incapable of enduring divine majesty.
"One might even wonder whether the being who created us was somehow different from the god who later discovered what we were capable of.
"Who knows?
"Whatever the case, we should give him the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps when he created us, he simply had no idea that human beings would be unable to tolerate his divine form.
"So he hid himself from us.
"But his messengers and emissaries are apparently special. They alone can tolerate his presence. They alone are allowed to speak to him, hear from him, and witness the miracles he performs to convince them of his divinity.
"After all that, are they not believers too? Are they not believing servants like the rest of us?
"Or are we the only ones who are supposed to prove our faith by obeying, bowing, kneeling, and worshiping a god we never see and never hear directly?
"We simply obey—or else.
"That is the deal."
Nasr suddenly straightened as though an alarm had gone off inside him. He turned toward Abu al-Hikma, anger dripping from his voice.
"You sound as though you are taking Aref's side, Abu al-Hikma. I think you came here to feed his doubts and make his confusion worse, not to calm him down. You have turned your sarcasm into fuel for his new ideas, and now he is talking as if he has discovered absolute truth."
Aref slammed his fist onto the desk.
"No. It is the truth—or at least the outline of it, the beginning of the trail. I admit there may be no single, absolute truth in this life. But there are clues. There are signs. There are arguments that point toward the larger picture.
"And Abu al-Hikma has provided one of those clues. His sarcasm may be biting, but he has grabbed hold of the first thread.
"He isn't saying anything except what is actually there.
"This god is a product of his environment.
"He changes and takes on the colors of the culture around him.
"And everything that happened with Antar is simply another version of the same idea.
"As human society develops over centuries, human behavior develops with it. Customs change according to environment, resources, social structures, and the needs of the people who live there.
"Take a society of hunters. Everyone may participate in the hunt with roughly equal effort and equal status. There is less need for hierarchy, less need for a permanent ruler standing above everyone else. They work together because survival depends on cooperation.
"Now look at agricultural societies. Hierarchy becomes much more common. There are people with greater wealth, influence, strength, resources, and power, and people with less. That creates the need for leaders and followers, for those who command and those who obey.
"And gradually the social hierarchy shapes the religious imagination.
"The idea of a supreme master with servants beneath him becomes familiar. The god becomes a reflection of the social order: master and obedient servant, ruler and subject.
"That is how the relationship between leader and followers can become transformed into the relationship between a god and believers."
Aref turned toward his grandfather.
"That is what I have been reading about recently in the studies and research papers I found in the library—the same material that was secretly smuggled into the collection."
Abu al-Hikma grinned.
"And what about Antar? Was he a hunter who recently wandered into the farming world and decided to become its king?"
Aref laughed softly.
"Even hunter societies have religious beliefs. Their beliefs tend to reflect their environment.
"A hunting society lives by the sea, so the sea becomes central. They might imagine a hidden supernatural power in the ocean, perhaps an enormous mysterious woman who sends them fish so they can survive.
"Rain would matter much less to them because their livelihood comes from fishing, not farming. Their god would naturally live in the sea rather than in the sky, because the sea is the center of their existence.
"Now look at our own society in this part of Antrototo. Most of us depend on agriculture. Rain determines whether our crops live or die.
"So naturally we imagine a powerful metaphysical being living above us, in the sky, because the sky is where the rain comes from. If our survival depends on rain, our god will probably end up living where the rain comes from.
"Antar followed the same pattern.
"Ever since he declared himself a god, he disappeared and claimed to dwell in the heavens. He gave himself a heavenly throne, a celestial kingdom, a place above everyone else.
"He is a child of this environment because his religion is a product of it.
"The circumstances in which people live inevitably leave their fingerprints on the religion they create—their beliefs, rituals, gods, and moral rules.
"And the essential job of those religions is always the same: connect people to some metaphysical or spiritual power beyond the material world.
"That connection is extremely useful to a ruler or leader who wants control. But it requires professional help. That is where priests and preachers come in. They transform the ruler into a powerful supernatural being, someone who can see everything, control everything, and punish everyone.
