It’s my profile photo. It’s different.
What’s this written here?
(Translator: “Hugh Bellerin.”)
That’s my name.
Your name.
Okay. I understand if you feel used. I’m more than aware of these pitfalls of my profession. Sometimes, we can be rightfully accused of exploiting our subjects. I know that I have power over your representation, that our relationship is completely asymmetrical. I try to treat this imbalance delicately. Maybe this is a glaring example of that difficulty, of the ethical dangers of what I do. I feel dreadful, really. But I did this work because I thought your life, your world, your story was important. If you feel insufficiently compensated for that recognition, I’m sure we can address that.
I’m not understanding.
(Translator: He’s saying that the magazine can give you money.)
I don’t want money. That’s not what I’m asking for. Please publish the picture of my family. It’s your picture anyway, you took it with your own hands.
Please understand, there are some things that are just not in my power. Let’s talk to the editors. Just wait a second, I’ll bring them into the conversation.
I don’t mean to be rude, but these editors don’t owe me anything. Why should they help me?
Listen. I’m trying to be fair. I could have submitted photos of you drinking, of you asleep outside the toddy shop. I didn’t do that. My best photograph from the entire trip was a picture of you draped over a trough of moonshine, covered in mud and booze, a pig sniffing at your fingers.
I’m not a drunk.
You know what I did with that photograph? I deleted it. Nobody will ever have the chance to see it.
You haven’t lived my life.
I understand. I don’t blame you. Nobody would.
That was a terrible thing to do, to take a photo like that.
Yes, it was. But it would have been an even more terrible thing to publish it, wouldn’t it?
(Translator: Please, there is no need to raise your voice. He’s speaking with great civility.)
I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to yell. There’s only so much I can do for you. It must cost you a day’s wage, maybe more, just to have this talk with me.
(Translator: More, he also has to pay for my services.)
Right, I worry that you’re doing all this in vain.
You came all the way to me, now I’ve come to you. I treated you with kindness in my home. Please treat me with kindness too.
I don’t understand. What’s he saying?
(Translator: The world is so unequal, but sometimes we can make it less so.)
Okay. It is really an honor to see you again. A privilege. Why don’t I bring my editor in and let her decide?
Will she understand why that man in my photo is smiling?
No, she won’t be able to explain that.
If you won’t give me your assurance that the photograph will be published, she won’t either. I know how accountability works. The further you are from the mine, the less responsible you become for what happens there.
This isn’t a mine, it’s the office of a magazine.
(Translator: Why don’t you just accept the photograph? Tell him you’ll have it published. That’ll appease him.)
But it was just a gift.
(Translator: The poor guy is going to have to skip a few meals to make up for this call.)
I’m not going to lie to him, he’s taken all this expense.
(Translator: All the more reason for you to let him leave feeling happy.)
What are you talking about? Please. Take the photograph of my family. My friend will send you a scanned version now. Publish it.
Okay. We’ll take it then. How can I say no?
Really?
(Translator: I’m sending you a hi-res scan of the photo.)
Yes. We’ll run it. I’ll do what I can to make sure it gets into the magazine. Maybe we can even publish a little interview about you and your family.
Just the photograph, please. Thank you. You are a decent man.
Not as decent as you.
My daughter has written each of our names for you, here, so you can put the correct caption next to the picture.
(Translator: These are your names?)
Yes.
(Translator: There seems to be a little problem.)
Why don’t you bring that piece of paper to the camera so I can see it, too?
What’s wrong? She told me she wrote our names in American letters so that you could read them.
I’m sorry, these aren’t your names. Tell him what the girl has written.
(Translator: This is what it says: Phytoplankton, Nebula, Carbon, Tuna.)
THE MIRRORS OF ISKANDAR
PREFACE
Each of these short pieces springs from an episode of “the Alexander romance,” a cycle of stories about Alexander the Great. Beginning in the fourth century A.D. (many centuries after the conqueror’s death), the romance spread outward from the Levant. It was popular as far west as Scotland (condensed in medieval literary form in The Buik of Alexander) and as far east as the Straits of Malacca (the Malay epic Hikayat Iskandar Zulkarnain). The Alexander romance was global literature before global literature, an extraordinary example of the migration of fables, tropes, and histories through folklore and text.
