A hush fell over the room as the revelers gaped at their seething bedfellow.
“He speaks!”
“It’s a miracle!”
“He’s actually human!”
Sharoud said nothing. But human was precisely what he did not wish to be. So when they returned to Cairo, he went to the seyhulislam of the palace mosque and asked for help.
“My heart is unclean. I need to remove myself from the world.” He paused for a moment. “Again.”
The seyhulislam was not a Sufi, yet he knew from the burnished glint in Sharoud’s eye what he needed. So he sent him to join the order in the clouds, where Sharoud began his life as Brother Shadow.
It had been five years now since the mountain retreat had become his home. And little by little the clean air and the daily prayer and the simple coexistence with the brothers restored the peace to his heart. He knew, though, that that peace would be tested. So when he returned that evening to find Nouri sitting at the table in the kitchen, he felt neither anger nor surprise. Only the keen understanding that—no matter where he traveled—no matter how deeply he prayed—this boy was a challenge that he could not avoid.
* * *
FOR NOURI, THE MAIN CHALLENGE was to prevent Sharoud’s reappearance from creating a veil between himself and God. For from the moment Sharoud revealed that he knew who he was, Nouri’s peace of mind was completely shattered. Resentment rose up. Insecurity. Fear. He tried to remove them with prayer, but the more that he looked within, the more flaws he observed. Obstinacy. Naïveté. Self-pity. Self-doubt. How could such a tainted vessel draw near to God?
He went to Sheikh al-Khammas to seek advice. But the Sufi master’s words only confused him.
“The Sufi Way is the way of self-knowledge. God knows himself. When you know yourself, you will know God.”
For the first time, Nouri began to contemplate making the long and arduous journey to the Holy City. Sharoud seemed to have been deeply affected by his trips and, despite it being one of the basic pillars of the faith to make the pilgrimage at least once, Nouri had never been. He’d observed that Sheikh al-Khammas never spoke about the hajj or gave any indication that he should go. When he told him of his wish to make the journey, however, the Sufi master’s response was immediate.
“The caravan leaves from Cairo in six weeks. Omar al-Hamid will accompany you until you reach the posting station. Then you’ll continue on with the others.”
The following day, Sheikh al-Khammas found a lay brother named Faraz al-Aziz who was willing to provide Nouri with a camel. So Nouri set about to gather his provisions—and his strength—for the journey.
On the morning of his departure, Nouri bid farewell to the other brothers. Then he and Omar al-Hamid started down the mountain path. They continued through the village, across the desert, for days and nights, until they reached the place, just east of the throbbing city, from which the caravan would depart. Nouri was amazed at how many pilgrims there were: thousands of men, women, and children, each determined to place his or her feet on the soil where the Prophet had been spoken to by God. When the last of them had gathered, they headed out in an orderly procession behind the Sultan’s mahmal, traveling eastward until they reached the oasis of Kuman. From there, they headed south, through the mountains, until they reached the city of Nadiz. They paused in Nadiz for several days to water their camels and rest. Then they continued on through the wretched terrain that stretched between there and Medina, the last stop before they reached the hallowed city of Mecca.
The journey from the posting station to Medina took forty-six days. Some pilgrims died of exposure along the way. Others of thirst. Some forgot the reason they’d made the trip. Others forgot their names. But when they reached Medina, their spirits rallied. They visited the Prophet’s tomb and the Prophet’s mosque and intoned their collective thanks to Allah. Then they loaded their camels with fresh provisions, rode to a station outside the city—where the men removed their clothes, bathed, and put on their ihrams—and set off on the final leg of the dusty journey.
It was a crisp autumn morning when Nouri finally entered the Holy City. He was struck by the power of the place, but whether that power was due to the fact that the Prophet had been born there, the fact that it was where he had received the Holy Book, or the sheer number of bodies that overflowed its narrow streets, he couldn’t say. He only knew that he was swept along on a sea of prayer to the center of the Haram, where he joined in the impassioned circling of the great stone cube.
