They didn't believe me when I told them about the bright red rose I saw in the desert. It had flowered on a dry leaf less thorny stem. I had seen it on the fifth day after I started from the oasis.
All had gathered around my table to know the news about the new outbreak in the north. The whole of the tavern laughed at me over the rose. There wasn’t anything I could do other than letting them take their pleasure from laughing at me.
Then one of them put forth that if a flower bloomed like that, then it would still be there. I assented to that to avoid further argument. At last when three of them set out to the desert, I felt that it was more for proving a stranger wrong than to see that flower.
I do not know whether any of them ever came back to the tavern.
