Chapter One: Why I Write This Story

I am writing this story now because I have lost hope for a beautiful ending that might restore the joy of life to my eyes. I write it certain, from the very beginning, that my story's ending will be a tragedy — a tragedy that is not mine alone, but belongs to every human being who dreams that love is stronger than everything. I write it for every person who has lived a love and known a beloved, and I place it in the hands of lovers, hoping to find in their understanding a boldness that the jurisprudence of religion failed to grant. I write my story because it deserves to be written, because it carved into my conscience the most beautiful human paintings and etched onto my being images that will never be forgotten. I do not exaggerate when I say that this story — which happened, and is happening, and will happen — shook my very being, changed me, and lit within me a love of revolution and a drive to struggle. It is a chapter among life's unforgettable chapters, and this chapter will be set down on pages of paper, so that people might learn from it, and so that one day the heroes of my story might triumph over their own time, their love ending differently than mine did — and in that, I will have contributed to that clear victory. Perhaps this story will reach the ears of those who forbade love in the name of religion, and forbade religion in the name of love. Perhaps this story will be a bullet in the heart of the merchants of religion and the bigots — who, in their multitude, I could not kill even one of. And perhaps my faith and certainty that the pen is a mightier weapon against injustice, however many faces injustice wears, will prove true this time, and my pen will grant me vengeance against whoever caused this ending. In this story, no one remains outside the circle of blame. I even dared to address God Himself, rebuking Him for what He had done. Perhaps it is an honor the Lord of all creatures bestowed upon me — to endure such a story and to set it down, so that I might become the last one to suffer it. And it is possible that, had I never endured it, my character would never have been shaped into what it is today. A story that began writing its first line the moment I met a girl who looked like an angel, and I said to her: "You are from Paradise!!"

And before I begin with my first words and share my story with people I do not know, and know nothing of the daily battles they wage in this life — though we surely share the same human feelings — I must introduce myself and my story to the reader, so that no one judges me through their own lens and their own experiences. Just as you cannot explain to someone born and raised inside a dark prison the meaning of the sun's warmth or the shade of trees, and then condemn him as an enemy of nature simply because he failed to understand your description — everyone who lives in his own prison, in his own private world, sees through his own lens and judges people by his own justice and his own constitution. I will begin by introducing myself, and afterward my journey in writing this story, from where it began to where it ended.