The Echo Chamber

by Luke Williams

  He pictured the lands beyond as unmarked terrain. Suspended between a desire to keep moving and his fear of loss, Edrisi placed flags in cities and names on maps. In the North African desert he craved water so intensely he saw visions of paradise. Tall magnificent palm trees. A silver racetrack. Hordes of women. Beehives in perfect order. Edrisi babbled; ravaged, exhausted by thirst. He grabbed his goatskin flask and emptied the last drops of water. As he drank, feeling his thirst subside and the madness within him dying down, the dream-vista began to vanish. The water extended his life but took away his vision of paradise. In Ethiopia, during the rainy season, he saw a woman who became a man on her wedding-day. He learned that people struck by lightning when awake are found with their eyes closed, and, when asleep, with their eyes open. On the Sierra Nevada in Southern Spain, Edrisi was stupefied by snow. A miracle, he thought. How can something be at once so brilliant and cold?

  …

  There were details Father left out of the story, perhaps because he thought I was too young, perhaps because it changed with each telling. Sometimes, when it was late, the tale lasted five minutes. Other times Father talked for longer. The version I am relating now is, in a sense, a false rendering, since I am leaving nothing out. In fact, I realize that I am adding to the story even as I write.

  Edrisi had a fearful temper. Yes, his temper was as changeable as the climates through which he had travelled. He was known among the courtiers of the Cappella Palatina – King Roger’s palace and chapel – as, variously, Procella, Al-Çáúçõyé, Cheimazô, La Tempesta.

  His desires were as vigorous and variable as his temper. Edrisi had fifty-three wives. He had fathered sixty-two sons and seventy-eight daughters. In and around his chamber dwelt slave-girls, eunuchs, handmaidens and concubines.

  He loved none.

  At this point in the story Father switches to the present tense. He edges closer and slowly straightens his back.

  Today in Palermo a ship has arrived. The cargo began its journey in Nubia, moving in a train of two hundred camels northward, following the River Nile up through Egypt, and to the sea-town of Alexandria; where it swung left, hugging the North African coast until it reached Benghazi. The cargo was loaded on to the ship, which for two days sailed up through the Gulf of Sirte and into the Mediterranean. Sailing through the channel between Scylla and Charybdis, it rounded the coast of Sicily and arrived, right on time, at Port Vieveria.

  Palermo celebrates. From the port to the Cappella Palatina crowds of revellers throng the streets. There are jugglers, vaudeville shows, acrobats and fire-eaters. Belly dancers swing and ripple to the sound of flutes, pausing only when coins fail to drop at their feet. Every five years it is the same. There are sounds of caged birds warbling in various voices and tongues, turtledoves, nightingales, thrushes and curlews. There are gambling dens, clairaudients, beggars competing for alms. As the train of camels, each supporting a curtained palanquin, passes with its hidden cargo, the crowds hush. They know what the curtains conceal: stolen virgins. Five hundred maidens from Nubia.

  The camels walk unconcernedly on, through noise and perfume, passing La Ferria, beyond the blue domes of the Jami’ Mosque, and now, climbing to the highest point in the city, draw near the gates of the Cappella Palatina. Outside, the carnival will continue long into the night. Inside, the courtiers of Roger’s palace wait – emirs and viziers, ushers and giandars – in eager anticipation.

  And here is Edrisi himself, impatient, tugging at his beard, standing by the side of his king.

  Father leans forward, placing a hand on each knee. He fixes his eyes on a point above my head and, imitating Edrisi, speaks in a guttural voice.

  ‘I tell you, Caliph, these maidens are fine. I gave instructions specially.’

  ‘How were they chosen?’

  ‘There is a province inhabited by infidels who are called Nubian, which is also the name of their city. They are a good-looking race with fair complexions. They are unlike other savages which inhabit that part of the earth. Their women are of a great beauty. I sent emissaries to Nubia to select their most beautiful maidens.’

  Roger claps his hands, moving to embrace Edrisi …

  But Roger is cut short. For now the bronze gates open; camel after camel lumbers into the courtyard, forming a wide circle around Roger and Edrisi and the courtiers. Roger beams. Edrisi feels faint; his eyes roll. Quickly he recovers his composure. The five hundred maidens from Nubia step, tentatively, blinkingly, into the courtyard. They are travel-weary. They are angry. They appear, to Edrisi, beautiful.

