TELEPATHY
TELEPATHY
A NOVEL
Amir Tag Elsir
Translated by William Maynard Hutchins
Contents
Author’s Note
– 1 –
– 2 –
– 3 –
– 4 –
– 5 –
– 6 –
– 7 –
– 8 –
– 9 –
– 10 –
– 11 –
– 12 –
– 13 –
– 14 –
– 15 –
– 16 –
A Note on the Author
A Note on the Translator
AUTHOR’S NOTE
One day a woman whose mouth spoke one language and whose eyes spoke many, asked, “What’s your view of the sun?”
I replied, “It’s what I want beaming down on me.”
“And the moon?”
“It’s what is never eclipsed, even when it is eclipsed.”
“The sea?”
“It’s what will never be merely blue.”
“Love?”
“What I can sense but never see.”
“Man?”
“Someone striving to be a man.”
“So how do you write?”
“By sun, moon, sea, love, and man.”
A.T.
– 1 –
When I wrote my latest novel, Hunger’s Hopes, in only about a month, driven by its many inspirations and multiple twists and turns, which suddenly and effortlessly revealed themselves to me, I never imagined it would bedevil me with an apparently intractable problem, that I would be pursued by the nightmare of its associations, or that despite all my efforts, I wouldn’t be able to escape.
I had returned from a splendid trip to Kuala Lumpur, an Eastern city that had stirred me profoundly and that I hoped to write about one day to capture its mischievous vigor. There I met cultural luminaries, capitalists, teachers, women of the night, and bums in the street. A number of personalities I encountered intrigued me, and in their distinctive appeal I recognized prototypes for characters in a novel, ones that would enrich any novel. Liyung Tuli, or Master Tuli as they called him, was one of these potential characters who dazzled me. He was an extremely well-known acupuncturist, and I noted his fitness despite his age, his very sincere smile, his extreme elegance, and the way he shed light on an ancient Chinese profession. The secretary at his clinic, Anania Faruq, whose nationality I did not know for sure – a common occurrence within the mix of ethnicities in that tumultuous city – was also a memorable character. Her unusual height, her heavy use of cosmetics such as green and red eye shadow, her dresses that did not defer to any known style, her shoes fashioned from canvas and reinforced cardboard, and the army of patients and their companions who flirted with her overtly or silently, made her a living model for an Eastern princess who undertook an impetuous journey to a repressed Arab land – in a novel that had to be written someday.
I also met the erstwhile American academic Victor Grayland, who had become Hoshi Hisoka, a professor of music in a Japanese institute. He was a truly amazing guitarist, who, as he put it, performed for children and their mothers anytime, anywhere. He had left his native country in 1977, never to return. We became acquainted in a narrow corridor in the Chinese market which was packed with merchandise, people, and trinkets. In a number of subsequent meetings, we debated the question of his identity at length – how someone who had been born in America and had lived there till he was forty could become an honest-to-goodness Asian bearing an ancient Japanese name that meant warrior.
This academic was an old man but vigorous and so slender that he seemed a specter. His presence in Malaysia was part of his regular routine; he visited every year because he loved it madly and because he was a patron of Tuli’s acupuncture clinic. As he himself said, he had never suffered from any ailment that required placing needles in his head, hands, or legs and hoped to reach one hundred standing on his own two feet. Acupuncture was merely an annual prophylactic for him. He always returned to his adopted homeland better equipped to deal with life after this treatment. His philosophy about erasing his Western identity and acquiring a different, Eastern one was simply that when you love, respect, and offer the East valuable services, it will never forget you. It weeps for you fondly when you pass; you will find some old man beside whom you sat in a public garden or a compartment of a high-speed train walking with his head bowed in your funeral procession, and the eleven-year-old daughter of your neighbors will place flowers on your grave at every propitious occasion. It was precisely the opposite in his native country, where geniuses, discoverers, and space pioneers died daily – as a result of traffic accidents, brain clots, and sniper fire in the streets – without anyone missing them.