Modern understandings of Alexander’s life—which hew closely to the accepted historical record—have buried these more legendary accounts. But the purpose of the romance was never to tell a straightforward history. Its stories offered variously a vision of ideal kingship and courtly behavior; a cautionary tale about arrogance and ambition; prophetic revelations; a description of fantastical adventures; and a sense of the deep, conflicted past of the world as well as its fundamental impermanence.
The figure of Alexander as a Muslim hero—referred to as Iskandar, Sikandar, or Zul-Qarnain (the “two-horned one”)—was developed by Arab and Persian writers, most famously the twelfth-century poet Nizami Ganjavi in his Iskandarnamah (the Book of Alexander). The Delhi poet Amir Khusrau produced his own version of the tale, known as the Aina-ye-Iskandari (the Mirror of Alexander), which contains a remarkable description of Alexander’s submarine exploration of the depths of the sea. A few centuries later, Mughal artists in Akbar’s atelier conjured in delicate miniature the finest paintings of the Alexander romance.
The following sequence builds on such texts and images.
1. THE DUEL OF THE ARTISTS
Along with the rest of his enormous entourage, Iskandar came to China with artists. They were practiced in all the styles of his lands—in the big cheeks of Rum, in the dusty eyebrows of the Persians, in the grain of Mesopotamia, in the delighted paunches of the Indians. The khan of China welcomed the great conqueror and his retinue. As usual, there was much feasting and drinking, belching and puking. For the first time in his life, Iskandar tried the famous Chinese numbing pepper and felt his tongue disappear. This is extraordinary, he said, what an amazing taste. The khan nodded. Is it true, the khan asked, that your mother had such bad breath your father had to return her? Steam and smoke rose from platters of meat. Acrobats tumbled between the tables. That’s the story, Iskandar replied, I wouldn’t know … no breath smells bad to me if its words are fair.
The next day, Iskandar called for a competition. Let us see which people are superior, he said to the khan. He set the terms of a wager. If the Chinese won out, then he would return west and leave the khan and his property unmolested. If my people prove the stronger, Iskandar said, well, you can imagine what’ll happen next.
The tournament began. First, the javelin throwers sent spears whistling into the sky. Then the archers tested their precision, aiming for a glass cup, the fruit on a tree, the moving tail of a bullock. Wrestlers slapped their shoulders and rubbed their chests with soil. Sprinters became shadows on the steppes. Iskandar inspected the proceedings with a falcon latched to his wrist.
In all these feats, the C
hinese were equal to his men. Nothing could separate the talents of the musicians either, nor the dancers. Philosophers got entangled in the logic of the other. The astrologers compared their catalogues of stars and planets and found that while they might see different forms in the sky, the substance was much the same. The calligraphers fell in love with each other’s penwork, staying up all night to trace words in the sand and sentences in silk. They went to sleep dreaming in alien lines.
Finally, it was the turn of the artists. They were brought to a large rock cave. A curtain was placed in the middle, cutting the cave in half. They were given three days to compose a masterpiece. At the end of the three days, the curtain would be drawn and the artwork compared.
Iskandar’s artists spent the first day preparing their paints. On the second day, they turned the rock face into a sprawling courtly scene: first, they painted the landscape in the background, mountains and waterfalls swaying in the torchlight; then they drew animals and peasants beyond the walls of the city; next came the rings of the city itself, its assemblies of merchants and soldiers, courtesans, vegetable sellers, butchers and drovers; then the marble pavilions of the court, their filigree and gold gleam. At the top of the court, lording over the entire scene, sat the turbaned form of Iskandar, back erect, placid-faced, watching as the khan bent over and rolled a set of dice.
Iskandar’s artists spent the third day painting the hair, eyebrows, mustaches, and sideburns of every figure in their mural. At the end, they placed eyelashes on the goats and deer.