  And among the throng, there is one whose indifference will provoke a crisis in Edrisi, one who will arouse in him a strange and disturbing emotion.

  I’ll call it by its proper name: Love.

  Father stands up, opens the bedroom door, crosses the hallway and steps out on to the veranda. I hear his shoes like handclaps on the hardwood floor. It is dark outside. I do not feel tired. The insects sing. ‘Go on,’ I call out into the boisterous dark. There is no reply. ‘Tell me more.’ Father stops. I hear his footsteps growing louder as he approaches my room; they pause; the door swings open; and suddenly he is squatting beside my bed and we are looking directly at one another through the mosquito net. ‘You can’t stop there.’

  There was a time when mapmakers named the places through which they travelled after their lovers; for Edrisi, it’s the opposite. Each night, following the arrival of the Nubians, Edrisi calls a fresh concubine to his chamber. He looks her up and down, instructs her to turn around, then calls her by her new name.

  There is Sala, so named because, like the peaceful province of Sala, a province rich in copper and seashells, she is, Edrisi thinks, calm, and her skin possesses the brilliance of copper.

  There is Kaougha, a territory filled with mountain streams, from which prospectors sift gold dust, bit by bit, from the river bed; and Kaougha, named thus because Edrisi must tease from her silence her soft involvement.

  Tonight, some five weeks since the celebration of the Five Hundred Maidens, Edrisi summons a new concubine. Inspecting her carefully, he is struck, not by her beauty, but by her gaze, which appears to him both serious and unyielding. He runs a gamut of names – cities, lands – through his mind, toying with each, trying to fit this bold maiden to a province. But he can’t think of any. She has something of the sea about her, he thinks, something sleepless.

  ‘I name you Abila,’ Edrisi says.

  Abila says nothing.

  ‘Come, we’ll drink some wine.’

  Abila pours wine into a cup, drinks, fills another cup and gives it to Edrisi. He drains it and thanks her.

  ‘You’re welcome,’ says Abila.

  Edrisi fills his cup, drinks, pours wine into Abila’s cup and kisses her hand. Abila takes the cup, empties it and sits beside the bed.

  They go on passing cup after cup until Edrisi begins to feel tipsy and is aroused. He kisses her hand, toys with her hair, plays little jokes, all the time feeding her sweets. They continue drinking until the wine gets the better of Edrisi, who begins to praise her beauty.

  ‘Abila, your forehead is like the new moon, your eyes like those of a deer or wild heifer, your eyebrows like the crescent in the month of Sha’ban; you have lips like carnelian, teeth like a row of pearls set in coral, breasts like a pair of pomegranates, and a navel like a cup that holds a pound of benzoin ointment.’

  Abila says nothing.

  ‘You are like a dome of gold, as the poets say, a Queen bee, an unveiled bride, a splendid fish swimming in a fountain.’

  Edrisi, in a fit of arousal, and all at once, takes off his clothes. He stands naked on the bed. Abila laughs.

  ‘Follow my example!’

  Abila says nothing.

  ‘Reveal yourself.’

  ‘I won’t.’

  ‘You will pleasure me according to my desire.’

  ‘I will not.’

  ‘Undress and I shall take you.’

  ‘No!’

  Edris
i covers his nakedness.

  ‘By god, you will!’

  ‘No!’

  Each night it’s the same. Edrisi summons Abila to his chamber. They drink wine. He praises her beauty, then sheds his clothes. And, every night: ‘Undress and I shall take you.’

  ‘No!’

  Edrisi doesn’t know what to do. He paces his room, the courtyard, the palace chapel, tugging at his beard. In between entreaties to Abila, he takes ever more concubines into his chamber. They satisfy him less, and less often. Spending increasing hours with his bees, but forgetting to wear his face-net and gloves, he is stung thirteen times. He arranges sprinting contests with the courtiers and wins without fail. He attempts to copy out Book XI from Pliny’s Natural History. Perhaps I am losing my charm, he thinks. It will be different tomorrow.

  Night after night Abila remains indifferent. Edrisi’s desire for her increases. Why? he thinks. She is only one among many beauties. It is true, she is able to bend her limbs extravagantly; but so can Sahart, Galla, Shari, Nufii, Zallah, Kawar and Alura. She is voluptuous and, I imagine, forgiving; though no more so than Ozala and O Abu’I-Bilma. Her legs rise from the round bulbs of her heels and stretch as far as Mount Etna. But Afno, Anbiya, Zayla and Sahart each have longer legs.

