‘Reclining seats,’ said the driver, ‘for siesta.’ The leather cushions beneath me began to hum and tip. My legs were lifting, my back was falling, all at government expense.
THE PEOPLE at my uncles’ village were not impressed. All they wanted was tobacco. The driver handed out a packet of cigarettes. But nobody wanted a light from the car’s automatic cigar-lighter. Nobody wanted to smoke. They wanted to hoard their fortune. The driver gave out ice cubes from the icebox in the car. Children held them and watched them slowly disappear, like fool’s gold. Nobody remembered my uncles, though our family name was familiar. They pointed me towards the trees. They were superstitious enough to respect the acacia of old men. They waited patiently for the firewood.
I COME once a year — once a year only — to pay my respects at the acacia in the village of my uncles. I come after my birthday and tie a twist of white linen to a branch, a strip of cloth every year.
The tree was now a ragamuffin of flapping tatters, from white to grey to nearly black. There was more linen than leaf. In the old days I came by donkey and then later by bus and now by air-conditioned limousine. In the distance, beyond the walls of the acacia wood, I could hear the stereo cassette of my driver and the shrieks of the children. A touch of reality amongst the reveries.
I took the fresh, newly laundered strip of linen from my pouch and carefully wound it twice round the one living branch. I tied it with a firm knot and stepped back with the delicate care of an egret. Slowly — and not without some pain — I urinated into the earth at the roots of my tree. I had carried out both the written and the private rituals. Then I sat and prayed. I prayed — even at this late dry stage in my rigidly geometric life — for Lily Death.
This is what we were taught as children, that when God created Death he created two sorts, Lily Death and Moon Death. The choice is ours, depending on the way we live our lives. The lily is gregarious. It thrives amongst its own kind. It sends out shoots which replace and survive it after death. The moon is solitary and childless. It has no offshoots. But when it dies, it rises to live again. I had lived a moon life. Was I to die and rise again? Was the reward of solitude on earth immortality of some kind?
These days, of course, the choice is not the same. They have cleared the lilies from the river. The moonshine is damped out by street lights and car lamps. Nowadays, one selects either cremation or interment. It’s ashes or bones. We choose the nature of our death by the way we live our lives. Accusations are made against cigarettes and alcohol, animal fats and partners in bed.
So back to the limousine and a cool drive to the city, praying in the stench of button cloth and recycled air for deliverance from Moon Death. So back across scrub to my Evening Desk in the inner room.
STARTING a piece of work is a simple matter for those with purpose: a desk, some fine inks and brushes, a little chalk dust (blotting paper is untrustworthy) and a good light are all that are required.
Exercises first. The calligrapher’s hands are tense from mixing his inks, perhaps, or from oversleeping with bad dreams. They must be relaxed. The nervousness must be worked out on scrap paper until the pen and brush strokes are unhesitant, firm and decisive. Then he can embark on the warp and weft of design, on the complex challenges of reconciling the age-old rules which govern the placing of diacritical signs with the vexatious oddities of Siddilic orthography. And now the letters must be worked again to develop fully the equilibrium of dimensions, to reveal balance and rhythm, to express meaning through form. Then the calligrapher should leave his work and eat a little, walk perhaps to a friend’s house, bathe, sleep a little. Let the letters brew. He is seeking beauty of the highest intellectual order, the most contemplative, the most civilized and sophisticated. There can be no haste.
Then, refreshed, the calligrapher looks at his first drafts again. He studies them at another desk, under a new light. The decorative themes curl around the letters under his gaze. The Kufic and cursive debate before his eyes and present their conclusions. He sits with clean parchment, newly mixed inks, his head not spinning but calm with certainties. This is the easiest and the final draft.
I HAVE NOT been so fortunate. The Minister’s head of protocol came today, chewing gum. He enquired about the progress of my great work. Exhibition dates, he said, had been arranged.
‘Well,’ I explained, ‘I have nothing to show you.’
‘Then start quickly. You don’t have time.’
‘I am an old man,’ I said. ‘I have lost my talents.’ I held up a (frankly) excessively shaky hand. ‘I’ve sat at my three desks for two weeks. I have wasted a ream of paper and a half-kilo of ink. Nothing comes. I don’t have ideas any longer. You’d better cancel your exhibitions.’
The aide-de-camp looked severely discountenanced. He rolled his chewing gum round his mouth. He looked around the house for some evidence of deceit.
‘The Minister isn’t going to be pleased,’ he said eventually. ‘We had an agreement with you.’
I shrugged. I hadn’t agreed to anything.
‘You’ve been using the government car! You’ve been using the government driver! Corruption! Fraud!’
I shrugged again. My hand was really shaking.
‘You’ll die in prison,’ he said. ‘We’ll burn your house.’ He extemporized dreadful fates for a few moments. Then he put up his hands, palms out, at chest level, to indicate that he had discovered a solution and that the threats were now ended. ‘Say nothing to the Minister,’ he said. ‘The Minister has made it my responsibility. You understand. I can make it easy for you. You won’t let me down because I can be a very cruel man. Call your servant.’
Sabino came through from the yard and sat down, as instructed, on the tiled floor. The aide-de-camp lit a cigarette and drew on it a few times until its ash burned bright. Then he stubbed it out on Sabino’s head. The odour of burnt hair joined the smell of tobacco. Sabino did not seem to feel anything except fear and apprehension. The aide-de-camp and head of Ministerial protocol took the gum from his mouth and ground it, too, into Sabino’s scalp. ‘There,’ he said.
‘Bravo.’
‘This is just to give you an idea,’ he explained. ‘Now, to business.’ He placed a thick envelope of banknotes on Sabino’s head. It balanced there. A fortune. ‘That should help you find inspiration,’ he said, and left my house with only a fraction of the ceremony with which he had entered it. I have seen many strange things in my life and met many foolish men — but this was the strangest and he was the most foolish.
I WAS SPENDING more and more time on my bed in the company of my gecko. I could think of little but work. But I produced nothing at my desks except doodles in geometric arabesque, mockeries of script. I slept on my back as recommended by the great calligrapher, Mir Ali of Tabriz. He had been thus inspired to devise Nasta’liq, the hanging script of the Muslims. A partridge had appeared to him in a dream and instructed him to shape letters like the wings of a bird. But all I dreamt of was young, young girls. Should I shape letters like young girls for the Minister’s great exhibition?
SABINO HAS fled from me. He fears for his life. Now I have no one to prepare my food, to wash my gowns, to walk into the market for my few provisions.
I walk each day at dusk, just as the moon starts to show itself low on the horizon, to what remain of the market booths. I enjoy myself. People call out to me as they used to when I had a booth of my own. I am a celebrity here, now that the Minister has visited me and Americans have made off with my shop fronts. I buy some fish and a few vegetables. I sit in the Syrian’s bar and drink tea while small boys, on hire for a few coins, run to fetch my clean washing or to purchase some heavy item. The Syrian sits with me and complains bitterly: custom is bad, too many laws, too many taxes, the young are disrespectful, an honest man cannot make his honest fortune, thieves everywhere, nobody knows how hard he works, life is cruel and expensive, the heat.