He was fascinated with bones

Ejaz examined his own bones, and he compared them to animal bones. Birds, goats, camels, human beings pretty much have the same bones. although differently suited for tasks like carrying burdens or taking flight. This was not part of teaching or myth so it bothered him. He realized it might be dangerous to know this, but he couldn’t help it. He counted the vertebrae. He measured the tibiae. The shapes of the mandibles lined up in his mind. He could see that human beings were neither the most fragile nor the most robust. We were neither the weakest nor the strongest, only average. It seemed to Ejaz that only the soft parts—the tongue, the heart, the brain—give us pride, delusion, or beauty.