Without saying a word I kissed the old man's head.
"So, `Abd al-Haqq," he asked me with a smile, "do you smell in me the foul stench of heresy?"
I gestured that I did not, then left the room after bidding him farewell. In the corridor one of the older residents stopped me. "So, dear sage," he said in a feeble, despairing tone, "even you will counsel me to remain steadfast in resisting evil. But what can a poor devil like me say when he has gone to extreme lengths in his indulgence in both evil and endurance?"
That said, he turned around and left without waiting for the benefit of my wisdom on the subject.
As I left the asylum, the things that I had witnessed were making my head spin, even though they were obviously just the tip of the iceberg. Equally disillusioning was the impotence I had experienced in the face of so many images of human misery.
I promised al-Badisi to go back and see him, but what was the point when it occurred to me that I should have been urging the man named Byron to question his own doubts but had decided not to do so out of modesty and respect for his avoidance of argument and preaching? How was I supposed to behave any other way, when in this regard the only difference between the two of us lay in the fact that the downturns and trials in his life had led him to believe that man was made from dust and returned to it, just as chemical compounds are reduced by dissolution. For my part I was and still am involved in my own emotional flights, my intellectual contemplations, and my mystical fantasies, seeing the spirit exempted from such an outcome and wagering its redemption and resurrection after death.
Once I reached the zawiya, I made my way to the cell of the Meknesi shaykh. I found him stretched out on his bed, so I sat down beside him and offered my greetings. I started telling him about the things I had witnessed at the asylum today, but he was far away and not paying any attention. Sometimes he kept his eyes closed, while at others he kept mumbling things I could not understand. I gave him a shake as though I were waking a sleeping man and made him aware I was there by asking him what was distracting him.
"What's distracting me, you ask?" he replied, staring vacantly at me. "This memorable day, dear man. Its light has made me aware of the sheer futility and uselessness of my life. That woman-may the One who created her and made her so beautiful be praised! If God has indeed willed her to be yours, then you are a really lucky man, really lucky!"
"And here I thought you despised this world," I said.
"No, it's not that. That's not enough to make people sad. How can you despise something you don't even possess? I've watched as the world has expended enormous efforts in shunning me. As a result I've adopted a policy of despising it as a way of laying the blame where it truly belongs and taking my own revenge. Tell me, by God, have those people who are to enter paradise been promised only ugly, deformed women? Or crude matting, patched garments, and bread dipped in lard and water? Or is it that they've been promised something much better and lovelier than that? When we visited that beautiful woman's riyad, I saw images of precisely those things. Today I'm not leaving my cell here. To the extent possible I'm going to fast and pray-my only prayer being that God may speed my journey to paradise and eternal life…"
"Are you going to leave me," I asked jokingly, "before you tell me the second reason?"
"Which second reason, Ibn Dara?" he asked with a frown.
"You only gave me one reason for leaving Meknes for Sabta," I said. "You promised you'd tell me the other one."
"Here I am talking to you about my desire to leave this world," he responded angrily, "and you're asking me about something I've completely forgotten. Are you making fun of me?"
"No, heaven forbid," I said. "And what about the lady's wonderful gift, `Abd al-Kamil?"
"Clothes made of expensive materials whose names I don't even know. If I put them on, people would laugh at me or say I'd stolen them. Here they are, under my coverlet. When I die, put them inside my shroud. Then, when I wake up in paradise, I can put them on and strut about like a peacock. Yes indeed, a peacock. During my lifetime I've suffered enough deprivation and mockery and spent far too long pretending to be scared and poor. It's as though for some reason or other I needed to apologize for being alive and walking around in the midst of other people."
"Paradise is guaranteed to you," I said, trying to keep a chuckle suppressed, "that's for sure."
He clearly found my comment peculiar. "But paradise is reserved for people who are pious and poor," he said. "I'm both, so if I'm not among the very first to get in, then who's it intended for?"
I made a gesture to indicate that I thought he was probably right. Kissing his head, I made my way out, promising to come and see him again soon.
7
BACK IN MY ROOM I did some routine chores and recorded all the things I had seen and heard during my investigations that day. I read some pages from the anthology of Arabic love-poetry and ate a good deal of my beloved's food, resolving as I did so to visit her the next day.
My sleep was full indeed, being embellished by a dream that I could vividly recall when I woke up. At the very top of the oak tree that I had been unable to climb in my quest to talk to the lunatics' overlord, my beloved, the mistress of my very being, sat cross-legged. She was inviting me to come up and pick whatever I wished. I duly responded to her invitation, whereupon we embraced and clung to each other enough to cause the branches we were on to snap. Thus linked together we fell to the ground, which had prepared for us piles of soft grasses and straw. We rolled around together in the most delightful way, relishing the union of marital intercourse and indulging in its pleasure till dawn and the arrival of daylight.
This woman is lifting me up, entrancing me, and giving me new life!
Reluctant to interrupt such a vision, I nevertheless got out of bed, washed myself, and performed the prayer. I put on my best clothes and perfumed myself. After breakfasting on some of my beloved's food, I went out and headed for her dwelling, full of longing and passion. I soon reached the quarter in question. But no sooner did I arrive at the door of her house than I saw a huge black man standing there and watching as I anxiously paced to and fro. He told me to move on, and I had no alternative but to do what he said, not least because a lot of nosy men and women were now watching my movements with considerable curiosity.
I went into the center of the city, mingled with the city folk, and then sat down on a bench opposite a square teeming with people. I started practicing my secret hobby, desiring to make light of my doubts and feelings of nausea. Had I been in the desert, I would have stared fixedly at the flights of birds passing over my head or at the herds of cattle so I too could have felt myself turned into a bird or animal. But in an urban setting my strategy involves looking at people as they pass by and weaving a story around each of them, male or female, even though it may never have applied to them in particular nor would it. For example (one among many possibilities), this particular man looks like a criminal, a brutal murderer, or a vicious enforcer, while that one seems like someone condemned to death although the sentence has been commuted, or else someone with one foot already in the grave; still another one has a face beneath which is another countenance with a thousand and one secrets to it, a passionate lover perhaps who allows his imagination to fabricate an entire web of desire and longing and fashions his dreams on cords of wind and leaves of sand. Anyone who can do what I do, steering the ship of the imagination in better directions, will never be a professional historian, but rather a narrator of promises, a ploughman for the marginal and secluded.