Valley of the Butterflies

It was not a passing saying, or a line of poetry that dampened the dryness of the situation, but a slap whose hissing sound continued to ring in my ears for twenty-five years. Late last year, my uncle Gibran visited me in prison, bringing with him a bag of food and a box of gifts, which one of the jailers helped him carry. He was an old man with a hunched back, weakened by illness, and except for ...