[ the three of them have something in common, kaveh thinks. he has known this. it had merely been a footnote since - that all three of them are orphans. alhaitham's living relatives are all dead; an accident, old age, the lack of any relatives close enough to claim the familial plot. kaveh's father is dead, and his mother has left to remarry. he loved them and loves them still, but he had grown up on his own. and daan - his parents had left him in a field.

kaveh breathes out. he smiles. it's a wry one; it's a sorrowful one. it's a bitter one all the same. ]

See? Courage. [ kaveh says, ] I continue to think so. You've courage to you, to think that way, to allow yourself to think that way, to dare yourself to try. But you know, Daan. Alhaitham doesn't make mistakes. I left him unsupervised for three weeks to go dig a hole in the desert, and when I came back, he had toppled our government because he didn't like where the new regime was taking his working hours. He's that sort of man. Alhaitham is an island unto himself, and he doesn't make mistakes.

So it follows that it would be unforgivable if he were to make a mistake. I don't want him to make the mistake, of choosing to love someone that can't be loved. In the unlikely scenario that he did mean what he said, I can forgive the honesty. But I wouldn't be able to forgive myself for letting him make a mistake that I could have prevented.