In Arabian Nights (27 page)

'As time slipped by, the merchants in the bazaar began to
wonder if they had been tricked by Maruf. A group of them
went to the king and explained the situation. Greedy at the
thought of gaining the treasure caravan for himself, the king
summoned Maruf to his court. The monarch's vizier designed a
test. The stranger would be presented with a large emerald,
unequalled in size and quality. If he realized its true value, he
would be rewarded. If not, he would be beheaded.

'Maruf arrived at the palace, where he was received by the
king and offered the enormous gem. But instead of accepting the
stone, he waved it aside. "Keep it for yourself," he said, "for I
have far larger jewels in my caravan." "Dear stranger, where
exactly is your caravan laden with riches?" asked the king.
Maruf the cobbler touched a hand to his great silk turban and
said: "It will be here any day now, Your Majesty."

'Unable to contain his greed, the king of Ikhtiyar decided to
marry his loveliest daughter, Princess Dounia, to the fabulously
rich stranger, despite the grand vizier's disapproval. But when
Maruf received the invitation to marry the royal princess, he
said: "How could I sustain such a treasure as your daughter until
my own treasure caravan arrives?" The king, who was now
beside himself with avarice, opened the royal treasury and
demanded that Maruf take what he needed for the wedding.

'Celebrations on a scale never seen before continued for forty
days and forty nights. The poor were rewarded with charity
beyond their wildest dreams and the rich were buried in gold, all
at Maruf's insistence. Watching the royal treasure vaults being
emptied, the grand vizier pleaded with the king to test Maruf
one last time.

'A plan was devised, involving Princess Dounia, the cobbler's
new wife. As they lay together in their palace suite, she asked
Maruf about his caravan. Not wanting to lie to his beautiful new
bride, he told her the truth. "There is no caravan of treasure," he
said. The princess, who had fallen in love with Maruf's generous
spirit, said: "Dear husband, take this sack of gold and flee. Send
word to me of your whereabouts and I shall come to be with you
as soon as I can."

'Dressed as a simple cobbler again, Maruf crept out of the city
at dawn. A little later, the king sent for his son-in-law. Princess
Dounia went into the throne room. "Father," she said, "Maruf
received a group of royal outriders in the night. They were
dressed in the finest livery." "What did they want, my dear?"
"They came to tell my husband that his caravan had been
attacked. Fifty of his soldiers had been killed and two hundred
camel-loads had been stolen." "What a tragedy," said the king.
"On the contrary," replied Princess Dounia. "Maruf hardly
seemed to care. As he left to escort the rest of the caravan into the
kingdom, he declared that two hundred camels was but a small
fraction of the whole."

'Maruf himself rode day and night away from Ikhtiyar. He
eventually came to a farmstead, where a peasant was tilling the
land. Seeing the stranger, the peasant greeted Maruf and asked
him to wait while he fetched refreshments. As a gesture of
thanks, the cobbler took the tiller and continued with the
ploughing until the farmer returned.

'He went up and down with the oxen. Then, suddenly, the
plough hit a stone. Fearing its blade had been broken, Maruf
looked down and saw a slab of stone, with an iron ring in the
centre. He pulled the ring and the stone came away, leading to
stairs. He crept down cautiously and found a huge chamber
filled from the floor to the ceiling with treasure—'

At that moment, a fist knocked at the door. Noureddine
glanced up, cursed and apologized once and then again.

'It is the landlord of this building,' he said gloomily. 'I shall
have to sit with him a while.'

I excused myself and said I would return later in the day. The
cobbler unlocked the door. He shook my hand and looked me in
the eye.

'Do you promise?' he said.

'Promise?'

'Promise that you will come back.'

Sometimes we understand a thing only when it is no longer
there. Through my childhood and until his death, a week into
my thirties, I heard my father speaking thousands of times. On
some occasions he was addressing a crowd; on others, a small
group, or just me. He wasn't the kind of person who took part in
idle chatter. His conversations usually had a point, a central idea,
which he revealed as he went along. When he spoke, I felt it wise
to listen well, although much of the time I couldn't grasp the full
depth of his address.