When Iskandar entered the cave, he laughed with pleasure at the sight of the mural. Nothing could surpass this accomplishment. No Chinese artist could match the deftness of color and movement, the pathos in the fall of each bit of clothing or each downturned gaze, nor the wonder of painting rock upon real rock, imbuing the stone with magical life. Iskandar called out to the khan. Draw the curtain, he said, and you’ll see the end of your kingdom.
The curtain was drawn. Torchlight filled the cave. Iskandar couldn’t believe it. The Chinese had painted the exact same mural. There were all the animals and men, walls and mountains, domes and minarets. He came closer and watched the Chinese mural sway and tremble, saw his shadow interrupt the painting.
It was a reflection. The Chinese artists had shaved and polished the wall to such a fine degree that the rock assumed the quality of a mirror. While your men were busy picking colors and sketching shapes, the khan said, mine transformed the cave itself. The khan ordered the curtain to be pulled forward. Iskandar watched the mural vanish from the wall. Naked stone stretched before him, alive with its own dark light.
He stayed with the khan for another week. Afterward, reprovisioned and laden with gifts, Iskandar and his entourage returned home.
2. SURVEILLANCE
Iskandar received news of attacks against his merchants in the Levant. Soon after they went out to sea, pirates from Cyprus would seize them. The raids were costly. Iskandar was furious when he learned that pirates had intercepted a finely dappled mare intended for his mother in Macedonia. He mourned for the poor horse now alone in some piratical hold, surrounded by the treasures and sundries of the sea.
Why can’t they be stopped? he asked Aristotle. They’re so elusive, the sage said, nobody can find pirates who hide in the foam and spray. Can’t we just conquer Cyprus and get it over with? My lord, we’ve done the calculations and it seems clear that Cyprus is just not worth the capital investment of its conquest. But I’m a world conqueror, what will people say if after all this time I haven’t taken Cyprus? You are a world conqueror, my lord, and the world is entirely yours … A world without Cyprus is still very much the world.
Iskandar relented. Instead of dispatching an expeditionary force to Cyprus, he sent his architects and engineers from the east to construct an enormous tower. It loomed over the coast, wide at the base, narrowing like a ziggurat after each level till its gleaming pinnacle.
A series of lenses and mirrors was fixed to the top. Sentries peered through this telescope, searching the waters for pirates. At the first sight of an enemy ship, the guards waved flags alerting the merchant vessels below. Iskandar’s own warriors would push out to sea and chase the corsairs. The men on the tower watched as the ships neared each other, as puffs of smoke from the guns drifted over the waves, as the oars fenced and the hulls bumped. Combat is silent through a telescope. When muted against the sea, the sight of men flailing on blood-slicked decks has all the drama of mime.
Soon, the pirates were defeated. Merchants sailed the eastern Mediterranean without cursing Cypriot mothers. Iskandar’s own mother loved the horses he sent her. The telescopic tower developed other uses. Guards inspected incoming ships to determine which they’d steal from in the name of the law. They trained the telescope on processions of nuns, zooming in on their bare feet. Bored, they scanned the clouds for evidence of vaporous habitation. They even tried to probe the night sky and see what kindling burned beneath the stars.
In later years, before other conquerors cannibalized its stone, the tower cast its shadow on open pasture. Shepherds let their goats graze around its ruin as they stretched out on the grass and took in the view of the sea. Once, a shepherd boy was brave enough to test the tower’s ghosts. He climbed to the top. There, he found the assemblage of glass and metal that had once been the telescope. It was cracked and rusted. He turned it this way and that. No matter how the boy looked into the object, he only saw a splintered reflection of his own face.
3. REFLECTIONS WHILE RAFTING
During the early weeks of each spring, the army was assembled for the year’s campaign. Iskandar and his retinue had little to do but wait. Worse, they were stuck at court. Hunting was always disappointing in that time. The forests were scrawny, the animals scrawnier. Nature offered no threat, none of the abundant mystery that made heroes out of men on the chase.
