A Poet of the Invisible World

by Michael Golding

  “Welcome!” cried the man, as Nouri approached. “It’s time to commit you to eternity!”

  Nouri crossed the courtyard to the wooden stool that had been placed beside the fountain and sat. Then he drew himself up very tall and nodded to the painter to begin. The fellow worked intently, with great zeal, and every so often he would call out to Nouri:

  “Imagine you’re on a boat on the open sea!”

  “Imagine you’re in a sunlit meadow!”

  “Imagine you’re on an elephant storming through the jungle!”

  Nouri didn’t see how he could be on a boat, in a meadow, and on an elephant all at the same time. But he tried his best to relax and let the court painter paint. For the first hour or so, it was easy to sit still. Nouri placed his attention on his breathing and took pleasure in the court painter’s focus and concentration. Eventually, however, the sun caused beads of sweat to trickle down his neck. Then an insistent mosquito appeared, which made it difficult not to squirm. So he was grateful when at last the court painter lowered his brush and announced that the portrait was done.

  Nouri was eager to see the finished work. But before he could go to it, the court painter clapped his hands and the small boy sprang up and scurried to the easel. He waited as the court painter removed the clips that held the book in place. Then he lowered the book into the boy’s hands and he carried it to Nouri.

  When he reached him, the boy held the portrait up like a mirror before Nouri’s eyes. And Nouri was startled by what was reflected back to him.

  His chin was lifted in pride. His mouth beamed with self-satisfaction. And his eyes, though dark and glistening, seemed covered by a veil.

  “A perfect likeness!” cried the court painter. “Don’t you agree?”

  As Nouri gazed at the portrait, he was suddenly reminded of Ibn Arwani and the spiritual struggle from which he’d turned away. But no sooner did the thought rise up than it vanished again. So he turned his eyes from the portrait and nodded.

  “Perfect,” he said.

  The boy lowered the book and carried it back to the easel. Then Nouri headed to his room to finish the poems.

  * * *

  NOURI LAY ON HIS BACK, on the floor, his knees raised, his head on a pillow, waiting for the final image to take shape. He was describing the faint swirls of fog that nestled in the mountains before dawn, and he knew that when the image was perfectly clear he would know how to express it. He closed his eyes. He listened. Then, when the words finally came, he sat forward, reached for the pen, and scribbled them down. When he wrote the last word, a strange quiet came over him. Then he took the poem to the court calligrapher to be inscribed in the book and went to tell The Right Hand that his work was done.

  When he reached the familiar door, he knocked.

  “It’s Nouri!”

  There was a long silence. Then The Right Hand called out: “You may enter!”

  When Nouri pushed open the door and stepped into the room, he found that it was unusually still. There were no servants to be found, nor any sign of a musician. Only The Right Hand, stretched out on the divan, his eyes balanced between thought and sleep.

  “What brings you?” he said, as Nouri approached.

  “It’s done.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The book.”

  “The book?”

  “It’s finished. I’ve just taken the last poem to be inscribed.”

  The Right Hand was silent. Then Nouri’s words penetrated the fog. “The book!”

  Nouri nodded. “It’s done!”

  The Right Hand combed his fingers through his luxurious beard. Then he clapped. “We must celebrate!”

  He gathered his loose robes, slipped his feet into his slippers, and rose from the divan. Then he crossed the room to the large cabinet from which he’d fetched the leather book and removed a glass bottle and a pair of silver cups. He placed the cups on the desk that stood beside the open window that looked out over the city. Then he removed the curved stopper from the bottle, poured a dark amber liquid into the cups, and offered one to Nouri.

  “To your achievement!”

  Nouri gazed across the room at The Right Hand. He’d been in his chamber many times, yet he had never seen him like this. His eyes glittered and a heat rose from his body. Nouri wondered what he would say when he introduced him to the Sultan. Perhaps he would be made a member of his circle and be asked to recite for him each day, as he had done for The Right Hand. At the moment, however, The Right Hand’s arm was outstretched. So Nouri pressed all thoughts from his mind, crossed the room, and took the cup from his hand.

