Continent (10 page)

Then, refreshed, the calligrapher looks at his first drafts again. He studies them at another desk, under a new light. The decorative themes curl around the letters under his gaze. The Kufic and cursive debate before his eyes and present their conclusions. He sits with clean parchment, newly mixed inks, his head not spinning but calm with certainties. This is the easiest and the final draft.

I
HAVE NOT
been so fortunate. The Minister’s head of protocol came today, chewing gum. He enquired
about the progress of my great work. Exhibition dates, he said, had been arranged.

‘Well,’ I explained, ‘I have nothing to show you.’

‘Then start quickly. You don’t have time.’

‘I am an old man,’ I said. ‘I have lost my talents.’ I held up a (frankly) excessively shaky hand. ‘I’ve sat at my three desks for two weeks. I have wasted a ream of paper and a half-kilo of ink. Nothing comes. I don’t have ideas any longer. You’d better cancel your exhibitions.’

The aide-de-camp looked severely discountenanced. He rolled his chewing gum round his mouth. He looked around the house for some evidence of deceit.

‘The Minister isn’t going to be pleased,’ he said eventually. ‘We had an agreement with you.’

I shrugged. I hadn’t agreed to anything.

‘You’ve been using the government car! You’ve been using the government driver! Corruption! Fraud!’

I shrugged again. My hand was really shaking.

‘You’ll die in prison,’ he said. ‘We’ll burn your house.’ He extemporized dreadful fates for a few moments. Then he put up his hands, palms out, at chest level, to indicate that he had discovered a solution and that the threats were now ended. ‘Say nothing to the Minister,’ he said. ‘The Minister has made it my responsibility. You understand. I can make
it easy for you. You won’t let me down because I can be a very cruel man. Call your servant.’

Sabino came through from the yard and sat down, as instructed, on the tiled floor. The aide-de-camp lit a cigarette and drew on it a few times until its ash burned bright. Then he stubbed it out on Sabino’s head. The odour of burnt hair joined the smell of tobacco. Sabino did not seem to feel anything except fear and apprehension. The aide-de-camp and head of Ministerial protocol took the gum from his mouth and ground it, too, into Sabino’s scalp. ‘There,’ he said.

‘Bravo.’

‘This is just to give you an idea,’ he explained. ‘Now, to business.’ He placed a thick envelope of banknotes on Sabino’s head. It balanced there. A fortune. ‘That should help you find inspiration,’ he said, and left my house with only a fraction of the ceremony with which he had entered it. I have seen many strange things in my life and met many foolish men – but this was the strangest and he was the most foolish.

I
WAS SPENDING
more and more time on my bed in the company of my gecko. I could think of little but work. But I produced nothing at my desks except doodles in geometric arabesque, mockeries of script.
I slept on my back as recommended by the great calligrapher, Mir Ali of Tabriz. He had been thus inspired to devise Nasta’liq, the hanging script of the Muslims. A partridge had appeared to him in a dream and instructed him to shape letters like the wings of a bird. But all I dreamt of was young, young girls. Should I shape letters like young girls for the Minister’s great exhibition?

S
ABINO HAS
fled from me. He fears for his life. Now I have no one to prepare my food, to wash my gowns, to walk into the market for my few provisions.

I walk each day at dusk, just as the moon starts to show itself low on the horizon, to what remain of the market booths. I enjoy myself. People call out to me as they used to when I had a booth of my own. I am a celebrity here, now that the Minister has visited me and Americans have made off with my shop fronts. I buy some fish and a few vegetables. I sit in the Syrian’s bar and drink tea while small boys, on hire for a few coins, run to fetch my clean washing or to purchase some heavy item. The Syrian sits with me and complains bitterly: custom is bad, too many laws, too many taxes, the young are disrespectful, an honest man cannot make his honest fortune, thieves everywhere, nobody knows how hard he works, life is cruel and expensive, the heat.

