The Alchemist (22 page)
Authors: Paulo Coelho
The boy smiled. It was the first time she had done that.
“I'm coming, Fatima,” he said.
An inspirational companion to
The Alchemist
that invites us to live out our dreams, to embrace the uncertainty of life, and to rise to meet our own unique destiny. In his inimitable style, Paulo Coelho presents a collection of philosophical stories that will delight and guide seekers everywhere and help bring out the
Warrior of Light
within each of us.
PROLOGUE
“Just off the beach to the west of the village lies an island, and on it is a vast temple with many bells,” said the woman.
The boy noticed that she was dressed strangely and had a veil covering her head. He had never seen her before.
“Have you ever visited that temple?” she asked. “Go there and tell me what you think of it?”
Seduced by the woman's beauty, the boy went to the place she had indicated. He sat down on the beach and stared out at the horizon, but he saw only what he always saw: blue sky and ocean.
Disappointed, he walked to a nearby fishing village and asked if anyone there knew about an island and a temple.
“Oh, that was many years ago, when my great-grandparents were alive,” said an old fisherman. “There was an earthquake, and the island was swallowed up by the
sea. But although we can no longer see the island, we can still hear the temple bells when the ocean sets them swinging down below.”
The boy went back to the beach and tried to hear the bells. He spent the whole afternoon there, but all he heard was the noise of the waves and the cries of the seagulls.
When night fell, his parents came looking for him. The following morning, he went back to the beach; he could not believe that such a beautiful woman would have lied to him. If she ever returned, he could tell her that, although he had not seen the island, he had heard the temple bells set ringing by the motion of the waves.
Many months passed; the woman did not return and the boy forgot all about her; now he was convinced that he needed to discover the riches and treasures in the submerged temple. If he could hear the bells, he would be able to locate it and salvage the treasure hidden below.
He lost interest in school and even in his friends. He became the butt of all the other children's jokes. They used to say: “He's not like us. He prefers to sit looking at the sea because he's afraid of being beaten in our games.”
And they all laughed to see the boy sitting on the shore.
Although he still could not hear the old temple bells ringing, the boy learned about other things. He began to realize that he had grown so used to the sound of the waves that he was no longer distracted by them. Soon after that, he became used to the cries of the seagulls,
the buzzing of the bees and the wind blowing amongst the palm trees.
Six months after his first conversation with the woman, the boy could sit there oblivious to all other noises, but he still could not hear the bells from the drowned temple.
Fishermen came and talked to him, insisting that they had heard the bells.
But the boy never did.
Some time later, however, the fishermen changed their tune: “You spend far too much time thinking about the bells beneath the sea. Forget about them and go back to playing with your friends. Perhaps it's only fishermen who can hear them.”
After almost a year, the boy thought: “Perhaps they're right. I would do better to grow up and become a fisherman and come down to this beach every morning, because I've come to love it here.” And he thought too: “Perhaps it's just another legend and the bells were all shattered during the earthquake and have never rung out since.”
That afternoon, he decided to go back home.
He walked down to the ocean to say goodbye. He looked once more at the natural world around him and because he was no longer concerned about the bells, he could again smile at the beauty of the seagulls' cries, the roar of the sea, and the wind blowing in the palm trees. Far off, he heard the sound of his friends playing and he felt glad to think that he would soon resume his childhood games.
The boy was happy andâas only a child canâhe felt grateful for being alive. He was sure that he had not wasted his time, for he had learned to contemplate Nature and to respect it.
Then, because he was listening to the sea, the seagulls, the wind in the palm trees, and the voices of his friends playing, he also heard the first bell.
And then another.
And another, until, to his great joy, all the bells in the drowned temple were ringing.
Years later, when he was a grown man, he returned to the village and to the beach of his childhood. He no longer dreamed of finding treasure at the bottom of the sea; perhaps that had all been a product of his imagination, and he had never really heard the submerged bells ring out on one lost childhood afternoon. Even so, he decided to walk for a while along the beach, to listen to the noise of the wind and to the cries of the seagulls.
Imagine his surprise when, there on the beach, he saw the woman who had first spoken to him about the island and its temple.
“What are you doing here?” he asked.
“I was waiting for you,” she replied.
He noticed that, despite the passing years, the woman looked exactly the same; the veil hiding her hair had not faded with time.
She handed him a blue notebook full of blank pages.
“Write: A Warrior of the Light values a child's eyes because they are able to look at the world without bitterness. When he wants to find out if the person beside him is worthy of his trust, he tries to see him as a child would.”
“What is a Warrior of the Light?”
“You already know that,” she replied with a smile. “He is someone capable of understanding the miracle of life, of fighting to the last for something he believes inâand of hearing the bells that the waves set ringing on the seabed.”
He had never thought of himself as a Warrior of the Light. The woman seemed to read his thoughts. “Everyone is capable of these things. And, though no one thinks of himself as a Warrior of the Light, we all are.”
He looked at the blank pages in the notebook. The woman smiled again.
“Write about the Warrior,” she said.
Photo by Xavier González
PAULO COELHO
was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. His own life has in many ways been as varied and unusual as the protagonists of his internationally acclaimed novels. Like them, Paulo Coelho has followed a dream in a quest for fulfillment. His own dream, to be a writer, met with frustration throughout much of his early adult life, a time in which he worked at various professions, some of them materially rewarding but spiritually unfulfilling. “I always knew,” he says, “that my Personal Legend, to use a term from alchemy, was to write.” He was thirty-eight when he published his first book.
In 1970, after deciding that law school was not for him, he traveled through much of South America, North Africa, Mexico, and Europe. Returning to Brazil after two years, he began a successful career as a popular songwriter. In 1974, he was imprisoned for a short time by the military dictatorship then ruling in Brazil. In 1980, he experienced one of the defining moments of his life: he walked the five hundredâplus mile Road of Santiago de Compostela in northwestern Spain. On this ancient highway, used for centuries by pilgrims from
France to get to the cathedral said to house the remains of St. James, he achieved a self-awareness and a spiritual awakening that he later described in
The Pilgrimage.
Paulo Coelho once said that following your dream is like learning a foreign language; you will make mistakes but you will get there in the end. In 1988, he published
The Alchemist,
a novel that explores this theme, and it launched him as an international bestselling author. Specifically, Paulo Coelho is recognized for his powerful storytelling technique and the profound spiritual insights he blends seamlessly into his parables. His books have sold over 150 million copies worldwide. A winner of numerous literary prizes, he has been a member of the Brazilian Academy of Letters since 2002. Paulo Coelho is also a prominent speaker for humanitarian causes. In 2007, he was named a United Nations Messenger of Peace.
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