In the years since his death, I have found snippets of the conversations
bubbling up in my mind. I can hear him, stressing
certain words or phrases, giving caution for a time that he
envisaged would one day arrive. My great fear then was that I
didn't remember conversations as they came and went. But now
I understand that the snippets which stuck form a structure of
their own. Just as with the teaching stories he passed on, the
shreds of advice and the observations have a framework and a
cause.

Of all the fragments of conversation, the ones most vivid are
those that offered guidance. My father was a believer that every
person had an inbuilt ability to achieve in the most astonishing
way, but that most people never realized their ambition because
certain circumstances held them back. He considered it an
imperative to get the correct set of circumstances in life if
one was ever going to realize one's full potential. Teaching stories
was for him a way of preparing the individual for the process
of learning, the path to achievement.

'People think I am a writer,' he would say, 'and when they
think that they are missing the point. I write things down but the
writing is just a tool. It's nothing more than ink arranged over a
surface of wood pulp. If they had real insight, they would see
that I am really a basket-weaver. I have always told you that,
Tahir Jan. I take reeds from the river that have been nurtured by
fresh water and grown in good soil, and I turn them into baskets,
a product that has so many uses. I know how to make baskets
from something so simple because my father taught me, and his
father taught him.

'Make baskets of your own,' he would say; 'make them all kinds
of shapes and colours. But never forget that your baskets are made of something
that is there for anyone to cut and use. And never imagine that you created
the reeds yourself. You are only the person who shapes them into something
that can be of use to others.'

At six in the afternoon, I returned to the cobbler's shop.

The old man was stitching a workman's boot, gritting his
teeth as he forced the needle through the layers of Taiwanese
rubber. As soon as he saw me come in, he tossed the boot aside,
slapped his hands together and bolted the door.

'Praise be to God for your virtuous return!' he cried.

The chair was hauled out from the back room once again and,
a moment later, the cobbler had conjured us back into the tale.

'As I have told you,' he said, 'Maruf found himself in a dark
and wonderful cavern, abundant with precious gems and gold.
He could not believe his eyes, so great was the wealth. He ran his
fingers through rubies and sapphires overflowing from iron coffers
and became almost hypnotized by the sheer amount of gold.
But there was one item that caught his attention by its dazzling
brilliance: a rock crystal box, no bigger than this.' Noureddine
motioned something round with his hands, the size of a pencil
box.

'Maruf picked it up, unfastened the golden catch and found
inside a gold ring. He slipped it on to his finger and was knocked
backwards by a tremendous noise and blinded by a flash of
lightning.

'Before him towered a colossal dark-faced jinn, with a golden
earring in his ear and a scimitar in his fist. "I am your servant, O
Master!" roared the creature.

'Craning his neck back, Maruf shielded his face with his hand.
The jinn explained that the treasure which lay beneath the
furrowed field had once belonged to a king called Shaddad. He
had served him until his kingdom had fallen.

'Maruf ordered the spirit to transport the treasure up to the
surface. It was done in the blink of an eye. The jinn then
materialized a multitude of camels and fine stallions from a
legion of spirits. A moment later the treasure was loaded on to
the caravan.

'The peasant arrived back at the field in time to be showered
in jewels. He assumed that the visitor was a prosperous
merchant who had until then been in disguise. Maruf
commanded the jinn to transport the treasure caravan to
Ikhtiyar. It took an entire day and a night for the train to enter
the royal city such was its enormous length.

'As soon as the king spied from his royal balcony the caravan,
snaking its way forward, he danced with jubilation. His
daughter, the princess Dounia, although confused, assumed that
her husband had lied in order to test her loyalty.

'Once the caravan had arrived, Maruf himself appeared. He
repaid the merchants in the bazaar with precious gems and distributed
sacks of gold to the beggars who lined the streets. But
the grand vizier, who had secretly wanted to marry his own son
to Princess Dounia, tricked the cobbler into admitting the truth.
As soon as the king's adviser understood the power of the ring
on Maruf's finger, he stole it and summoned the jinn himself.
The creature appeared in a flash of light, and was ordered to
transport Maruf to the furthest corner of the world.

