The slippers in the story mean that everything you see and do and touch, every seed you sow, or don't sow, becomes part of your destiny. That night the old man died in his sleep. Why try to lose them? He'll never escape.' The old man laughed, and he seemed happy when he said that. 'One night when Tawfiq finished, another prisoner, a quiet dignified old man, said, 'Abu Kassem might as well build a special room for his slippers. But his every attempt to get rid of his slippers ended in disaster: when he tossed them out of his window they landed on the head of a pregnant woman who miscarried, and Abu Kassem was thrown in jail when he dropped them in the canal, the slippers choked off the main drain and caused flooding, and off Abu Kassem went to jail. At last, even he couldn't stomach the sight of them. “It was a tale well known to children all over Africa: Abu Kassem, a miserly Baghdad merchant, had held on to his battered, much repaired pair of slippers even though they were objects of derision.
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