"If you look at the sacred book in all three of its sections, you can see exactly what I mean.
"Every religion describes a god in ways that mirror the community that created it.
"Look at the tribal society from which the first section of our sacred book supposedly emerged. Its followers were organized into tribes, each with a chief or leader who intervened in everything—large or small, public or private. Every tribe had a chief.
"So naturally they imagined Antar as a tribal leader: powerful, authoritarian, involved in every detail, quick to anger, quick to punish, comfortable with bloodshed, proud of himself, obsessed with his own greatness, and demanding obedience in everything.
"Once you see that pattern, the conclusion becomes difficult to avoid.
"Human beings created the gods they worshiped more than gods created human beings.
"Or at least, human beings created the images of gods that fit their own societies.
"A desert culture, an agricultural culture, a tribal culture—each will produce a deity with the emotional and social characteristics of the people who imagine it.
"So if we return to the sacred book and examine our own section, we find a religion that encourages hostility toward outsiders while encouraging compassion, cooperation, and mutual support among members of the same faith.
"That is not mysterious. It reflects the social environment in which the doctrine developed.
"And there is another factor: scarcity.
"In our region of Antrototo, limited resources and insecurity helped create the conditions in which a single, powerful god could become socially useful.
"But scarcity is not the only explanation.
"Antar himself and all those who serve him—his preachers, messengers, guards, soldiers, and the beings he calls angels—also have interests in spreading this religion.
"In the old days, people revered the five righteous men who followed Saman and his companions. They built statues of them.
"So those in power needed to destroy that old focus of loyalty. The easiest way was to replace it with a single god, a doctrine of unity, and a new religious order.
"That may have been politically convenient then.
"But today—today, specifically—do we really need this religion? Do we need this god?
"We did not even need the system as much in the past as we were told. Why should we need it now?
"Religions also tend to accumulate layers as they age. Rituals, explanations, traditions, and new beliefs are added until people forget which parts were original and which parts were historical additions.
"And eventually those additions are treated as sacred necessities even when they contribute nothing to human development.
"They do not necessarily improve mental well-being. They do not advance civilization. They do not give the individual believer anything essential.
"Sometimes they do the opposite."
Abu al-Hikma leaned forward enthusiastically.
"Now that is something. Your words are jewels. I swear you have defeated me with logic, scientific arguments, and evidence."
Nasr shot him an irritated look.
"If you intend to follow this new path with him, and to join his ideas under the cover of your jokes and paradoxes, then I want no part of it."
Aref rose from his desk and walked calmly toward his grandfather. He sat beside him on the edge of the bed and gently touched his shoulder.
"I know how frightened you are for me. I know how much you love me. I know what you fear Antar and his followers might do.
"But this is the truth, Grandpa. Why won't you let me follow it?
"Why do you want me to close my eyes to it?
"Am I supposed to spend my whole life living inside an illusion simply because it is familiar?
"Haven't I already spent enough years doing that?
"I regret those years more than I can tell you. Sometimes I wish I had remained the same skeptical child—the child who asked too many questions, who refused to accept easy answers.
"Don't you remember? Your own fear for me, your anxiety about my questions, changed me. You pushed me toward false faith because you wanted to protect me."
Nasr answered angrily.
"And how do you know it is false? You say this now after spending years defending that very faith."
"I was blind," Aref replied. "Foolish. Lost in a desert made of illusion.
"Now the fog has lifted—or, more accurately, it has lifted from my mind and my way of thinking. Once the false halo of holiness began to dissolve, the fear of the unknown after death began to dissolve with it.
"I'm no longer terrified of the wrath of Antar, that narcissistic tyrant who loves nothing but himself. In his eyes, everyone else is nothing—merely believing servants required to worship him without evidence.
"Perhaps that is the whole trick."
Nasr looked at him anxiously.
"And what makes you so sure that what you believe now is actually reason? What makes it truth?
"Do you expect me to gamble with the unknown because a few young people you debated filled your head with ideas?