‘Tell me, sir,’ he asked me one day. ‘What must a
businessman do? He must follow the market, am I correct? Supply and demand. You are involved in this, so you will understand… ‘ He paused to order fresh tea and to whet my curiosity. ‘When that first American bought Duni’s shop front, my ears were prickling like any good businessman’s. Three thousand dollars! For a shop front? Well, I saw a chance. The market was full of tourists. My bar was full of tourists. All they talked of was you, your work, Siddilic script. I sat with them at these tables, to improve my English. Did I know you, they wanted to know. Did you have any work for sale? Not shop fronts. Shop fronts were too big. Something small. Something that could be rolled up and taken home in a suitcase. Well, no, I had nothing. But a businessman never says no. “Come back in three days,” I told them, “and then, maybe, I will have found something. But it will be expensive, of course.” “Never mind ‘expensive’,” they said. So…’ The Syrian smiled at his own cunning. ‘I went to somebody – let us not say who – and told him: “I can pay such and such for good Siddilic script. By the master, of course. Nothing too large, mind. With the master’s authentic signature, naturally!” And in two days my friend returned with a parchment. A very nice piece. A good clear signature.

‘I wasn’t fooled. The design was beautiful but the ink had been applied by an amateur in a hurry. The ink was poor school ink and had dried unevenly. It
was a copy. But a skilfully signed copy. I paid my friend such and such. And one day later I sold to an American for such and such and such. Good business. Perfectly legal. What am I, an expert on scripts? How should I know?

‘So, I told my friend: “Good, quite good, bring me some more, but sell only to me.” This is also good business practice: control the supply, establish a modest monopoly, wait for the price to rise, sell. Simple. Second nature to a Syrian. Imagine, then, my storeroom full of your beautiful work, rising in price day by day, minute by minute. I was going to be a rich, rich man. Already my friend was a wealthy man from the money I had paid him. Already I was dreaming of dying in Damascus, of seeing my brothers in Aleppo for the first time in twenty years, of sitting with my toes in the Euphrates, of waving goodbye to business forever.

‘Then what occurs at the airport? They arrest my American. They seize his parchment. They let him fester at the police barracks for a few days while they threaten him with evading their new export regulations. Control of Antiquities and Artefacts (Backdated). They insult his wife. They frighten his children. The American Ambassador makes visits to the Minister. An aid deal is agreed on. The American is released and sent back to his big house in Massachusetts. The Minister’s man visits me. “Never again,” he tells me, “sell a work of art to a foreigner. If you
do, you’re in big trouble. You’re in big trouble anyway. Tread lightly.” Maybe my trading licence won’t get renewed. Maybe my passport will be required for scrutiny at the Minister’s office. Now I’ll never die in Damascus. Why? All because I am a businessman. Supply and demand.’

We went, two old men with waning dreams, to the storeroom behind the bar. There, beside the crates of cola and fruit drinks, the bottles of wine and beer, was a canvas case full of parchments. Indecipherability was the keynote to these forgeries, with every stroke over-ornate and uneven. Misplaced accents hovered uncertainly over misspelt words. All were signed with my name.

F
INALLY
I dreamt my dream of inspiration. I dreamt of a large gallery full of smart Europeans in their best clothes, walking slowly round the exhibits with expensive catalogues. I stood in a European suit, a young man once again, pointing out some fine detail to a beautiful woman.

‘Here,’ I was saying, ‘I have misplaced the vowel sound so that this word reads “Moon” instead of “Man”. And here are letters which do not exist in Siddilic and which no one can decipher. And there I have pressed so hard on my pen that the nib has snapped. So that sign there is not an accent but a blot.’ The woman smiled appreciatively. The gallery
applauded. Rich men shook my hand. The Minister shook my hand. I saw the Syrian rinsing his toes in a wide river. I saw Sabino in my courtyard. I saw my acacia throwing out new shoots.

When I woke, the envelope of banknotes was lying unopened at the side of my bed. I dressed and hurried to the Syrian’s bar.

‘Your story moved me,’ I told him. ‘It was my fault that you lost your money. I carry the guilt.’

‘Well, maybe,’ said the Syrian.

‘Here, take this envelope. Give me the scrolls.’

The Syrian saw the thickness of the envelope and did not haggle. He promised me free tea at his bar ‘until the angels take you up to Paradise in recognition of your kindness and your honesty’. He put the envelope into his safe and hung the key on a gold chain at his throat. He put his finger to his lips. ‘Say nothing,’ he told me. ‘This is between friends.’

N
OW THE
Minister has his exhibits and I am working to contribute just one genuine piece of my own. My last work of calligraphy, the work which was intended to be sealed in a tube of bamboo and burned at my funeral, is now to go instead to Vienna and Paris and Chicago. It is my Sins and Virtues.