Nouri spent fifteen days in the Holy City. The constant eruptions of sound—the donkeys, the bells, the booming calls to prayer—were overwhelming to his ever-sensitive ears. But he stuffed them with some wax he purchased from a candlemaker and soldiered on. He found lodging at a Sufi hospice not far from the Grand Mosque, which allowed him to go there whenever he liked. He also performed the other rites of the hajj: the prayers at the Maqam Ibrahim, the “Running” between the hills of al-Safa and al-Marwa, the “Standing” beneath the Mount of Mercy on the plain of Arafat. At the end of the visit, he joined the Feast of the Sacrifice. Then he removed his ihram and headed home.
The journey back was even longer than the journey there. When they reached Nadiz, an illness swept through their weary ranks and the caravan had to remain there for nearly a month before they could travel on. A windstorm impeded their progress to Cairo, and by the time Nouri reached the gates of the mountain lodge he was gaunt and sun-dazed and aching with fatigue. The brothers were eager to hear of his adventures and Nouri did not hold back. But only Sheikh al-Khammas knew the truth, which he conveyed in a single glance.
The journey was thrilling.
Inspiring.
Exalting.
And, in the end, it did not change a thing.
“You would never have believed me if I’d told you,” said Sheikh al-Khammas. “You had to learn the truth for yourself: the real Holy City is within.”
Nouri wasn’t sorry he’d made the trip. It had stirred his heart and strengthened his will. But he knew that Sheikh al-Khammas was right. So he focused his efforts on finding the Mecca within. He poured himself into the world of nature. He sat in the chapel mosque, trying to merge with a higher world. At times, the sharp line around things would melt and he would unite with a bird or a cloud or a tree. But the moment would always pass, and the feeling of separateness would return.
Perhaps he hadn’t suffered enough.
Or paid enough.
Or prayed enough.
“Who are you, Nouri?” Sheikh al-Khammas would say. “You must keep asking yourself. Over and over.”
So the members of the tiny order in the clouds fell to the ground and lowered their heads and extended their arms and tried to observe who they were and who they were not.
I am not this withered body, thought Sheikh al-Khammas.
I am not this resentment or this disdain, thought Sharoud.
I am not these yearnings or these fears, thought Nouri. Or these ears.
And the days passed. And Nouri’s connection with God flickered on and off, like a torch in a storm. And he prayed that he could find the strength to keep it from going out.
PART FIVE
Nineteen
So time began to change shape at the little Sufi lodge in the mountains. The days came and the days went and Nouri and Sheikh al-Khammas and Sharoud and Abbas al-Kumar and Omar al-Hamid and Yusuf al-Wali tried to empty themselves and love God. And they moved closer to the mark and they drew further away. And they struggled. And they plummeted. And they soared. And the final layer of softness was whittled from Nouri’s cheeks. And Sharoud’s hair turned from black sprinkled with white to white sprinkled with black. And Abbas al-Kumar grew fatter. And Omar al-Hamid grew thinner. And Yusuf al-Wali grew frailer. And Sheikh al-Khammas’s skin became so gauzelike it revealed the fine tracery of the capillaries that feathered beneath it. And two years, and five years, and eight years passed. And Sheikh al-Khammas continued to mold Nouri. To temper
him. To confound his logical mind and shatter the constructs within him that kept him from God.
“You must be vigilant,” said the Sufi master. “The house is on fire. And you just sit there, staring at the flames.”
When ten years had passed, Sheikh al-Khammas sent Nouri to an order in a nearby village to teach. Nouri didn’t feel he was ready, but Sheikh al-Khammas knew the only way he could progress further on the path was to share his understanding with others. Nouri spent an entire year there, trying to impart what he’d learned from Sheikh al-Khammas. And though he could not say, when the year had passed, if he’d deepened the understanding of any of the brothers he’d taught, there was no doubt in his mind that he’d strengthened his own.
Another year passed. Another two. Another four. Nouri was now thirty-eight—nearly twice the age he’d been when he’d first arrived at the lodge. Yusuf al-Wali had died that spring, reducing the brothers’ number from six to five. And while they’d grown used to one another’s habits and quirks over the passing years, Sheikh al-Khammas was always aware of the unspoken tension—subtle as the fragrance of a peach blossom—between Nouri and Sharoud. Despite the countless meals they’d shared and the countless times they’d knelt beside one another in zikr, they always seemed to avoid each other’s gaze. So one day—just as Sheikh Bailiri had found a way to bring Nouri and Vishpar together so many years before—Sheikh al-Khammas devised a plan to dissolve the distance between Nouri and Sharoud.