  The Right Hand reached for the other cup, raised it to Nouri’s, and drank down the liquid in a single gulp. Nouri drew the cup to his lips and did the same. Then The Right Hand turned to the open window.

  “Look at the city, Nouri! Perhaps someday everyone out there will know who you are!”

  Inflamed by both the liquor and the praise, Nouri lowered his cup to the desk, moved to the window, and looked out past the weathered ramparts and the rain-washed towers at the tumult of the streets beyond. He felt a deep urge to describe what he saw. To compose a true hymn to the city. But before he could even frame the opening words, he felt The Right Hand move close behind him.

  “It’s exciting, isn’t it?”

  Nouri felt his heart begin to pound. Then The Right Hand parted the curls that hung down from his head cloth and pressed his lips to his neck.

  “Have you taken care of that problem we spoke about?”

  At these words, The Right Hand reached around Nouri’s body and grasped the serpent. Nouri recoiled. But the serpent, stirred by the contact, began to stiffen, which only emboldened The Right Hand.

  “There are many ways to deal with these things,” he whispered.

  He kissed Nouri’s shoulder. And then his back. Then he pressed him down against the frame of the window and tore open his trousers.

  “All things,” he whispered, “come at a price!”

  It wasn’t the first time Nouri had experienced staggering pain. When he was six, he had found a wasps’ nest in the grass and when he carried it through the garden to show Habbib, he was stung, sixteen times, on his arms and face. When he was ten, while he was helping Salim Rasa prepare some khoresht annar-aveej, he had sliced off the tip of his left thumb. But what was happening now so stunned him he could not actually believe it was occurring. His mind dissolved. His body became a field of flame.

  Somewhere, from deep within the pain, he felt The Right Hand reach beneath him and grasp the serpent again. He resented the delicious tremor that shot through him. It brought pleasure into the bargain, which only confused him more. As he lay there, pinned between the heated body and the cool marble ledge, he saw Leisha walking by on the path below. He wanted to cry out to her, but he could not make a sound. So he watched as she moved on, unaware of the outrage that was happening a short distance over her head.

  The Right Hand drove on. Nouri felt as if the breath had been expelled from his body and his blood had turned into dust. He could not imagine it lasting much longer, but as The Right Hand’s passion approached its peak, he began thrusting harder. Nouri was too consumed with pain to see that, in his fever, his assailant had wound his fingers into his head garment and, in a moment of fury, had torn it off. Only when The Right Hand’s groans rose into a furious wail did he realize that his ears had been revealed.

  “Demon!” cried The Right Hand, as he reared back. “Spawn of Satan!” He reached out and squeezed Nouri’s ears to be sure that he was not seeing double. “I’m fucking a goddamn monster!”

  Nouri gripped the ledge, grateful for the sudden interruption of his abuse. He knew that what was likely to come next was his demise, but to his surprise, The Right Hand reached neither for an inkpot to crush his skull nor a dagger to pierce his heart, but instead began pounding him even harder. Nouri wondered if this was how he intended to kill him. But then, like a lightning-struck ox, he suddenly spasm
ed, and collapsed on top of Nouri’s battered frame.

  Nouri waited for The Right Hand to regain his senses, certain that when he did he would call for the guards to come fetch him and take him to some dark corner of the palace, where they would chop off his head. But the body, having lapsed into a sated swoon, only grew slack. So Nouri slipped out from under the leaden weight, gathered his torn clothes, and hurried off.

  PART THREE

  Twelve

  The snow covered the woodshed and the granary and the pasture and spread like a gentle sleep over the hills. It had fallen, in a great silent downpour, during the night. So when Nouri awoke and looked out through the little window over the place where he slept, there was neither a footprint nor the tracks of either a cart or a plow to mar the perfect white. Nouri had never seen snow in his life. So he could only think that some djinn had cast a spell over the landscape to make it disappear.