I sit at my desks, intimate and scholarly, plaiting knots of Kufic script, the stems foliated, the heads floriated. I curve patterns of letters, leaves and tendrils.
Tightly disciplined parades of vertical strokes march across the parchment to come to attention at undergrowth concealing fabulous animals. Blooms and blossoms fall amongst keywords in plain geometric patterns.

I have divided the paper into four squares and there in each square is a virtue embracing a vice. I plead guilty to Lust, but I name Virginity in mitigation. I admit to Selfishness but call upon Self-Awareness in my defence. I decorate with half-palmettes the verticles of Misanthropy and list the names of those I failed to help. But I claim, too, the virtue of Tolerance and display an empty nameless list of those I ever intentionally harmed. My greatest virtue has been the virtue of Talent. I inscribe it large and plain. Simplicity is the mark of the craftsman. Talent shares its box with Deceit, the same word in Siddilic for Forgery,
‘ALL THIS WORK IS FALSE
’, I have written and decorated in gold. Now my Sins and Virtues are complete. I leave the manuscript unsigned…

T
HE
M
INISTER’S
man tried to persuade me to follow my exhibition to all the galleries in the world, to give talks and interviews, to be present at the great auction. But I explained that I was too frail for travel and the aide-de-camp was not insistent.

The Minister is very pleased. He came to compliment me on my exertion and to repeat his promise of
luxuries in my old age. He enquired about the possibility of more works. But I explained to him Supply and Demand. Flood the market, I told him, and the price goes down.

‘You are famous worldwide,’ he said, sitting at the end of my bed, watching the gecko in the folds of my bed sheet. ‘Our country is now highly regarded. Art is important in Europe and America.’

He rose to leave. ‘One small point,’ he said. ‘There is one parchment which is unsigned…’

‘Does it matter?’

‘For the price, the value, that’s all. Art buyers like to know that they are buying the genuine article. If there is no signature…’

‘Sell that one cheaply, then,’ I suggested. ‘That is good practice in business, too, to have something cheap amongst the more expensive.’

‘Excellent,’ said the Minister, ‘You are more worldly than I had imagined.’

I
HAVE
left instructions with the Syrian and with Duni, the ironmonger, and all those that know me in the market, that when I die they should burn my body and take my ashes in a vase to the village of my uncles. There they should bury me beneath the acacia. Duni asked me about my Sins and Virtues, but I explained that I had lived such a solitary life that I had none.

‘What, not even a little minor failing once in a while?’ he asked.

‘No, nothing,’ I said. ‘My conscience is clean.’ The sin-lister, I reminded him, must be free from sin. It is the custom and the regulation.

I
PASS
between my various desks with very little purpose now. Occasionally I take out ink and paper, just for old times’ sake, and doodle for a while. But I am not interested in letters. The quest for Meaning in Form belongs to an age long past. I often draw a forest of trees, almost bare and leafless, with the moon hovering on the horizon. Is it dawn or dusk? Soon we all shall know.

‘N
EGLECT,’
says Awni, the Rest House warden. ‘For one hundred years we have been neglected. Now we are remembered!’ And who claims credit? Warden Awni does. ‘My petitions worked the trick,’ he says. He displays carbon copies. Anyone is welcome to read his fawning paragraphs, to ministers and civil servants. Now the town supplicant has turned braggart. ‘You will be pleased to learn that electrical power is to be installed in your town during the Dry,’ informs the framed ministerial letter which Awni has tacked to the veranda wall. The Rest House is amongst the first dozen buildings to be equipped with sockets and fittings.

We know better. Awni’s petitions are not the cause: they are too frequent and too dispersive. He petitions for a road surface, for a petrol licence, for a landing strip, for the removal of the schoolteacher (‘Honoured Minister, we have amongst us one who, like a kittle beetle, disseminates anxiety…’). He petitions for a transfer elsewhere, to the town or the coast or the salt
lake resorts. He is ignored. No, it is the Minister’s personal secretary who deserves our gratitude. His neighbour is landowner Nepruolo. They own adjacent houses in the city’s New Extension. They have vacation cottages on the Mu coast. Their wives are stalwarts of the same club; their children bicker at the same school.