  The nights of rejection continue. Edrisi begins to fear the day he might possess Abila almost as much as he longs for it. He doesn’t know what his feelings will be on that day, forever deferred. He buys her presents, displays his skills on the racetrack. Nothing works. Abila turns her back, laughs even. Edrisi, in a fit of ardour, decides to build her a silver map of the world. He reads the great works of cartography – Al-Mas’udi, Ibn Hauqal, Orosius, Ptolemy – combining his own experiences as a traveller with the universal scheme of the seven climes. He orders pure unalloyed silver from Germany, contracts metal smiths and an army of engravers.

  ‘The world is a ball floating in the clouds of Heaven, like the yolk of an egg,’ he tells the engravers. ‘We’ll produce a silver orb which will represent the world on a round surface. It will weigh forty thousand dirhams,’ Edrisi instructs them, ‘and when it is ready you’ll engrave on it a map of the seven climes with their lands and regions, their shorelines and hinterlands, gulfs and seas, watercourses and rivers, their inhabited and uninhabited parts, their known harbours and the distances between each locality.’

  This is done. Edrisi summons Abila to his chamber and unveils the planisphere.

  ‘I present to you this silver globe.’

  Abila says nothing.

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘I think, sir, it’s a plaything.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘It tells me nothing.’

  ‘But here is Sicily,’ implores Edrisi. ‘And here the Mediterranean is charted. Look, here is Africa, Egypt, Nubia.’

  ‘Where are the people?’

  ‘They are too small to depict, even on a map such as this.’

  ‘There are no stories.’

  She leaves his chamber.

  Edrisi despairs. Lying in his chamber by day, pacing the courtyard by night, he tugs ever harder at his beard.

  Only when Milus, the travelling storyteller, arrives at court does Edrisi conceive his next plan. Abila wants stories, he thinks. By god, she’ll have a story!

  It was late afternoon when Edrisi approached Milus’ chamber. The air was growing cold, pierced by the shiver-rustling of trees, catcalls, trumpets announcing sunset. He seized Milus, fixing his fist around his gaunt neck.

  ‘Teach me your storyteller’s art!’

  Edrisi raised his eyes to the diminishing sky. Visible in the half-light were the masts of ships unhurriedly swaying to and fro, the cathedral spire, the barred windows of the leprosarium, railed parapets to which kites clung by their tails. Edrisi noticed none of the signs of the city. Instead he saw a crease in the sky, a faint and gauzy tear through which appeared a small though perfectly proportioned simulacrum of his Ceutan backyard. A shiver ran up from his toes, expanding in his chest to a tearing pain. He held the storyteller’s neck.

  ‘Teach me your storyteller’s art,’ he repeated without taking his eyes from the tear in the sky above Palermo, which now revealed the fascia of his favourite childhood sweetshop. He pictured the shopkeeper’s hairy arms and his fat fingers which nevertheless yielded wonderful sugar-beaded sweets. Milus rocked back and forward, his mouth drawn wide, gums as pink as a kitten’s. And Edrisi recalled the particular technique that as a child he had developed to eat sweetmeats, dropping one into his yawning mouth, then two, four, eight, sixteen if he could manage, until his tongue was forced against his palate and he spat the gummy sweetness on to the street, where one of the ragged dogs would gulp it down. The pain in his chest subsided, and Edrisi relaxed his hand. The storyteller collapsed on the ground. He was shaking violently and gasping for breath. Edrisi nudged him with his foot.

  ‘Stand up!’

  Milus got to his feet. Edrisi felt the pain in his chest return more insistently as he noticed for the first time the broken black teeth, the warty brow, the roomy smile for which Milus was renowned. Tendrils of spit trembled and fell from his bottom lip. Uncontrollably he heaved and shook. He cackled, wept, beat his chest; and then, unsteadily, with the tip of his big toe, sketched in the dust the words, Get Lost.

  Calling vainly for a guard, Edrisi brought down an elbow on Milus’ shoulder. As the poet’s legs gave way once again, Edrisi spat, ‘I’ll come to your quarters tomorrow at three. Insult me again and you won’t have a chance to get back to your feet.’