'But providence shone upon the cobbler,' said Noureddine,
gazing out at the street. 'For, realizing what had taken place,
Princess Dounia stole the ring from the vizier and summoned
the jinn again. She commanded the spirit to return her husband
and to bind the grand vizier in chains.

'In less time than it takes to tell, Maruf was transported back
across the world and into his apartment in the palace. With time,
Princess Dounia bore a son. And, with her father's death, Maruf
succeeded him as king.'

The ancient cobbler tugged off his dark-blue hat and
scratched his nails across his head. I thanked him for the tale. He
held an index finger in the air.

'But the story has not ended,' he said.

'There's more?'

'Of course,' said Noureddine. 'It's an epic from
Alf Layla wa
Layla
.'

'But I have to go and pick up the children from their friend's
house,' I said, shifting in my seat.

'Rushing a good tale is a terrible crime,' replied Noureddine
gravely.

'Then I shall return tomorrow,' I said.

We shook hands and the door was ceremoniously unlocked.

'There is one crime worse than rushing a story,' the cobbler
said as I was leaving.

'What?'

'Not finishing a story once it's begun.'

Do not look at my outward shape,
But take what is in my hand.

Jalaluddin Rumi

THE NEXT MORNING, I WAS STANDING OUTSIDE THE COBBLER'S
shop by eight o'clock. The traffic was like a seething juggernaut,
choking anyone stupid enough to be standing on the road. I
waited for twenty minutes but the cobbler didn't come. I
was about to turn round and go home, when his apprentice
appeared.

'Where's the cobbler?'

'He was taken ill in the night,' he said.

'Is he at home?'

'No, Monsieur, he's been rushed to the hospital.'

The boy wrote the name of a public hospital on the back of a
shoe receipt and handed it to me. An hour later, I was going up
and down the hospital corridors, the smell of bleach heavy in the
air. There were so many patients that they had spilled out into
the corridors, many lying on makeshift beds. I wasn't sure why I
was there. The story could have waited. But something inside
prompted me to go.

At the end of the last corridor on the right, I came to a ward
edged on both sides by beds. I don't know how, but somehow I
knew Noureddine was in there. I could feel him pulling me in.
His bed was near the window. He was asleep, the blue woollen
hat on the nightstand beside a jug of water and a strip of pills. I
crept closer, until I was standing over him. His face was calm,
the deep furrows on his brow smoothed a little by sleep. He must
have heard me approaching. His eyes flicked open. He strained
to focus, paused, smiled.

'My dear friend,' he said.

I held his hand and whispered a greeting. He looked very
tired, as if he might not live.

'Sit down,' he said.

'Where?'

'Here, on the edge of the bed.' He gazed at me. 'I must hurry,'
he said faintly.

'With what?'

'With the story. Quickly, moisten my lips.'

I poured a glass of water and held it to his mouth.

The old cobbler pushed himself up higher on the bed.

'
Bismillah rahman ar rahim
,' he said softly. 'In the name of
God, the Compassionate, the Merciful . . .'

'Are you ready?'

'Yes, yes.'

Noureddine wove his fingers together on his chest and began.

'Where was I?'

'Maruf had become king.'

Noureddine peered into the middle of the room.

'Ah, yes, I see it,' he said. 'Maruf and Dounia were happier
than they could have imagined. They had luxury, a fine healthy
son and a people who loved them very much. But good fortune
can be turned upside down in the blink of an eye. And it was.
Queen Dounia became gravely ill. She knew she would not
survive. On the last day of her life, she whispered to her
husband, who nursed her day and night, "Dear Maruf, when I
am gone, look after our son with great care and make certain you
guard this well." So saying, she passed him the magic ring and
took her last breath.

'After the funeral, which the entire kingdom attended, a long
period of mourning began. Maruf felt very alone, although he
had the little boy to keep him company. He called for the peasant
on whose land he had found the treasure cave and appointed
him grand vizier.