On that sunlit morning, the Sufi master and Nouri were sitting in the garden, as they had sat, almost daily, for so many years. Nouri—whose beard had grown thick and whose gaze was now firm and sure—was splitting open the large seedpods the carob tree had scattered upon the grass and was launching them, like tiny feluccas, onto the surface of the pool. They rarely spoke as they sat together. Nouri had asked all the questions worth asking and Sheikh al-Khammas had imparted what wisdom he could. But today there was a plan to hatch, so the Sufi master broke the silence.
“It’s been years since anyone came to receive succor. It’s not good for us. We’re cut off from the pulse of life.”
“We need a good sickness to strike the village!” said Nouri.
“Don’t say such a thing!” said Sheikh al-Khammas, laughing. “Allah hears!”
He reached for one of the pods that lay near his feet and gave it to Nouri, who cracked it open and added it to the fleet.
“Besides, there is a sickness in the village. A kind of blood fever. I’ve been told that the hospice is nearly full.”
“We should go and help them.”
“I agree. But I’m too old to travel down the mountain. And Abbas al-Kumar and Omar al-Hamid are useless with the infirm.” He paused. “I think you and Brother Shadow should go.”
Nouri was silent a moment. Then he nodded. “We’ll head out this morning.”
An hour later, Nouri and Sharoud met at the front gate and began the long walk down the mountain to the village below. They’d circled each other for years now, each one insisting that time and the grace of Allah had melted the hardness between them, yet each fully aware that it wasn’t so. So they walked in silence—Nouri trying to keep Sharoud’s piety at the forefront of his mind, Sharoud trying to suppress the ever-disturbing thought of Nouri’s ears.
When they reached the hospice—a flat-roofed building with a dormitory, a kitchen, and a small room for the gravely ill—they were welcomed in. Nouri was given a cloth, a bowl of water, and a bottle of vinegar to cool the patients’ brows. Sharoud was given a pail of soapy water and a mop to keep the place clean. They worked all day at their separate tasks. Then they made their way back through the village and up the mountain to the lodge.
Over the following weeks, they met each morning and accompanied each other to the hospice. But whether they walked together in the wide morning light or the gathering shadows of dusk, they did not utter a single word. One day, however, about three weeks after they’d begun their labors, as they were heading down the mountain, Sharoud spoke.
“I need to stop for a drink of water,” he said. “There’s a dwelling at the foot of the mountain. I’ve been there before.”
Nouri was so accustomed to the silence that always shrouded them on their walks that he was unable to respond. So he followed Sharoud to the foot of the mountain and then on to a small building that stood a few hundred paces from the path. When they reached it, Sharoud knocked loudly upon the door. There was a moment’s pause. Then it opened, and a spindly man whose arms and hands and face were covered with dark smudges peered out.
“I’ve come for water,” Sharoud shouted at the man.
The man—whom Nouri assumed must be deaf—said nothing. Instead, he turned and began to make his way across the room. As he did, Nouri looked inside and saw that it was a workshop, the floors strewn with pieces of charred wood, the table scattered with hammers and ratchets and bowls filled with an assortment of colored powders. There was a strong smell of sulfur in the air, and the walls and ceiling were covered with dark smudges, just like the man. When the man reached the far wall, he fetched a pair of cups from a shelf. Then he hobbled back to where Nouri and Sharoud waited, gave them the cups, and closed the door.
Sharoud—who seemed to think nothing of the fellow’s strange behavior—turned. “Follow me,” he said.
He led Nouri around the building to a well, where he drew fresh water to fill the cups. They drank. He refilled the cups and they drank again. Then he turned back to Nouri.
“We should return these to the fellow before we go.”
Nouri nodded, and reached out his hand. “I’ll take them.”
Sharoud handed his cup to Nouri. Then they started back to the door.
