One afternoon a shepherd watched the hakim healing on a hillside in the Yemen and came to him when he was finished. He was a small plump man given to continual smiles who waddled more than walked.
The waddle carried him along the hillside where he stood dancing from one leg to the other.
Salaam aleikoum, respected hakim. And who might you be?
Aleikoum es-salaam, brother. A man astray.
Ah but we're all astray, yet isn't it also written that each man has an appointed place?
It is, and also that man knows not in what country he must die. Now what is it that ails you, brother?
So businesslike, hakim, but you see it's not me. I only have the usual aches to be cured when that day arrives. It's you I've come to talk about.
Me, brother?
Yes. You're ailing and no one likes to see a kindly man ail.
As you said, when that day arrives.
No no, hakim, I didn't mean that at all. But won't you come to my tent for coffee? The day's over and it's time to leave the dust. Won't you come along now? Come.
The little man tugged the hakim's sleeve and when the hakim rose the little man laughed loudly.
What is it?
Why the two of us, don't you see? When you were sitting I was as tall as you but now suddenly I'm only half as tall. What's to be done? Must a hakim always sit while a poor shepherd always stands? A marvel, that's what it is.
What?
His variety, His gifts. But come, brother, as you call me, the day's over and there's good coffee to drink.
Yes come at once. Ya'qub is my name, come.
He laughed again and they started off, the tall gaunt hakim dignified despite his rags, the short plump shepherd humming happily as he skipped along trying to match the solemn strides of the man he had come to lead home.
The hakim arranged his rags, Ya'qub made coffee. And now the little man's face was serious and his voice urgent.
I've watched you curing the sick with your eyes, hakim, and it's good work you do. But don't you know your own eyes can be read as well? They can and today I read them. Would it be wrong to say you've traveled so much you've seen everything?
It may be so.
And that these things you've seen and done no longer interest you?
That's true.
Yes of course, because you're growing old like me. But we're not really that old, hakim, only sixty and a little more, not much of anything. And isn't it also true you're very rich? Not at all the poor man you appear to be?
How's that, brother?
Here I mean, in your heart, because you've seen so much. Isn't it true you're one of the richest men in the world? Perhaps the richest of all?
It may be.
No no, sadly for you it isn't true. You certainly should be but you're not at all. And when you said before you'd seen everything, that wasn't true either. You're a good man and kind but a sickness has come to you in the second half of your life.
I grow old, that's all.
No no it's not age, it's something else. With all your travels and your wisdom don't you know it? Don't you see it with those powerful eyes of yours, you who see so much in everyone else? Well if you don't I'll have to tell you. It's loneliness, hakim, that's your sickness. You're all alone. Haven't you ever loved a woman and had a child?
The first but not the second.
You mean you have loved a woman?
Yes.
But it was long ago in some faraway place?
Yes.
But how long ago, simply years and years? A very long time?
If forty years is a long time, yes.
And this faraway place, would it be strange to a poor shepherd from the Yemen?
It might be strange, yes.
You mean it has palaces and fountains and elephants? These and other wonders without count? All that and more? What could such a place be called?
Persia.
The little man clapped his hands and now all the gravity was gone from his face. He laughed and hugged himself.
Oh I've heard of it, hakim, I've certainly heard of Persia with its elephants and fountains and palaces but I've never known anyone who's been there. So won't you tell me all about it? About the woman too? It's good for men of our years to recall love, nothing is better save to have that love still. So please tell me everything, hakim. This is rich news you bring to my hillside.
Yes yes, he whispered, jumping to his feet and scurrying around the tent searching in vain for more coffee to boil, bumping into a lamp in his haste and knocking it over, laughing at the lamp and bumping into the tent poles and laughing at them, finding coffee at last and seating himself with great pleasure, rocking and smiling and wrapping his stubby arms around his body as if to feel the joy that would be his with a story of love and Persia.
The tale Ya'qub heard wasn't at all what he had expected. The hakim began slowly, for once unsure what he was going to say, not even sure why he was telling this stranger about the gentle Persian girl he had once known for a few weeks, no more, before she died in an epidemic and he too had fallen ill and been partially blind for a time, memorizing the Koran in his sadness and becoming a Master Sufi before moving on to encompass the rituals of a thousand tribes.
As Ya'qub listened to this tall gaunt man he realized he wasn't merely a hakim no matter how good and powerful, but a wanderer who had been many men in many places, a figure disguised in many robes, truly a vast and changeable spirit.
A genie?
Yes a genie, but that was before. Now he was a man with a sickness.
Ya'qub listened to his guest and watched his eyes. He nodded when the hakim ended.
You're deaf?
Yes.
No matter. Anyone can be deaf or something else and all men are.
Only one other person has ever guessed that.
And he heard it too, just as I did, and of course his name was also Ya'qub, wasn't it?
Yes, but why?
But why and why? repeated Ya'qub happily. How could it be otherwise? When things are a certain way that's the way they have to be. But you're smiling now, hakim, and why is that? How can a man who's done nothing and been nowhere make you smile? And there was more to your wandering than just wandering, wasn't there? All that time when you were pretending to be on a haj you were really looking for a lost book, isn't it so? The story of the gentle Persian girl was in it but also other things and that's why you picked up so many jokes and riddles and scraps of rhymes in so many holy places. Admit it, because you thought they were also part of the book.
Rhymes? asked the hakim. Jokes and riddles?
Ah I've caught you haven't I? Now listen to me retell your tale exactly as I heard it.
The little shepherd swelled himself up and began to hum. He rocked back and forth and whistled, spread his short arms and clasped himself, floated naked down the Tigris at night and swam the Red Sea and penetrated Mecca and Medina and tarried in Safad, walked twenty-five hundred miles to Timbuktu to meet the other Ya'qub and soaked his feet in Lake Chad coming and going, marched out of the Sinai oblivious to two sunsets and three sunrises and plotted the passage of a secret comet in north Arabia, conversed with an oily stationer and an ethereal dealer in antiquities while composing three hundred million words in a Jerusalem vault, acquired one empire and destroyed another and finally rode an elephant to a palace, finally sat down beside a fountain in the palace to rest, finally leaned back with a small cup of coffee to read the old new lines in the palm of his hand.
Do you see? said Ya'qub. Isn't that how it was? Scraps from a magical book that's always being written?
Or was written once? Or will be written someday? Well I know all about that book, hakim. What? Of course I do, I couldn't have been more than three or four years old when I first heard people talking about it. But the point is, hakim, why go on looking for it when we can write it ourselves? Or better yet, just talk it out in our old age? Why seek what can be lived? Could it be this very tent is the palace referred to in the tale? Don't the two of us know enough by now? An old man who's been nowhere, an old man who's been everywhere? Between us all the gifts and marvels, every one? Now admit it, hakim, you like this hillside don't you? Of course you do and that's why you're going to stay here. There must be an Arab saying for that. What could it be?