To my way of thinking, his theory was dotty and based on weak arguments, but I didn’t debate it much. I knew the man was a Leftist who opposed capitalism and what he termed America’s foolhardy policies. He considered the country’s numerous wars – especially the Vietnam War and more recently the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq – to be major offenses that even the greatest historical eraser could never wipe away.
Strange stories cluster around Bukit Bintang Street in the center of Kuala Lumpur. Referred to by Arabs themselves as the Arabs’ Street, it harbors Eastern and Western restaurants, giant shopping malls, and massage parlors, which can turn at any moment into dens of vipers. The beggars tint their bodies every color of the rainbow. Tourists stagger under the sensory assault: displays of Canon, Nikon, and Yashica cameras, accordion and saxophone players, and shredding guitarists who stage rowdy music parties at street corners, traffic lights, and all the people who cluster together or go about their business.
I was fascinated by the numerous coffeehouses. I hoped to become addicted to one of these (or have one addict me to it) so I would come to it daily to write – the way I do in my country – but that didn’t happen, sadly, because I was so busy throughout the trip.
Everything inspired me and motivated me to write.
I returned home delighted with all these memories, feeling my blood pumping, my juices flowing, and expecting a new novel to steal over me at any moment. During my ordinary, daily life, when I lacked inspiration, I would be fortified by these memories; I actually prepared myself to be ravished by this new novel.
I thought that Master Tuli, the practitioner of Chinese acupuncture, would probably become a practitioner of passion’s fire in the chest of a vanquished lover or that the heroine would have fallen in love but been conquered, against her will, by another. She might be the secretary Anania Faruq, that savage princess who sauntered down savage lanes, searching for a man she had seen for a moment in a primitive museum and had never forgotten. Hoshi Hisoka, the Leftist, would be a professor of political science at a university overflowing with students and the instigator of a giant revolution that would blow through my writings and bring a mighty dictator to power.
I considered transferring all the commotion of the streets and public gardens to my country, which is stagnant even though it suffers from numerous hardships. Effendi Irfan, the taxi driver who was my companion throughout my stay there, would definitely make an appearance. He immersed me in details of his past and present life and shared his desire, long postponed, to perform the duty of the Hajj pilgrimage. He would be a driver here too but of a different vehicle – one that was grimy and pathetic, a marked contrast to the type of richly appointed vehicle he had driven all his life.
But none of this happened, and there’s no hope it will now that I’m embroiled in the entanglements of Hunger’s Hopes. I certainly never thought it would turn out to be such a dangerous novel when, with unconscious exultat
ion, I wrote it.
– 2 –
Three months before I traveled to Malaysia I published Hunger’s Hopes with a local publishing house. A medium-sized novel consisting of 220 pages, it discussed in a purely imaginary way, which bore no relationship to reality whatsoever, a man in his forties named Nishan Hamza Nishan. Illiterate most of his life, Nishan worked as a messenger in an elementary school, where his job was to prepare tea and coffee, to fetch the teachers’ breakfast, and to race between the different offices with a folder, documents, or requests. With unusual perseverance he had taught himself to read and write and had obtained his elementary, middle school, and secondary certificates, completing the last of them not long after he turned forty-five. Shortly before he was to enter university, after deciding to study law and become a judge, he contracted seasonal schizophrenia, which ran in his family and which afflicted him for a month or two every year. He would hear imaginary voices calling him. He would experience internal conflicts and pick fights with people, with life. He made ragdolls, stuffed them with explosives, and tossed them at elegant men and pretty girls in the streets. He might carry a sharp knife and attack random people with it. He might also wear a mask portraying a public figure such as the country’s president or chief justice, or even a famed fruit seller or tailor, and then act as if he were that person. When the symptoms of schizophrenia disappeared or gradually diminished, he would return to his ordinary life, remembering only what people recounted and apologizing to everyone who had suffered during his frenzies. He would resume his perpetual efforts to study law.