As Nouri made his way over the dusty ground, he thought of the rheumy-eyed patients who awaited him at the hospice. There was one in particular who brought a smile to his lips: an old fellow with a kind, lumpy face who reminded him of Habbib. When Nouri sat pressing the moist towel against the fellow’s forehead, he could see his old friend walking along the river, kneeling in the garden, telling him stories before bed. He was so lost, in fact, in this double layer of imagination—imagining himself at the hospice, where he would imagine himself at the lodge in Tan-Arzhan—he almost believed that he’d imagined it as well when a sound louder than anything he’d ever heard suddenly ripped through his ears and hurled him to the ground.
When Nouri came to, he felt the ground hard beneath him and the crumbling dirt stinging his eyes. But as he lay there, watching smoke pour through the open window, he felt a strange sense of calm. The feeling was undisturbed when the door flew open and the man stumbled out, gasping for air. But it was only when Nouri saw Sharoud running toward him—mouth open—seeming to cry out—that he realized he could not hear a thing.
* * *
FOR SOMEONE ACCUSTOMED to a lifetime of intensified shouts, screams, sobs, wails, growls, yowls, yammers, whimpers, grunts, snarls, barks, bleats, bangs, clangs, squawks, tweets, thumps, thuds, yawps, yips, honks, snorts, hoots, whispers, buzzes, howls, hollers, hisses, cackles, screeches, moans, groans, clicks, clacks, whines, cheers, moos, coos, clinks, squeaks, jingles, jangles, booms, shrieks, yelps, yaps, whoops, bellows, woofs, quacks, trills, caws, clucks, whinnies, yells, and roars, the sudden absence of sound made it seem as if Nouri had been transported to another world. He watched as the spindly man staggered toward him. He watched as Sharoud knelt down and rolled him over onto his back. But without the crunch of the dirt beneath their feet or the sound of their voices, it all seemed like a dream.
As the smoke cleared, Sharoud helped Nouri to his feet. It was clear that no bones had been broken, but when the elder dervish asked him if he felt any pain, Nouri did not say a word. Sharoud realized that Nouri’s hearing had been damaged, so he started to lead him off to the hospice to be examined. But Nouri knew that in order to be examined he’d have to remove his head cloth. So he raised his hands to his ears and shook his head.
“Please,” he sai
d. “Just take me back to the lodge.”
Sharoud understood. So he took Nouri’s arm and escorted him back up the mountain.
When Sharoud told Sheikh al-Khammas what had happened, the Sufi master wanted to inspect Nouri’s ears. Nouri, however, would not allow his head cloth to be touched, and Sheikh al-Khammas—believing the Sufi’s body to be a sacred vessel—respected his wishes. Instead, he fetched a sheet of paper and a pen and wrote a message to Nouri:
“God has placed his hands over your ears for a reason. He can remove them whenever he likes.”
As the days passed, however, Nouri’s hearing didn’t return. And while the loss only strengthened his other senses—the roses in the garden smelled sweeter—the sun felt warmer on his back—it was strange to no longer hear the wind rattle his window or the rain pelt the roof or Omar al-Hamid intone the call to prayer. After a lifetime of being pierced by the tiniest vibration, Nouri’s world had gone utterly still.
Despite the perfect silence without, it became quickly apparent to Nouri that there was no silence within. For without the roaring and crashing of the day, he was unable to escape the relentless rumble of his thoughts. The concerns and regrets and complaints and ruminations were all there, whether he wished them to be or not. And it was only after weeks of trying to quell them, as he sat on the bench in the garden one morning, that he remembered the refuge of words.
It startled him when he realized how long it had been since he’d put pen to paper. He’d not written a word since he’d fled the brutal embrace of The Right Hand. But now, with the absolute silence without and the constant clamor within, he was again drawn to the tender act of giving shape to his perceptions. As he moved through the lodge, simple phrases would appear. As he toiled in the garden, they would extend themselves into verse. And as the weeks passed, it became more and more clear that he wished to preserve them. So he asked Sheikh al-Khammas for a quill and some paper and began writing them down.
A Poet of the Invisible World Page 17
