Paulo Coelho - The Fifth Mountain

Translated By

And he said, Verily I say unto you, No prophet is accepted in his own country.

But I tell you of a truth, many widows were in Israel in the days of Elias, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, when great famine was throughout all the land;

But unto none of them was Elias sent, save unto Zarephath, a city of Sidon, unto a woman that was a widow.

Luke 4:24–26

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Title Page The Fifth Mountain Paulo Coelho Translated By

Epigraph And he said, Verily I say unto you, No prophet is accepted in his own country. But I tell you of a truth, many widows were in Israel in the days of Elias, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, when great famine was throughout all the land; But unto none of them was Elias sent, save unto Zarephath, a city of Sidon, unto a woman that was a widow. Luke 4:24–26

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR

PROLOGUE

PART I

I HAVE SERVED A LORD

HE WALKED FOR MANY HOURS

ELIJAH AWOKE THE NEXT DAY

ELIJAH JOURNEYED FOR DAYS

ELIJAH’S PRESENCE WAS SOON

LITTLE BY LITTLE ELIJAH BECAME

AT THE ENTRANCE TO THE VALLEY

IN THE DISTANCE

SHOUTING INSULTS AND HURLING STONES

AFTER MUCH TIME HAD PASSED

PART II

THE HIGH PRIEST SAID

AKBAR WOULD GO ON EXISTING

THE HIGH PRIEST REMAINED

THE NEXT DAY

ELIJAH STILL LIVES

TWO MORE MONTHS PASSED

THE PRISONER

THE LORD SPOKE UNTO MOSES

ELIJAH CONTINUED WALKING

HE WAS AWAKENED

LET’S GO

ELIJAH, THE WOMAN, AND THE BOY

I’M HUNGRY AND THIRSTY

THE NEXT DAY THEY AWOKE

THE BOY AND THE MAN

HE LOOKED AT THE BOY

BEHOLD, OH LORD

THE NEXT DAY

ANOTHER DAY WENT BY

ELIJAH AWOKE WITH A START

THE WOMAN WHO HAD ASKED

TWO NIGHTS LATER

THE DAYS BECAME WEEKS

ELIJAH AWOKE SAYING

CARAVANS NO LONGER CAME

THE CHIEF TRADER SAW

AND IT CAME TO PASS

FROM THE STONE WHERE HE SAT

ELIJAH AND THE BOY

FIVE YEARS LATER

ELIJAH RETURNED TO

MARIA CONCEIVED WITHOUT SIN

About the Author

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In my book The Alchemist , the central thesis lies in a phrase that King Melchizedek says to the shepherd boy Santiago: “When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.”

I believe this with all my heart. However, the act of living one’s own destiny includes a series of stages that are far beyond our understanding, whose objective is always to take us back to the path of our Personal Legend—or to make us learn the lessons necessary to fulfill our own destiny. I think I can better illustrate what I am saying by relating an episode in my life.

On August 12, 1979, I went to sleep with a single certainty: at the age of thirty I was successfully making my way to the top of my career as a recording executive. I was working as artistic director for CBS in Brazil, and I had just been invited to the United States to talk to the owners of the company, who would surely provide me with every opportunity to achieve all that I desired to do in my area. Of course my great dream—to be a writer—had been set aside, but what did that matter? After all, real life was very different from what I had imagined; there was no way to earn a living from literature in Brazil.

That night I made a decision: to abandon my dream. One had to adapt to circumstances and take advantage of opportunities. If my heart protested, I could deceive it by composing song lyrics whenever I wanted, and by doing some writing now and then for some newspaper. Besides, I was convinced that my life had taken a different path, but one no less exciting: a brilliant future awaited me in the world of the music multinationals.

When I woke up, I received a phone call from the president: I had just been fired, without further explanation. Although I knocked on various doors in the next two years, I never found a position again in that field.

When I finished writing The Fifth Mountain , I recalled that episode—and other manifestations of the unavoidable in my life. Whenever I thought myself the absolute master of a situation, something would happen to cast me down. I asked myself: why? Can it be that I’m condemned to always come close but never reach the finish line? Can God be so cruel that He would let me see the palm trees on the horizon only to have me die of thirst in the desert?

It took a long time to understand that it wasn’t quite like that. There are things that are brought into our lives to lead us back to the true path of our Personal Legend. Other things arise so we can apply all that we have learned. And, finally, some things come along to teach us.

In my book The Pilgrimage , I tried to show that these teachings need not be linked to pain and suffering; discipline and attentiveness alone are enough. Although this understanding has become an important blessing in my life, it still did not equip me to transit certain difficult moments that I experienced, even with total discipline and attentiveness.

One example is the case I have cited; I was a serious professional, made every effort to give the best there was in me, and had ideas that even today I consider worthwhile. But the unavoidable happened, at the very moment when I felt most secure and confident. I believe I am not alone in this experience; the unavoidable has touched the life of every human being on the face of the earth. Some have rebounded, others have given up—but all of us have felt the wings of tragedy brushing against us.

Why? To answer this question, I let Elijah lead me through the days and nights of Akbar.

At the beginning of the year 870 B.C., a nation known as Phoenicia, which the Israelites called Lebanon, had marked almost three centuries of peace. Its inhabitants could take pride in their accomplishments; because they were not politically powerful, they had developed an enviable skill at negotiation as the only means of assuring survival in a world beset by constant war. An alliance made around the year 1000 B.C. with King Solomon of Israel had allowed the modernization of its merchant fleet and the expansion of trade. Since that time, Phoenicia had never stopped growing.

Its navigators had traveled to places as distant as Spain and the Atlantic Ocean, and there are theories—as yet unconfirmed—of their having left inscriptions in northeastern and southern Brazil. They carried glass, cedar, weapons, iron, and ivory. The inhabitants of the large cities such as Sidon, Tyre, and Byblos were familiar with numbers, astronomical calculations, the manufacture of wine, and for almost two hundred years had been using a set of characters for writing, which the Greeks knew as alphabet.

At the beginning of the year 870 B.C., a council of war was meeting in a distant place called Nineveh. A group of Assyrian generals had decided to send troops to conquer the nations located along the Mediterranean coast. Phoenicia had been selected as the first country to be invaded.

At the beginning of the year 870 B.C., two men hiding in a stable in Gilead, in Israel, expected to die in the next few hours.

“I HAVE SERVED ALORD WHO NOW ABANDONS ME INTO the hands of my enemies,” said Elijah.