"Am I supposed to rush out and adopt everything they told you?
"It is not that simple. I cannot guarantee that what you are saying is true.
"And my fear for you is becoming unbearable."
Aref insisted.
"It is true, Grandpa—or at least a substantial part of the truth. I know there may be no perfect, absolute answer. But a large and important part of the picture can be approached through evidence.
"What I am saying rests on observations, research, experiments, and reason. It does not rest on old myths, invented beliefs, or stories with no scientific foundation.
"Religion, Grandpa, can function as a painkiller for a mind that cannot explain what it sees.
"When people cannot understand natural phenomena or make sense of chaos, they reach for myths and supernatural explanations because those explanations are easier on the mind.
"That is not merely something I am saying. There is scientific research suggesting that parts of the brain are involved in responses to uncertainty, threat, fear, and pain, and that religious experience can interact with these systems.
"The preacher can stimulate those responses through his sermons by invoking the wrath, punishment, and revenge of the Antarian god.
"He tells the believing servants that they will face punishment in this life or in an imaginary life after death. But where is the evidence?
"Has anyone ever come back from death to tell us what he saw?
"Have you, Grandpa, ever heard from someone who died and returned to report that another world exists and that we should spend this life working exclusively for it rather than for the life we actually have?
"Where is the evidence that this other world is real?"
Aref sighed and returned to his desk, looking first at Nasr and then at Abu al-Hikma.
"Look at where religion tends to be strongest. It often thrives among people living with poverty, insecurity, hunger, disease, and the constant presence of death.
"Look at our own community.
"Who is the most religious?
"Which social class clings most tightly to faith?
"Usually, it is the poor, working people—the people living closest to hunger and illness, people who face death as an everyday possibility because resources are scarce.
"When life becomes unbearable, people naturally reach for imagined powers, supernatural explanations, and miracles.
"They pray to a superhuman protector, something like the Superman or Tarzan of old stories: an all-powerful being who can perform miracles and give them what reality cannot.
"When you have no food, no medicine, no money, and no practical way to defend yourself, an invisible protector can become the easiest refuge available."
"People turn to the illusion and deception religion supplies because it is an easy, popular product—something that can be handed out cheaply by the preachers who serve the unjust god and the authoritarian ruler.
"Religion and political power are twins. That is why religion becomes especially useful to a ruler when he is a dictator—a tyrant, an oppressor, a man who needs an invisible authority to sanctify his earthly one.
"What I am saying is that the impulse toward religion is a powerful human need. That need may have driven people to invent religions in the first place.
"Instead of taking the harder path—examining natural phenomena and trying to understand them as they really are—human beings often chose the easier route.
"They looked for a painkiller rather than a cure.
"Religion became that painkiller.
"It soothes the pain caused by uncertainty and chaos without actually solving the underlying problem. Worse, it can encourage people to abandon independent thought altogether. The believer becomes a kind of automatic machine: he obeys, repeats, performs, but no longer asks why.
"The problem is never actually cured. The pain is simply pushed into a corner of memory for a while, where it waits for the symptoms to return.
"And once religion takes over the explanation of life, every experience can become a metaphysical message. Illness, death, failure, disappointment—even happiness and joy—can all be interpreted as gifts or tests from a god.
"Look at history. Disease, catastrophe, poverty, and death have repeatedly pushed human beings toward religion as an easy refuge and a quick answer to suffering.
"Nasr asked hesitantly, still unconvinced:
"Then how do you explain the way people have blamed themselves for disasters for generations? Why have they felt guilty whenever suffering came, believing that their own distance from God brought the punishment upon them?
"People have expressed that guilt in art, writing, ritual, images—everywhere. Almost every inhabitant of Antrototo has, in some form, encountered the idea that personal failure and suffering are evidence of having offended the god.
"Isn't that evidence of a god who rewards and punishes?
"Isn't their sense of guilt evidence that they believe in a real divine relationship?
"A person does not normally ask forgiveness from an imaginary being without some genuine reason—or so it would seem. Surely this cannot all be fantasy, myth, or illusion as you claim."
