Let me tell you a story about the price I paid for a certain book, famous among a very select group of darwish, the Secret Book of Uways.

Pondering on where to get money I decided to earn some by making artificial paper flowers. For this purpose I immediately went to a shop to buy coloured paper, but, calculating that for my fifty kopeks I could get very little, I decided simply to buy some thin white paper and a little aniline dye of different colours and to colour the paper myself. In this way for a trifling sum I could produce a large quantity of flowers.

From the shop I went to the town gardens to rest on a bench in the shade of the trees. Buried in my thoughts, I looked at the trees where sparrows flitted from branch to branch enjoying the stillness of the afternoon. Suddenly the thought entered my head: ‘Why not try to make money with the sparrows? The inhabitants of this place, the Sarts, are very fond of canaries and other kinds of song birds; is a sparrow any worse than a canary?’

On the street which ran alongside the town gardens was a cabstand, where a number of drivers were resting and dozing on their boxes in the afternoon heat. I went over and plucked from the horses’ tails the hairs I needed, made snares of them and set them in various places, Philos watching me all the time with great attention. A sparrow soon fell into one of the snares. I carefully took it out and carried it home.

At the house I asked the landlady for scissors, clipped my sparrow to the shape of a canary, and then coloured it fantastically with the aniline dyes. I took this sparrow to Old Samarkand, where I immediately sold it, claiming that it was a special ‘American canary’. I charged two roubles for it. With the money I at once bought several simple painted cages and from then on began selling my sparrows in cages. In two weeks I sold about eighty of these American canaries.

I did not risk a long stay in Samarkand. I was afraid that the devil would play a joke, and that my sparrows might suddenly get wet in the rain or that some American canary in its cage might take a fancy to bathing in its drinking trough, and then indeed there would be a great uproar, as my American canaries would be turned into disfigured, clipped and miserable sparrows. So I hastened to get away with my skin whole.

From Samarkand I went to New Bukhara, where I expected to find my friend, the dervish Bogga-Eddin. I felt like a rich man, for I had over a hundred and fifty roubles in my pocket, which at that time was considered a fairly large sum.

Finally I was able to obtain from Bogga-Eddin his secret book of wisdom, handwritten by Uways. I pressed the roubles into his palm, and begged him to give it to me.

“Wait here.”, he said. “I’ll be right back with the book.”.

I did not see hide nor hair of the rascal for many years. Our next meeting – well, that is another story.

By the way, I did eventually manage to obtain Uways’ famous secret book. It’s on the shelf, right there, in that locked box.

How much do I want for it? Well, you seem like a eager seeker after truth, so for you, a very special price.

Just $15,000 of your American dollars.