'Days turned into months. Maruf did his best to raise the child
and rule over the kingdom, but the loss of Dounia had struck a
heavy blow. One night, he retired to his chamber and fell into a
deep sleep on his bed. But he woke up with a start, as a strange
smell wafted into his dreams. A woman was lying beside him.
"Dear Maruf," she said, "do you not remember me, your wife
from Cairo? It is I, Fatima."

'Almost dumb at seeing the hag, Maruf leapt out of bed.
"How did you get here?" he cried. The crone explained how she
had resorted to begging when Maruf had deserted her. She had
existed on charity and, the more she did so, the more she realized
how good life had been when she was married. Years had passed.
Then, the night before, she had repented, shouting out loud how
foolish she had been to nag her beloved husband constantly.
Suddenly, a gigantic creature, a jinn, had appeared from
nowhere. Taking pity, the spirit had transported her to the kingdom
of Ikhtiyar, where she found herself lying in the king's bed.

'Maruf then explained how he had been transported to the
very same kingdom, how he had been married to the royal
princess, been forced to flee for his life, found the treasure and
the magic ring, been sent to the wilderness at the edge of the
world, been made king, and how his wife had borne him a
beloved son before taking her last breath.

'"I shall return you to our own land," Maruf said to his wife,
"and shall ask my jinn to construct a magnificent palace for you
and adorn it in precious silks." "Oh, husband," said the crone,
"my dream is to stay with you, here at your side." Feeling pity for
the woman, Maruf agreed to allow her to stay. He bade the jinn
build her a separate palace not far from his, where she lived in
opulence beyond her wildest dreams. And, while her husband
attended to matters of state, she grew a little uglier and a little
more gluttonous each day.

'As for Maruf's son, who had by this time reached seven years
of age, the wretched Fatima despised him. One night, hearing
that her husband was entertaining officials from another kingdom,
Fatima crept into his palace and gained entry into his
bedchamber. There, on a plump silk cushion, she discovered the
magic ring with the power of summoning the great jinn.

'But, unhappily for her, the sound of her large clumsy feet
woke the little prince, who was sleeping next door in his own
chamber. Spying his hideous stepmother and understanding
instantly what was about to occur, he fetched his small sword
and lunged at her. The sword may have been short, but it was
sharp as a razor and quite capable of slicing an old woman's
throat. It did so, and the little prince saved the ring, which the
vile Fatima was about to use to take the kingdom for herself.

'And with that,' said Noureddine, taking a sip of water,
'Maruf lived out his days until he was at last called to Paradise.'

The next week I met a woman from Chicago called Kate. She
had come to Morocco to meet her sister, who was in the Peace
Corps down in the Sahara, and she was lost. The heat, the dust
and the smoky cafés filled with dejected husbands had been too
much for her. She had sat down in the middle of the street near
the port and begun to weep. That was where Hamza's brother-in-law,
Hakim, found her. He was a parking attendant and the
woman was making his job very difficult. The cars wanting to
park could not get into their places, and the parked cars couldn't
leave, because the woman was blocking the way. Not knowing
quite how to handle a distressed American lady, but stirred
nonetheless by a sense of civic responsibility, Hakim bundled her
into a taxi and brought her to our home. He told me later that he
didn't know how to explain his intentions, as he spoke no
English. The only word he could remember, he said, was 'help'.
So he shouted it at her as loudly as he could.

By the time the little red taxi trundled down our lane, Kate was
much calmer. Hakim reported the details and I thanked him for
assisting a foreign lady in distress. Then I took our visitor into the
salon for a cup of mint tea. She was in her forties, a little taller than
average, with a mane of copper-red hair and a pair of small,
delicate hands, the nails polished red. She apologized for causing a
scene, but said it had all been too overwhelming for her.

'Was it the heat?'

'No, it wasn't that,' she replied. 'It was my ignorance, a sense
of my own tremendous ignorance.'

I asked what she meant.

'In the United States we know the system,' she said. 'But
down there at the port I felt like a dancer about to go onstage to
perform a dance for which I knew none of the moves.'

'How did it make you feel?'

'It crushed me, and I always thought I was so in control,' she
said.

It was then that Kate said something that interested me very
greatly, something I have thought about every day since.