Toward the end of the book, on a normal day without any delirium, Nishan experienced a strange weakness. He felt that his intestines were contracting, that his body was burning hot, that his head was spinning, and that his chest had become a battleground where pains struggled for supremacy. He staggered, without anyone’s assistance, to the government hospital. There he was methodically examined, and it was discovered that he had incurable glandular cancer.
The novel was filled with many characters, including a high-society lady who always put on airs; a miserable soldier who attempted to overthrow the government without knowing how and who was executed by a firing squad; a truck driver who was a member of Nishan’s family and who was charged with supervising him during his episodes of delirium; and a nurse named Yaqutah, whom Nishan met and fell in love with when she worked in the psychiatric hospital. She tried to help him during his ordeal. Nishan Hamza, however, was the puppeteer who held the strings for all the other characters.
Actually, in almost all the works I have written, I have devised strange names for my characters, names that are not frequently used in this country, or names that are used disparagingly and in certain tribes. This has not been true for all my characters, of course, but just for those who play major roles or those I want to stick in the minds of readers. I never use three-part names; I don’t know why I used the tripartite name Nishan Hamza Nishan in this novel. I noticed this fact during my feverish writing, but its rhythm prevented me from deleting it. I sensed then that I wouldn’t like it if it consisted of only two names.
I knew no one named Nishan and have never encountered anyone with that name in my readings or frequent travels around the country or abroad. I mused over it when I first wrote it, surprised and wondering where it had come from, but have never reached a definite answer. Doubtless it was a known name and was certainly used in some Arab or African countries – just not in mine.
I remember the book’s launch party was held just two days before I traveled, in a simple hall normally used for wedding parties. The event drew readers and people interested in culture. A beautiful girl asked me in a captivating voice with attractive circumspection: “Sir, how do you select names when you write? I find that the name Nishan Hamza Nishan is a perfect fit for the hero’s character and behavior. If he were a real man, this would be his name.”
I didn’t have a logical answer for her question and had no coherent theory about names or precise strategy for choosing them. I couldn’t even claim decisively that the names I wrote actually resembled their characters in the texts. All the same, I liked the attractive girl’s question and was flattered that she felt I had cloaked my hero in an appropriate name.
I replied, “It’s just something I sense, my dear. Nothing more, nothing less.”
It seemed that another character – Nashshar, a perfume vendor in the old market who was wall-eyed and who also appeared in a number of twisting alleys in the novel – was admired by another girl in the audience, because she stood up at the event with a beaming face and asked, “Will I happen to meet Nashshar in the old market one day? If so, will he flirt with me?”
I said, “Perhaps.”
She smiled and the rest of the audience did too.
Among those who attended the book launch and lined up to get their book signed was a man of about forty-seven. He was slim and his back was slightly stooped. He wore traditional garb: a thobe, turban, and shoes made of cheap goat skin. His stance seemed a bit shaky, and he kept turning around.
He was the sort of person who would attract attention at any gathering and actually had attracted mine, despite the crowd, the many questions asked, and the haste of some people to obtain a “sound bite”, as is often the case at cultural affairs. I saw him rub against a young girl in the queue ahead of him – in a manner that seemed unintentional and caused by his agitation. The girl, who was wearing makeup and eye shadow that did not coordinate, turned toward him, frowned, left the line, and headed out carrying a copy without a signature. I saw him open the book, peruse it for a moment, and then close it. When the man finally stood before me and placed his copy on the table for me to sign, he didn’t hold out his hand to greet me the way the others had. He dropped the copy carelessly on the table and stood there with a distant gaze that swiveled in whatever direction his eyes chanced to look, without focusing on anything. I asked him his name so I could write a dedication for him in the book. He turned toward me, providing me an opportunity to notice in his eyes a gleam that quickly passed.
He said, “It’s not for me. I’m going to give it to my sweetheart, Ranim. I’ll bring you my own copy to sign some other day. Just write: To my precious sweetheart, Ranim, with my love.”
