Page 13 - The Alchemist - Paulo Coelho

living.”

The boy estimated that, if he worked for six more months, he could return to Spain and
buy sixty sheep, and yet another sixty. In less than a year, he would have doubled his
flock, and he would be able to do business with the Arabs, because he was now able to
speak their strange language.

He was proud of himself. He had learned some important things, like how to deal in
crystal, and about the language without words...and about omens.

“I’ve had this shop for thirty years. I know good crystal from bad, and everything else
there is to know about crystal, I know its dimensions and how it behaves. If we serve tea
in crystal, the shop is going to expand. And then I’ll have to change my way of life.”

“Well, isn’t that good?”

“I’m already used to the way things are. Before you came, I was thinking about how
much time I had wasted in the same place, while my friends had moved on, and either
went bankrupt or did better than they had before. It made me very depressed. Now, I can
see that it hasn’t been too bad. The shop is exactly the size I always wanted it to be. I
don’t want to change anything, because I don’t know how to deal with change. I’m used
to the way I am.”

“You have been a real blessing to me. Today, I understand something I didn’t see before:
every blessing ignored becomes a curse. I don’t want anything else in life. But you are
forcing me to look at wealth and at horizons I have never known. Now that I have seen
them, and now that I see how immense my possibilities are. I’m going to feel worse than
I did before you arrived. Because I know the things I should be able to accomplish, and I
don’t want to do so.”

“Maktub” the merchant said, finally.

“What does that mean?”

“You would have to have been born an Arab to understand,” he answered. “But in your
language it would be something like ‘It is written.’”

And, as he smothered the coals in the hookah, he told the boy that he could begin to sell
tea in the crystal glasses. Sometimes, there’s just no way to hold back the river.

“I’m leaving today,” said the boy. “I have the money I need to buy my sheep. And you
have the money you need to go to Mecca.”