Before my birth, I lived among the green gardens in the stars, the place where the four rivers flow and flow, where green snakes slither and slither, where the mosquitoes are thick and do not bite. I lived in the gardens in the stars, with rivers flowing across the stars, the place beyond the reach of all science, the place beyond the reach of the toiling hands of men. I looked down upon the face of the earth and took pity on the state of men, and I said: "Surely I can bring some of them up with me." So I descended down to the face of the earth. But I was used to living among the shadows of things and not the things themselves; I was used to living among the senses of things and not their truths; I was used to living among the deeper meanings of things and not their material properties; so I was overtaken by terrible distress. Finally, I saw that I could not bring even one man or woman into the gardens in the skies, that I was in grave danger here, that I was trapped here and could not escape, that I had gone into the prison as a priest to minister to the prisoners and had found myself locked in a little cell, suffering with the rest. I used to live in the gardens in the stars, with rivers flowing across the stars. But now the heavens have shut me out, the doors have been locked; I have done nothing here on earth but blaspheme, and Allah has locked me in, to stay here forever. I fell to the earth as a baby dragon; I fell to the earth as a green snake or a tortoise; and the mouth of the heavens has closed. Spirits come to me in the night and watch over me through the night, for I am a spiritual criminal. I live in the world of sacred words, never sacred stories, only sacred words. They come to me from a mouth that sits buried deep in my brain, a mouth that is constantly speaking and speaking, a mouth that does nothing but chatter all day long. This mouth is hungry but cannot eat, this mouth is thirsty but cannot drink, and the hungrier and thirstier it gets the more it chatters and speaks, chatters and speaks. There is no silence in the depths of my brain, there is only chatter, there are only nonsensical words.