“While traveling in an eastern country, Mr Palomar bought a pair of slippers in a bazaar. Returning home, he tries to put them on: he realizes that one slipper is wider than the other and will not stay on his foot. He recalls the old vendor crouched on his heels in a niche of the bazaar in front of a pile of slippers of every size, at random; he sees the man as he rummages in the pile to find a slipper suited to the customer's foot, has him try it on, then starts rummaging again to hand him the presumed mate, which Mr Palomar accepts without trying it on. "Perhaps now," Mr Palomar thinks, "another man is walking around the country with a mis-mated pair of slippers." And he sees a slender shadow moving over the desert with a limp, a slipper falling off his foot at every step, or else, too tight, imprisoning a twisted foot. "Perhaps he, too, at this moment is thinking of me, hoping to run into me and make the trade. The relationship binding us is more concrete and clear than many of the relationships established between human beings. And yet we will never meet." He decides to go on wearing these odd slippers of out solidarity to his unknown companion in misfortune, to keep alive this complementary relationship that is so rare, this mirroring of limping steps from one continent to another.”

—Mr Palomar