"On Freedom" Summary

An orator asks about freedom, and Almustafa observes that he has seen them worshipping freedom like slaves do a tyrant. Freedom is a yoke and handcuff. It makes Almustafa's heart bleed to see freedom regarded as anything but a goal and fulfillment. People are free not when their days are carefree and their nights are want- and grief-free. Rather, they are free when they can rise above their physical concerns. One cannot do so without breaking at dawn the chains that fasten around the understanding at noon. What people call freedom is a strong, glittering chain, fragments of one's self that one is willing to discard in order to be free. People write unjust laws on their own foreheads and cannot erase them by burning law books or washing the foreheads of their judges. Despots cannot be dethroned without...