One way to escape domestic tedium was to smoke hash and go rafting. While floating downstream, they watched the cormorants in conversation and imagined the feel of wind on their feathers. Aristotle assumed an animal spirit, posing on one leg like a stork, sticking his arms to the side. Tak tak tak tak tak tak, he said. The raft wobbled and Aristotle teetered into the water. Tak tak tak tak tak, he said as they dragged him up.
They told stories. Do you know what the ladies and gentlemen do for fun in Turkistan? one noble began. They go to the courtyard and have a long curtain strung up through the middle … the men go to one side and women to the other … at a certain point, they make a peephole, about waist level. I can guess where this is going, Iskandar said. Of course you can, the noble continued, but let me tell the others who are not as wise … Then the men in turns make themselves hard and stick their penises through the hole, and the women must guess whose penis it is. That’s the game? Yes, and everybody sings and plays instruments as it goes on.
I’ve heard a different version, Iskandar said. The women judge the penises … if they approve, they tie a ribbon around it. And if they dislike it? Well, if they find the penis ugly or think it has a malicious look, they tie a little bell to the tip, to make it look like a fool.
The nobles laughed. The stream widened and the current slowed. A convoy of silver fish plunged like daggers. After a silence, Iskandar spoke in a pensive tone. I’m feeling the world lightly, he said, so I’ll share this sadness with you … Every time we conquer some place and we amass our loot, I take what gold we cannot carry and I bury it. That’s nothing to feel sad about, a noble said, that’s just prudent. I take two men with me to dig a hole, Iskandar continued, and then I kill them and bury them with the treasure. The nobles felt obliged to nod and grunt. I have to do this, Iskandar said. After all, wealth dissolves loyalty just as easily as it makes it … But sometimes, I think about how, when I’m gone, the entire world will be pockmarked with my secret gold and the bones of obedient men.
4. THE BARD’S TALE
With relish, Iskandar set about destroying Thebes. Battering rams on great wheels careened in
to the seven gates. Archers embroidered the parapets with iron. Engineers dug trenches to the foundations and set fires between the timbers and stones. Iskandar’s cavalry uprooted the hinterland, scything down those peasants who hadn’t yet run away to the forest, or climbed into the hills, or through some other provincial magic made themselves invisible to power. Ash hung in the air. When asked what he wanted to do with the city after its fall, Iskandar stared at the mountainous smoke and replied, What city?
Thebes’s most famous bard fell at the feet of the conqueror. If you listen to my song, he said, you would know the wisdom of mercy. What instrument do you play? Iskandar asked. The flute. I hate the flute. Play the kamancheh instead. Luckily, the bard was skilled in many instruments besides the flute, including the daf, the barbat, and the kamancheh. Holding the kamancheh like a lamb, he sat down and began to sing.
He recalled the many tragedies of Thebes. In his boyish voice, they seemed more perverse than sad. A king confused for a wild animal and torn apart by his women, a warrior turned into a deer and eaten by his own dogs, Heracles driven so mad that he killed his own children, the crimes and misery of Oedipus, Tiresias divining fate like a farmer skimming cheese from milk. His prophecies went unheeded, the bard sang, but even now Tiresias tells the story of Thebes in the underworld, in words of black blood: this city is cursed, it is the end of ego, the end of power … By assaulting Thebes you make its story your own.
You have a nice voice, Iskandar said, but you misunderstand … I’m not assaulting Thebes, I’m destroying it. Anybody who thinks they can escape implacable fate, the bard said, will fail. That’s the problem with Thebes … it won’t recognize that I’m not just anybody.
Iskandar ordered the final advance. His men scampered over the walls, wrenched open the gates, and scoured the city with fire. The bard was bound to the parapets and made to watch the destruction. Pick up your instrument, Iskandar said. The bard played the kamancheh while the walls heaved, while the killing noise mingled with the lament of masonry, while the altar of Anahit and the altar of Heracles and the citadel of Cadmus came tumbling down, while Iskandar’s marauders poured salt and rocks into the wells. Thebes shed its skin and cowered naked in its bits.
Swimmer Among the Stars Page 8
