Then one day the boy returned the books to the Englishman. "Did you learn anything?" the Englishman asked, eager to hear what it might be. He needed someone to talk to so as to avoid thinking about the possibility of war. "I learned that the world has a soul, and that whoever understands that soul can also understand the language of things. I learned that many alchemists realized their destinies, and wound up discovering the Soul of the World, the Philosopher's Stone, and the of Life.
"But, above all, I learned that these things are all so simple that they could be written on the surface of an emerald."
The Englishman was disappointed. The years of research, the magic symbols, the strange words and the laboratory equipment… none of this had made an impression on the boy. His soul must be too to understand those things, he thought.
He took back his books and packed them away again in their bags.
"Go back to watching the ," he said. "That didn't teach me anything, either."
The boy went back to the silence of the desert, and the sand raised by the animals. "Everyone has his or her own way of learning things," he said to himself. "His way isn't the same as mine, nor mine as his. But we're both in search of our destinies, and I respect him for that."
 
 
The caravan began to travel day and night. The Bedouins reappeared more and more frequently, and the camel driver—who had become a good friend of the boy's—explained that the war between the tribes had already begun. The caravan would be very lucky to reach the .
The animals were , and the men talked among themselves less and less. The silence was the worst aspect of the night, when the of a camel—which before had been nothing but the groan of a camel—now frightened everyone, because it might signal a raid.
The camel driver, though, seemed not to be very concerned with the threat of war.
"I'm alive," he said to the boy, as they ate a bunch of dates one night, with no fires and no moon. "When I'm eating, that's all I think about. If I'm on the march, I just concentrate on marching. If I have to fight, it will be just as good a day to die as any other.
"Because I don't live in either my past or my future. I'm interested only in the present. If you can concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man. You'll see that there is life in the desert, that there are stars in the heavens, and that tribesmen fight because they are part of the human race. Life will be a party for you, a grand festival, because life is the moment we're living right now."
Two nights later, as he was getting ready to bed down, the boy looked for the star they followed every night. He thought that the horizon was a bit lower than it had been, because he seemed to see stars on the desert itself.
"It's the oasis," said the camel driver.
"Well, why don't we go there right now?" the boy asked.
The boy awoke as the sun rose. There, in front of him, where the small stars had been the night before, was an endless row of date palms, stretching across the entire desert.
"We've done it!" said the Englishman, who had also early.
But the boy was quiet. He was at home with the silence of the desert, and he was content just to look at the trees. He still had a long way to go to reach the pyramids, and someday this morning would just be a memory. But this was the present moment—the party the camel driver had mentioned—and he wanted to live it as he did the lessons of his past and his dreams of the future. Although the vision of the date palms would someday be just a memory, right now it signified shade, water, and a refuge from the war. Yesterday, the camel's groan signaled danger, and now a row of date palms could a miracle.
The world speaks many languages, the boy thought.
The times rush past, and so do the , thought the alchemist, as he watched the hundreds of people and animals arriving at the oasis. People were shouting at the new arrivals, dust obscured the desert sun, and the children of the oasis were bursting with excitement at the arrival of the strangers. The alchemist saw the chiefs greet the leader of the caravan, and wi............