  He knew, however, that, djinn or no djinn, he had to climb down the ladder and throw off his caftan and put on his warm clothes and head out into the icy air to tend the sheep. There were twelve of them: four rams, six ewes, and a pair of newborn lambs. It was his job to lead them out into the pasture to feed, to remove the twigs and dirt that matted their coats, and to make sure that they did not wander off. And while the snow was likely to complicate these tasks, he knew there was no choice but to carry them out.

  Had someone asked him, Nouri would have been unable to say how long he had lived in the dusty barn on the simple farm on the side of the stony mountain. He assumed that his seventeenth birthday had come and gone, but he could not say when. One day blurred into the next, the heel of bread he consumed each morning varying only in the degree to which its crust was burned, the watery soup he ate for lunch never wavering, the bowl of grain he was given for supper being augmented with a scrawny carrot or a small scrap of meat only now and then. He rose. He worked. He slept. Each breath was an act of forgetting. Each action was a denial of all that had come before.

  When Nouri had fled the wounding embrace of The Right Hand, he felt light-headed and dizzy. It was the hour of siesta, so no one saw him as he staggered over the colored tiles and back to his room. He removed his clothes, rolled them into a bundle, and changed into something unsoiled. Then he hurried through the palace, out the gates, and over the sleeping streets until the city was far behind him.

  He had no destination. He just ran and ran—down the dusty roads, through the choppy fields, along the dried-up riverbanks—until he spied an abandoned farmhouse where he could spend the night. He was cold and hungry and there was little comfort to be found in its forgotten rooms. But he curled himself up into a ball beside the lifeless hearth and relinquished himself to sleep.

  In the morning, he rose and went out to the parched garden, where he found a well. He drew enough water to fill the tub that sat on the broken porch. Then he removed his clothes and sank in. He did not think about what had happened the day before. He did not think about anything. But when he stepped from the water, it was as if his life at the court had never occurred.

  Over the following days, he continued north, stealing food from the fields and gardens he passed, stopping only when his tired body could move no more. At times he found a barn or an old windmill where he could spend the night, but for the most part to keep himself warm he had to huddle in the clefts of the dry earth that were scattered along the way. He followed the roads, but took cover when he heard the sound of horse hooves. Even the simple gaze of a pair of eyes was too much for him to bear.

  As he traveled on—his only motive to get farther from the court—he began to perceive that he was moving higher. The ground was less beaten, the air more fragrant and less tinged with salt. As he pressed on, the path grew narrow and snaked upward through great crags of rock. This meant that Nouri had to climb, and that there was less food to be found.

  One morning—after tucking himself into a tiny cave he’d found on the side of a great bluff—he awoke to find that he was not alone. Surrounding him, in a fleecy ring, were ten sheep, their eyes closed in a communal sleep, their bodies filling the space with warmth. When he sat up, they stirred, but they showed no signs of fear. They simply blinked their elliptical eyes and bleated a few times.

  Nouri felt safe at the center of the flock. But having drunk his fill from a meandering stream he’d passed the night before, he felt the need to piss. So he climbed over the circle and stepped out of the cave into the morning light. As he released a steady stream upon the ground, the sheep turned their heads to listen and watch the steam rise up. Then, when he’d brushed the dirt from his clothes and headed back to the path, they rose and started after him.

  At first, Nouri was confused to find the wooly creatures dogging his steps.

  “Be gone!” he shouted.

  He waved his arms and tried to shoo them away. But their dark, vacant eyes just stared at him, and he soon realized that after being alone for longer than he’d ever been alone in his life he was grateful to have them near. So he turned back to the winding road and let them follow behind.

  They remained at his heels the entire day. When he paused at a stream to drink, they drank too. When he came upon a patch of grass, he waited while they grazed. And when dusk came, he found a crevasse in the side of a mountain where the entire flock could spend the night. It was not as spacious as the cave where they’d sheltered the night before, but it was dry and protected from the wind, and both Nouri and the sheep seemed happy at the thought of settling in.