'When I was a child my father couldn't afford a good
education,' she said. 'We went to average schools. I remember on
my first day of grade school he sat me down on my bed and said
he would teach me a way to understand the world, and to be
wiser than almost anyone in it. He knew the secret, he said.'

I sat forward, put my glass on the table, and listened. 'What
was it . . . the secret?'

Kate smiled. 'He told me to read a lot of fiction,' she said.
'Whatever problems whack you in life, he said the answer was
fiction.'

'Stories?'

'Well, yes, stories, and all sorts of stuff.'

'Why fiction?'

'He said it was psychotherapy. As a child I didn't know what
that meant. But I read books all the same, and I found that they
worked in a silent way, balancing my mind.'

Kate told me she had never written fiction, but had become a
film director and was making movies.

'I'm a believer in the idea that Hollywood's a mass psychotherapist,'
she said. 'The stories go into the subconscious and
work away. People don't realize it, but when they go to the
movies on a Friday night they're really paying a visit to their
shrink.'

We went out into the garden and watched a pair of collared
doves working on their nest. Kate told me about a movie she had
been making in Kansas.

'You know what's so strange to me?' she asked.

'What?'

'That as a film-maker you know the story you've created is
total fiction, with actors and props, but even so you're drawn in. You find
yourself suspending disbelief, slipping into the story.' Kate looked at me
and frowned, as if to show she was making a very serious point. 'That's the
power of fiction,' she said, 'it keeps us on track and sings to the primal
creature in us all.'

One morning when I was a child, my father came out to the
lawn where I was playing with my box of wooden bricks. He
picked up one of the smaller bricks, a yellow one, and said: 'This
brick is the house in which we live.' He picked up another, a
larger, red one. 'And this brick is the village out there.' Then he
took the actual box in which the bricks had come and placed it
on the grass, a long way from the others. 'This box is
Afghanistan,' he said. 'Do you understand?'

'Yes, Baba.'

'Are you quite sure that you understand?'

I nodded.

'Tahir Jan,' he said, 'I am showing you this because it's an
important thing. I will explain it to you. If I go into the kitchen
and take a dry sponge, and put it in a bowl of water, it will suck
up a lot of water, won't it?'

'Yes, Baba.'

'But if I take the same sponge and put it in a bowl of ice, it
won't suck up anything at all. That's because the sponge isn't
designed to suck up ice. Its structure – lots of little holes – can't
take in ice, only water.'

He sat down beside me, motioning with his hands.

'Ice is water, but in a different form,' he said. 'To make it into
water – so we can suck it up easily – we need to change its form.
The water is knowledge, Tahir Jan, and the sponge is your mind.
When we hear information, a lot of it,' he said, 'sometimes it's
too hard for us to suck up. It's like ice. We hear it in the same
way that the sponge touches the bowl of ice, but it doesn't get
inside. But as soon as you melt the ice, the water penetrates deep
into the middle of the sponge. And that's what stories do.'

My father always spoke very carefully to children so that they
understood. He would pause and study the feedback, making
sure what he said was getting through. I wasn't quite sure what
he was aiming at and was rather keen to get on playing with my
bricks.

'Stories are a way of melting the ice,' he said gently, 'turning
it into water. They are like repackaging something – changing
its form – so that the design of the sponge can accept it.' He
pointed to the bricks. 'When I told you that brick was our house,
that other one was the village and that box way over there was
Afghanistan, you knew what I meant, didn't you?'

'Yes, I did, Baba.'

'And you knew that they weren't really the house, the village
and Afghanistan . . . but they were two bricks and a box?'

'Yes.'

'Well, that's how stories are. They are symbols. The different
people and the things in stories represent other things, bigger
things. In the same way that we can talk about a sponge and ice,
which means something else, we can use the bricks and the box
to explain in an easy way an idea that's very complicated to
understand.

'Try and remember, Tahir Jan, that there are symbols all
around us. Look out for them, examine them, and work out what
they mean. They're a kind of code. Some people will try and tell
you the symbols don't exist, or they'll say that something they do
not understand is nothing more than what it first appears to be.
But don't believe them.'