As a botanist might, he planted seeds and nursed the seedlings into flowers. Gently he blew the flowers to and fro until their contours shimmered in the sun. Steadily he gauged the sweep of the horizons.
The eyes spoke a final time and the patient awoke from the trance. The hakïm told him to come again in a day or a week, and if the asthma or astigmatism hadn’t improved by then he would suggest they sit together once more staring at the desert.
At the same time the hakïm took the opportunity to explore a more personal question. Ever since he had left Jerusalem he had pondered deeply that obscure conversation in archaic languages between a mole and a hermit outside a cave on Mt Sinai. And having considered it carefully, he had come to believe that an astounding transformation had indeed occurred in that tiny cave, and that the Bible accepted as the oldest in the world was nothing more than a forgery of stupendous proportions.
Of course he had no way of knowing what was in the real Sinai Bible, he could only guess at its contents. Yet for some reason he was convinced it held the secret to his own life. A strange idea came to him then and he began asking his patients the questions he had been asking himself for so long.
Have you heard of a mysterious lost book in which all things are written? A book that is circular and unchronicled and calmly contradictory, suggesting infinity?
His patients stirred in the depths of their hypnotic trances. Sometimes they were slow to answer but the answers seemed always the same. They thought they had heard of the book. Parts of it might have been read to them when they were children.
The hakïm went on with his cures until the end of the day, when he sat alone and wondered at the sameness of these replies. Since so many people knew of the lost book, could it be they were all secret contributors to it? That the lost original could thus be retrieved only by probing the hypnotic trances of everyone on earth?
The hakïm reeled under the weight of this revelation. The truth was staggering, the task without hope. For the first, time in his life he felt helpless.
Bleakly he recalled his decades of ceaseless wandering through tides of sand in the wake of the moon in search of a holy place once mentioned by Father Yakouba. The memory of that serene and gentle dwarf now filled him with a terrible sadness, for his haj was over and he knew he hadn’t found his holy place. Why had he failed? Where were the footprints in the sky?
Enormous and solitary in the twilight, the greatest explorer of his age sank to his knees and gazed slowly around at the shadows, lost and knowing he was lost, remaining there until a young man approached him at dawn.
O revered hakïm?
Yes, my child.
I am sick and weary.
Yes, my child.
Can you help me, as they say you can?
Yes. Sit now and turn your back and fix your eyes on that distant eagle as he swoops and soars in the first light of day living a thousand years. Are we able to follow such paths? Could it be his flight traces the journey of the Prophet, the actual footsteps a man takes from the day of his birth to the day of his death? The swirls of the Koran shape and unshape themselves as do the waves in the desert and yes the oasis may be small. But yes, we will find it.
One afternoon a shepherd watched the hakïm 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 hakïm. 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, hakïm, 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, hakïm, 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 hakïm’s sleeve and when the hakïm 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 hakïm 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 hakïm 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 hakïm 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, hakïm, 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, hakïm, 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, hakïm, 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, hakïm, 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, hakïm. This is rich news you bring to my hillside.