I wrote the dedication to his precious sweetheart, Ranim, with his love, not mine, on the first page, and held the book out to him. He grasped it quickly and proceeded to stagger off. He was certainly an odd fellow, just as agitated as could be. I had never met a man of his age with such an obvious tremor, wearing traditional clothing, who was supposedly a passionate lover of a girl named Ranim. Ranim is a name used only recently here and it would be impossible for a woman of his generation to be called that. But I didn’t brood about this much and soon totally forgot him in the throng of people who clustered around me – among them close friends who wanted us to conclude the evening elsewhere.
When we eventually went out to the street after the event, Ranim’s shaky lover was still staggering around the area, carrying Hunger’s Hopes in his right hand and a lit cigarette in his left.
Suddenly he approached me with quick steps and then stopped in front of me. Panting, he asked me without any introduction, “When will you return from your trip, sir?”
His question would have been perfectly normal if my trip had been announced. But I wasn’t attending a cultural conference (so no one would have heard about it that way), I wasn’t seeking medical treatment so that a journalist might have written that I was ill and traveling abroad for treatment, and I didn’t remember referring to a forthcoming trip on my Facebook page.
It was a personal trip, one of a series I take from time to time to see a new country and to acquire the bits of information I need desperately for my work as a writer. I hadn’t even told the friends who were standing with me then and attempting to shield me from a man they thought was an assailant.
I said, “I don’t know” and moved away as I tried to think of the source from whi
ch Ranim’s lover (as I thought of him) might have learned about my travels. I couldn’t come up with any leads, however. To spare myself further anxiety, I tried to convince myself that this man had merely guessed I was planning to travel – nothing more. Even so, I didn’t sleep well the two nights prior to my departure. I would wake up with a groan in reaction to the acid reflux I experience every time I feel agitated or stressed out on account of the book I am writing. In a grim dream I saw Ranim as a tender girl in the embrace of a beast; her lover, who bore no resemblance to storybook lovers, hit her with a signed copy of Hunger’s Hopes and disfigured her with a lit cigarette in his left hand.
As I headed to the terminal carrying my suitcase, I sighed deeply and attempted to imagine a new country from which I might return with extraordinary Eastern spices that would get prose boiling on the hearth of my writing again.
– 3 –
The first thing I did when I returned from my splendid Malaysian trip was to seek out Umm Salama. She is a middle-aged widow whose military husband died in the Southern War while it was raging a number of years ago. She has two adolescent children bursting with curiosity, but her limited means curb their enthusiasm. She lives in a district far from my own and comes two or three times a week to clean my house and prepare my food.
I live in an excellent district in the center of the capital, in a house I purchased long ago. I am not married and have absolutely no intention of marrying again after my divorce – from a woman who loved me and whom I loved – seven years earlier. My ex-wife simply could not bear to live with the lunacy of my writing and perpetual travel, my bouts of pessimism and frustration, and the troupes of women who are always twittering at cultural events.
My house actually has been very well fortified against surprise visits of any type, and just a few people know where it is. By and large, no one visits me except my only brother, Muzaffar, who works as an aid coordinator for an NGO and who lives in a city in a distant region in the west of the country. He only comes twice a year, not to spend time with me but to hang out with his friends in the capital, which we residents normally find less thrilling than do people who live in the provinces. On a few occasions, Malikat al-Dar visits me. She is an elderly, retired midwife and my spiritual mother, as I call her. She was a friend of my mother’s and helped me a lot when I was starting out. I normally meet my friends and readers, however, in numerous coffeehouses. This strict domestic isolation has permitted me to organize my library the way I want. I have put most of my books in the living room and created two smaller libraries in the two adjoining rooms. Meanwhile, the master bedroom has remained free of everything related to reading and writing. When I enter it, I bring along only my drowsiness or my insomnia – nothing more.
Telepathy Page 1
