"He's a wool merchant."
"So he's out in the city somewhere right now, selling wool, but his nature's not satisfied with the selling of wool. He needs something else in his life, so he sends you along to talk philosophy."
"Oh no… you don't understand… he didn't send me."
"He may not think he sent you. You may not think you were sent. But you were born your father's son and whatever you do, you do it for him." The youth frowned, plainly troubled at the thought of doing anything for his father. "You're like the fingers of his hand, digging in the dirt while he counts his bales of wool. He doesn't even notice that the hand's digging. He doesn't see it drop seeds into the hole. He's amazed when he finds a tree's grown up beside him, filled with sweet fruit and singing birds. But it was his hand did it."
The youth looked down at the ground. "What do you mean by this?" he said.
"That we do not belong to ourselves. That though we cannot know the full purpose of our creation, we should look to those who came before us to understand it better. Not just our fathers and our mothers, but all who went before. They are the pathway back to God, who may not know, even as He counts stars, that we're quietly digging a hole, planting a seed…"
Now the youth looked up again, smiling, entertained by the notion of God the Father looking the other way while His human hands grew a garden at His feet.
"Does that answer the question?" Zelim said.
"I was still wondering…" the student said.
"Yes?"
"Your own father-?"
"He was a fisherman from a little village called Atva, which is on the shores of the Caspian Sea." As Zelim spoke, he felt a little breath of wind against his face, delightfully cool. He paused to appreciate it. Closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them again, he knew something had changed in the room; he just didn't know what.
"Where was I?" he said.
"Atva," somebody at the back of the room said.
"Ah, yes, Atva. My father lived there all his life, but he dreamed of being somewhere quite different. He dreamed of Samarkand. He told his children he'd been here, in his youth. And he wove such stories of this city; such stories…"
Again, Zelim halted. The cool breeze had brushed against his brow a second time, and something about the way it touched him seemed like a sign. As though the breeze was saying look, look…
But at what? He gazed out of the window, thinking perhaps there was something out there he needed to see. The sky was darkening toward night. A chestnut tree, still covetous of its leaves despite the season, was in perfect silhouette. High up in its branches the evening star glim mered. But he'd seen all of this before: a sky, a tree, a star.
He returned his gaze to the room, still puzzled.
"What kind of stories?" somebody was asking him.
"Stories…?"
"You said your father told stories of Samarkand."
"Oh yes. So he did. Wonderful stories. He wasn't a very good sailor, my father. In fact he drowned on a perfectly calm day. But he could have told tales of Samarkand for a year and never told the same one twice."
"But you say he never came here?" the master of the school asked Zelim.
"Never," Zelim said, smiling. "Which is why he was able to tell such fine stories about it."
This amused everyone mightily. But Zelim scarcely heard the laughter. Again, that tantalizing breeze had brushed his face; and this time, when he raised his eyes, he saw somebody moving through the shadows at the far end of the room. It was not one of the students. They were all dressed in pale yellow robes. This figure was dressed in ragged black breeches and a dirty shirt. He was also black, his skin possessing a curious radiance, which made Zelim remember a long-ago day.
"Atva…?" he murmured.
Only the students closest to Zelim heard him speak, and even they, when debating the subject later, did not agree on the utterance. Some thought he'd said Allah, others that he'd spoken some magical word, that was intended to keep the stranger at the back of the room at bay. The reason that the word was so hotly debated was simple: it was Zelim's last, at least in the living world.
He had no sooner spoken than his head drooped, and the glass of tea which he had been sipping fell from his hand. The murmurings around the room ceased on the instant; students rose on all sides, some of them already starting to weep, or pray. The great teacher was dead, his wisdom passed into history. There would be no more stories, no more prophecies. Only centuries of turning over the tales he'd already told, and watching to see if the prophecies came true.
Outside the schoolroom, under that covetous chestnut tree, two men talked in whispers. Nobody saw them there; nobody heard their happy exchange. Nor will I invent those words; better I leave that conversation to you: how the spirit of Zelim and Atva, later called Galilee, talked. I will say only this: that when the conversation was over, Zelim accompanied Galilee out of Samarkand; a ghost and a god, wandering off through the smoky twilight, like two inseparable friends.
Need I say that Zelim's part in this story is far from finished? He was called away that day into the arms of the Barbarossa family, whose service he has not since left.
In this book, as in life, nothing really passes away. Things change, yes; of course they change; they must. But everything is preserved in the eternal moment-Zelim the fisherman, Zelim the prophet, Zelim the ghost; he's been recorded in all his forms, these pages a poor but passionate echo of the great record that is holiness itself.
There must still be room for the falling note, of course. Even in an undying world there are times when beauty passes from sight, or love passes from the heart, and we feel the sorrow of partition.
In Samarkand, which was glorious for a time, the lozenge tiles, blue and gold, have fallen from the walls, and the chestnut tree under which Zelim and Galilee talked after the prophet's passing has been felled. The domes are decaying, and streets that were once filled with noise are given over to silence. It's not a good silence; it's not the hush of a hermit's cell, or the quiet of dawn. It's simply an absence of life. Regimes have come and gone, parties and potentates, old guards and new, each stealing a portion of Samarkand's glory when they lose power. Now there's only dirt and despair. The highest hope of those who remain is that one of these days the Americans will come and find reason to believe in the city again. Then there'll be hamburgers and soda and cigarettes. A sad ambition for the people of any great city.
And until that happens, there's just the falling tiles, and a dirty wind.
As for Atva, it no longer exists. I suppose if you dug deep in the sand along the shore you'd find the broken-down walls of a few houses, maybe a threshold or two, a pot or two. But nothing of great interest. The lives that were lived in Atva were unremarkable, and so are the few signs that those lives left behind them. Atva does not appear on any maps (even when it thrived it was never marked down that way), nor is mentioned in any books about the Caspian Sea.
Atva exists now in two places. Here in these pages, of course. And as my brother Galilee's true name.
I have one additional detail to add before we move on to something more urgent. It's about that first day, when my father Nicodemus and his wife Cesaria went down to baptize thek beloved child in the water.
Apparently what happened was this: no sooner had Cesaria lowered the baby into the water than he squirmed in her hands and escaped her, diving beneath the first wave that came his way and disappearing from view. My father of course waded in after him, but the current was particularly strong that day and before he-could catch hold of his son the babe had been caught up and swept away from the shore. I don't know if Cesaria was crying or yelling or simply keeping her silence. I do know she didn't go in after the escapee, because she once remarked to Marietta that she had known all along Galilee would go from her side, and though she was surprised to see him leaving at such a tender age she wasn't about to stop him.