  ‘Come in,’ said a voice, next day, as Edrisi approached the doorless entrance. Milus lay on a hemp mat on the floor and instructed Edrisi to sit.

  ‘Let me be frank,’ he began. His grin was hideous but submissive. ‘I could give you the fancy screed about storytelling, about the ancestors and heroes and the imparting of wisdom. I could tell you that one can learn the art of storytelling only from one’s roots in the soil.

  ‘But I see,’ grinning and winking at Edrisi, ‘you are not a man for whom a poet’s trickery will work its charm. I’ll speak plainly,’ he said, moving closer. ‘We rhymesters are liars. You hear? Liars and cheats. Give me a copper coin and I’ll compose a lampoon that’ll have your enemies writhing in their robes. A silver one and I’ll make the earthworm in your pants grow into a snake. A gold coin will buy you a tale to seduce a princess. Tell me. Why do you want to learn to tell stories?’

  Edrisi got to his feet and twice circled the room.

  ‘I’m in love with a woman who is in love with stories.’

  Once again Milus roared with delight. He struck his palms against his thighs.

  ‘But will she love the storyteller as much as the story?’

  ‘A fair point,’ Edrisi conceded.

  ‘You have two options.’ Milus placed a knot of bark on to his tongue and began to chew. ‘You could attempt to learn the storyteller’s art, although this will be tricky. You are one who holds great authority, one who need not look over your shoulder. And that is the weakness of power.’

  Edrisi said nothing.

  ‘Tell me a story.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Then come back tomorrow.’

  And, next day, ‘There are two types of story. Those that are distant in time and those that are distant in space. The first are ancient tales, tales of our past heroes. And the primary tellers of these are sedentary people. The second are told by travellers of one kind or another. Which are you?’

  ‘Traveller,’ Edrisi said enthusiastically.

  ‘Tell me a story.’

  After a long pause, Edrisi declared in a loud and breathy voice, ‘One day …’

  ‘A good start.’

  ‘One day … there was … a boat owned by a king. The boat was full of soldiers dressed in garments of war. They were about to set sail for Alexandria … when … when a wave swept them to sea … and they all died.’

  ‘Tell me another.’

 
; ‘One day …’

  ‘Not all stories start with One day. Try, for example, There was once …’

  ‘There was once … there was … a small boy lost in a desert sandstorm. When he was more dead than alive, an old griot arrived with a skein of fresh water attached to his hip. The griot attacked him then ate him.’

  The storyteller Milus closed his eyes. ‘You will never charm your lady with storytelling.’

  ‘You said there were two options,’ Edrisi said after some time. ‘Tell me the second.’

  Milus spread his hands out before him. ‘To write. Set down on paper. Woo your love with words on the page. No doubt, it’s a base alternative. When I speak I draw the largest of crowds. A dense throng of listeners squat on the ground, and even the town idiot, to whom my words mean nothing, is captured and rooted to the spot. To write, however, is to substitute living words for empty scrawl. It is to filch and deceive. There is nothing natural in it – a parasitic, masturbatory art! But, my stubborn apprentice, my incompetent griot, it’s all you’ve got. Steal from the writings of others in order to spin your tale. Pinch from a thousand sources, anything that fits. You don’t know how to look but you’re well versed in deceit. My proposal: Write it down!’

  Edrisi took this advice. He embarked on his greatest attempt to woo Abila. As his starting point he took the silver globe. He decided to create a text illustrating in words each of the seven climes. He would call it the Kitab Rujjar or Book of Entertainment for One Desirous to Go Round the World and present it as an advancement of geographical knowledge. In addition to notes from his own travels, Edrisi began to collect information from written sources: the Kitab surat al-ard of Al-Khwarizmi, Al-Battani’s Astronomy, works by al-Istakhri, al-Kashgari, and the Periploi. Then he contacted merchants, seamen, diplomats, itinerants of all kinds. He despatched envoys accompanied by draftsmen. The tone, he decided, would be narrated through the mode of curiosity. In addition to the mapping of the seven climes, he would describe the conditions of the lands and countries, their inhabitants, their customs, appearance, clothes and language, their seas, mountains and measurements, their crops and revenues and all sorts of buildings, the works they had produced, their economy and their merchandising. But at its heart, in addition to being a lexical map of the world, would be wonderful tales. The Kitab Rujjar would serve the primary purpose of telling stories.