Aref shook his head.
"It is actually the opposite, Grandpa. What you just said supports my argument.
"As disasters have declined and societies have moved toward greater comfort, education, and development, religious dependence has also declined.
"That is exactly what happened here.
"An age of enlightenment emerged. It produced the educated young people I met and debated.
"At first, I approached them exactly as you are approaching me now. I attacked their position. Then I removed the halo of blind holiness from my own thinking, and the fog began to clear.
"Once I could see things without automatic reverence, everything became much clearer.
"And now a new idea is spreading among us—one that may be making the Antarian god increasingly nervous: perhaps human beings do not need a god at all.
"Look around, Grandpa. The younger generations are discovering science. Scientific methods of gaining information and knowledge are becoming more reliable tools than superstition, trickery, metaphysics, and the supernatural.
"As industry expanded, as science advanced, and as the industrial revolution transformed our planet, people gradually needed religion and God less and less.
"Religion is the child of catastrophe.
"It grows in the soil of grief, poverty, famine, disease, uncertainty, and ignorance. Those conditions make consciousness desperate for relief and make supernatural explanations more attractive.
"But religion is a temporary sedative. It does not actually solve the problems it promises to solve. It sells people an illusion—something that does not exist.
"And the history of our own planet is the strongest example right in front of us.
"The progress we have made on Antrototo did not come from Antar. It did not come from his three preachers, with their polished sermons, evasions, lies, and intellectual patchwork.
"It came from the world of science and from the scientists who built knowledge step by step.
"They pulled humanity away from ignorance, poverty, disease, and misery—the very conditions in which religion had flourished.
"The balance of power shifted toward science.
"Science won that particular war.
"And what saddens me most, Grandpa, is that the scientific and industrial revolutions that transformed other parts of Antrototo never fully reached our region—or the neighboring territories that share our beliefs, customs, and traditions.
"We benefited from the products of progress, but we did not become the people producing it.
"We became consumers rather than creators.
"We were like a sleeper who suddenly wakes from a long coma and looks around as though the world has been waiting for him to wake up, only to discover that civilization has moved on without him.
"The reason is obvious.
"Our region and the surrounding territories are still dominated by religion. Religious authority still controls enormous portions of daily life.
"And Antar remains an authoritarian ruler here.
"He claims to control the entire planet, to punish, destroy, torture, and govern every corner of Antrototo, yet his divine authority seems strongest only in these particular regions.
"Elsewhere, science has advanced and people have changed.
"So I have to ask: Is our god weaker in the presence of science?
"Or has science simply forced him into the experiment of reality, where the grand claims of divinity begin to shrink into nothingness?
"Maybe what we called divine power was only a mirage, and the louder the roar of genuine knowledge became, the smaller the religious illusion looked."
Abu al-Hikma cleared his throat as though announcing that he had been listening closely all along. He adjusted his posture, leaned on his cane, and spoke thoughtfully.
"So, if religion is merely a painkiller, then by extension the idea of God is also a device for numbing the mind and soothing the disease of that troublesome habit called thinking.
"And if this Antarian god has a thousand faces, a thousand forms, and a thousand attributes spread across the three sections of his sacred book, does that mean he keeps changing like a chameleon?
"Or perhaps he is like a firefly that only glows in darkness—bright enough to distract us from the truth, while hiding some secret that might expose him as a mirage?"
Aref slapped the table with excitement.
"Exactly! Well said, Abu al-Hikma. That is exactly what I have been trying to explain.
"It's as though you are reading my mind."
Abu al-Hikma smiled.
Aref continued.
"That is why I can say this plainly: there is no god of Antrototo.
"No god created this planet.
"The god we have been taught about is an invention, a lie constructed to mislead us.
"The ruler and the religious preacher joined forces and built a single front against ordinary people for their mutual benefit.
"If someone asked me now, 'Is there a god somewhere behind this enormous universe—or behind our planet Antrototo?' I would say the question itself is badly framed.