  He removed a few stones scattered on the floor of the enclosure. Then he led the sheep in and they hunkered down. Before he could lay his own weary body beside them, however, he felt a shiver run through him, and when he turned he saw an old man hovering in the darkness. He was carrying a small torch, which cast shadows across his haggard face. But his eyes, set deep within his skull, blazed brighter than its flame. Nouri feared more for the sheep than for himself. But then the man suddenly shouted:

  “Ven!”

  The cry made Nouri’s tender ears throb. But as the sheep rose to their feet and started toward the old man, Nouri knew that the flock was his. When they were gathered around him, the man turned and started off, and the sheep—just as they’d done with Nouri—followed behind. After a few paces, however, the man turned back. He glared at Nouri through the fading light and Nouri feared that he might draw a knife from the heel of his boot and slice open his throat. Instead he shouted:

  “Venga!”

  Then he jerked his head to indicate that Nouri should follow him too, and so he did.

  By the time they reached the old man’s farm, it was dark. Nouri watched as he led the sheep into an enclosure. Then he followed the old man into a small stone house, where he gave Nouri a hunk of bread and some tasteless soup. After the spare meal, he led Nouri out to the barn, showed him the ladder that led up to the narrow loft, and left him to sleep. When Nouri awoke the following morning, the old man handed him a wooden staff. And Nouri understood that his new job was to tend the sheep.

  In the time since then, the weather had grown cold and Nouri had settled into life on the farm. In exchange for looking after the sheep, he was given food and shelter. The rest of the old man’s world—the cultivation of the scraggly vegetable patch, the tending of the orchard, and whatever went on in the little house outside the times when Nouri was welcomed for meals—was none of his affair. Nouri performed his chores and followed his tasks. Each day was like the day that had come before.

  Now, however, he’d awakened to find that the world had gone white. So he shook off the last traces of sleep and scrambled down the ladder to see what the strange substance was like. For with the past erased, and no guarantee of any future, what could match his state of mind more completely than a landscape that was hushed and numb?

  * * *

  AS TIME PASSED, A SIMPLE fondness grew up between Nouri and the old man. With no common language, they had to depend on looks and gestures to communicate. If the old man ra
ked his fingers across the sky it meant that more snow was coming. If Nouri mimed turning a key in a lock it meant that the sheep were in for the night. Nouri kept waiting for the old man to make some sort of reference to his head cloth, but he never did. So he assumed that it just seemed like another expression of his strangeness to the old man.

  There was a flurry of activity when the two lambs were born. The first came quite easily, on a clear afternoon, and Nouri did little more than hold the bucket of warm water and watch as the sticky creature entered the world. The second, however, came at night, and was breech, so Nouri had to assist while the old man pushed it back, grasped one of its legs and pulled it into the birth canal, did the same with the other, and then guided the lamb out to safety. With no words to use, the old man was unable to tell Nouri what was needed, yet it was as if some deep-seated intelligence moved in and explained what to do. When it was clear that both the lamb and the mother would survive, the old man clapped Nouri on the back. It was a moment of connection. Otherwise, they simply nodded to each other as they performed their chores and, from time to time, stood together beside the barn to watch the sun slip behind the hills.

  It wasn’t until several months had passed that Nouri learned the old man’s name. Nouri was sitting beneath the yew tree where the sheep liked to graze when he looked up to see the old man striding toward him. He assumed that he’d done something wrong, but when the old man reached him he peered into his eyes and thumped loudly upon his chest.

  “Enrico!” he shouted.

  Nouri was silent. Then he suddenly remembered that he also had a name. “Nouri,” he said, as he thumped his chest in return.

  The old man nodded. Then he turned and marched back to the house and that was that.

  Considering the amount of time he spent with them each day, Nouri was surprised he did not feel a deeper kinship with the sheep. He fed and watered them; he brushed their coats and took them on long rambles along the steep mountain paths; he even named them: the four rams were Abtin, Omid, Siamak, and Javeed, the six ewes were Ashtag, Chalipa, Yasaman, Ghamzeh, Malakeh, and Rasa, and the two lambs were Poupak and Kamal. But all that had occurred over the previous year kept his heart locked up tight, and the lambs could not enter in.