"Before the Big Bang, there was no time in the ordinary sense. So asking what a god was doing 'before' the universe existed creates a problem the question itself cannot escape.
"And asking where the creator of Antrototo is, and why we must worship him day and night, can become as absurd as asking where the edge of a sphere is.
"We know our planet is round. A sphere has no edge for you to walk to.
"So there is nothing to gain by searching for an edge that does not exist.
"I am not saying people should be forced to believe what I believe. Everyone is free to hold his own view.
"But the simplest explanation is this: there is no known god.
"No one has been demonstrated to have created Antrototo, and no one has been shown to control our destiny.
"At least not so far.
"We have not discovered such a being, and neither has anyone else.
"And that leads to another conclusion.
"All the stories about another life after death—the hell, punishment, paradise, eternal reward, everlasting pleasure—may be nothing more than imagination.
"We have this one life.
"One.
"When it ends biologically, we end with it.
"There is no evidence that another life waits behind the curtain.
"So this is our one opportunity to experience the beauty of the universe and the astonishing complexity of Antrototo.
"And for that, I am deeply grateful."
Abu al-Hikma suddenly turned toward Aref with renewed interest, as though something had slipped back into his memory.
His eyes widened. He stood, thin-faced and gray-haired, his veined hands tightening around his cane as he approached Aref.
"And what about Shaher?" he asked.
"Wasn't he once more important to you than even your grandfather?
"Didn't you always praise him for wielding the weapon of science against anyone who claimed science and religion were permanently at war?
"Wasn't he the one who opened the door to what he called the 'scientific miracles' hidden in the sacred book?
"Didn't he insist that science and religion were friends, that religion welcomed science, that God could not be worshiped through ignorance, and that religion encouraged learning?
"Wasn't that exactly why you chose Shaher over the other two preachers?
"Didn't you attend his sermons faithfully?
"Didn't you love science because he taught you to connect what you found in scientific books with what you found in the sacred text?
"At one point, you treated the sacred book as a source of scientific information and then returned to science to interpret it.
"So where did all of that go?"
Aref released a long, regretful breath.
"That is exactly why I changed.
"The same reasons that once made me trust that polished, evasive, manipulative preacher Shaher—and search scientific books for anything that could be connected to religion and faith—are the same reasons that eventually pushed me away from him.
"I came to see how much patchwork and intellectual dishonesty had been used to cloud the minds of believing servants who had surrendered their judgment to him.
"I was one of them.
"But once I removed the fog from my eyes, I finally understood the difference between blind acceptance without evidence—the kind religion calls faith—and justified confidence based on experiments, research, evidence, and repeatable observation.
"Science calls that knowledge, not faith.
"I understood the enormous distance between the two.
"I want to know.
"I do not want merely to believe.
"I want knowledge, not faith.
"Religion offers belief without sufficient evidence. That is why it calls conviction 'faith.'
"Science, by contrast, earns confidence through evidence, research, experiments, observation, and verification. That is why we call the result knowledge.
"Then Aref suddenly turned toward his grandfather.
"And you, Grandpa?
"Do you want to know?
"Or do you want to settle for believing, obeying, hearing, and submitting without evidence, proof, or facts?"
Nasr did not answer.
He was lost in his own thoughts.
His greatest concern was no longer whether Aref's argument was right or wrong. It was whether his grandson's new enthusiasm would bring the wrath of Antar and his followers down upon him.
Fear had sealed the old man's lips.
Truth mattered less, at that moment, than survival.
Abu al-Hikma, meanwhile, remained true to himself. He treated everything lightly. What delighted him were the paradoxes, the jokes, the absurdities, and the laughter.
He was, at heart, a satirist.
Although he was increasingly inclined to believe Aref—and had privately developed something close to certainty that Aref was right—he was still more interested in his biting humor and comic contradictions than in ripping away the final veil from the alleged god and religion.
The discussion slowly came to nothing.
Each man returned to his own thoughts.
And Aref remained where he was, changed by everything that had happened."