The Five Fakirs of Faizabad (14 page)

“If you don’t mind me asking,” said Philippa, “how did you get out of your grave?”

“You’ve seen a mole,” said Mr. Swaraswati.

“Yes.”

“Well, it’s the same sort of thing. You just burrow up through the earth. The hardest part is the end, when you have to force your arms and head through the surface.”

“Kind of like a zombie,” said Philippa.

“I don’t know what that is,” admitted Mr. Swaraswati. He hobbled to the door and opened it.

Philippa drifted out into the corridor ahead of him and through the door of her own room, where she found her body on the bed, in the same place that she had left it, and Moo asleep in an armchair. Philippa lay down in her body, stretched herself out into the toes and fingers, like someone putting on a rubber glove, and then let out a breath.

Moo yawned and looked up as she heard a knock at the door that Philippa was already opening.

Seeing Philippa, Mr. Swaraswati pressed the palms of his hands together, bowed, and said, “You are Philippa, perhaps?”

“Yes. Come in, Mr. Swaraswati.”

“This is my friend, Lady Silvia Stone,” said Philippa. “But who prefers to be known as Moo.”

“How do you do?” said the old lady, extending a gloved hand toward Mr. Swaraswati.

“Not so very well, thank you,” said Mr. Swaraswati.

Moo thought the old fakir looked a bit like Mahatma Gandhi.

“Many centuries of burial have left me with a variety of ailments,” he said. “The soil in this country is very damp. Things might have been different if I had been buried somewhere in India. The ground there is very dry and much kinder to the human body. Nevertheless, it seems pointless to complain about it now. I am here and surely must make the best of it.”

“I suffer from quite a few aches and pains myself,” admitted Moo. “Perhaps I could find you some ointments and medicines that might ease your discomfort.”

“That would be very kind of you.”

Mr. Swaraswati looked quizzically at Philippa.

“I must say you don’t look very much like a djinn, my child.”

“I know,” said Philippa. “Everyone expects a very tall man with a bald head, wild eyes, and baggy trousers.”

“And a mustache,” said Moo.

Philippa shrugged. “Sorry to disappoint,” she said.

“Actually,” said Mr. Swaraswati, “it’s really most reassuring that you are not at all like that. I should find it hard to trust someone as devilish as you have described.”

“I was thinking,” said Philippa, “that perhaps the best way of helping you would be to grant you three wishes. That way you might know that we really are your friends.”

“You can perform such miracles?” said Mr. Swaraswati.

“Of course,” said Philippa. “I wouldn’t be much of a djinn if I couldn’t grant some wishes.”

“Well,” sighed the old fakir. “That would be terrific. I should be eternally grateful to you, Philippa.” He hesitated. “How does the magic work?”

Philippa smiled. “Just make a wish,” she said.

“Very well. Oh, dear, this is most embarrassing. And you’ll think me an idiot. However, it’s been such a long time that I’ve been in the ground — longer than I would ever have thought possible — that I’ve forgotten that which I was supposed to remember.”

“You mean, your great secret?” said Moo. “The one entrusted to you by the Tirthankar of Faizabad?”

“Exactly so. I wish I could remember the great secret of the universe entrusted to me. Yes, that is what I wish, most earnestly.”

“Easy,” said Philippa, and spoke her focus word:

“FABULONGOSHOOMARVELISHLYWONDERPIPICAL!”

As soon as the last consonant had been uttered, the old fakir breathed a sigh of relief, smiled, and sat down on the
floor. “Ah, now I remember, yes,” he said. “Oh, that’s much better. I can’t tell you how relieved I feel to have remembered that. Ever since I came up from the ground it’s been a source of constant worry to me.” He wiped a tear from his eye. “I’m so very very grateful to you, Philippa.”

“No problem,” said Philippa.

As soon as Mr. Swaraswati had gathered his fragmented emotions together, he stood up and pressed Philippa’s hands in his own, and bowed his head to her.

“Three wishes, you say?”

Philippa nodded.

“You’ll think me such an old fool,” said Mr. Swaraswati. “What good is a man who forgets that which he is supposed to remember?”

“I’m always forgetting things,” confessed Moo. “And I am not nearly as old as you.”

“It’s kind of you to say so, dear lady. Very well. My second wish is to remember the name of my
dasa.
For I confess that I have forgotten that, too. And I can hardly go and find a man whose name I can’t remember.”

Philippa spoke her focus word a second time — “FABULONGOSHOOMARVELISHLYWONDERPIPICAL!” — and, once again, Mr. Swaraswati smiled happily as, suddenly, he remembered what he had forgotten.

“Rejoice, rejoice,” said Mr. Swaraswati. “Blessings be upon you, child. I have remembered it. Now, if I can just find out where he is. That is my third wish. I wish that I knew where to find my
dasa.”

“The wish is made,” said Philippa, although in truth she had little idea how to make this so with djinn power. But it’s not every wish that needs a djinn to come true, and Philippa sensed that Moo was probably best placed to do this for Mr. Swaraswati.

Moo was already opening a small computer and switching it on.

“Perhaps if you were to tell us his or her name,” said Moo.

“Yes, it’s Shoebottom,” said Mr. Swaraswati.

Philippa smiled. “I don’t know why it is that everyone in this town has a name that ends in ‘bottom.’”

“Perhaps because a bottom lies at the end of everything,” said Moo, and quickly typed
SHOEBOTTOM
onto her laptop keyboard.

Mr. Swaraswati frowned and then tapped his head with the flat of his hand. “The wish has not worked, I think. I still do not know where to find him.”

“Patience,” said Moo. “Some wishes take longer to come true than others.”

“Truly?” Mr. Swaraswati looked at Philippa.

“Truly.”

“Here we are,” said Moo, pointing at the screen. “At the last census there was only one Shoebottom living in Bumby. Born here, too. As were all her ancestors. Interesting.”

Philippa glanced over Moo’s shoulder at the laptop screen.

“Sheryl Shoebottom, 74 Muckhole Terrace, Bumby, West Yorkshire.”

“That is where the
dasa
lives?” Mr. Swaraswati looked amazed. “The shiny little tablet tells you this?”

“Yes,” said Moo.

“Now that really is miraculous,” said Mr. Swaraswati. “Where is this Muckhole Terrace?”

Moo was already accessing a website that showed a UK government satellite picture of the house where Sheryl Shoebottom lived, and directions on how to get there from the Stately Pleasure-dome Guesthouse.

“You’re looking at it,” said Moo.

Mr. Swaraswati continued to look and sounded amazed.

“That’s interesting,” said Moo. “Three weeks ago, Sheryl Shoebottom made a complaint to the local police that she was being watched by some strange-looking men. According to this the complaint was withdrawn before it could be investigated.”

“Three weeks,” said Mr. Swaraswati. “That’s how long it’s been since I came up from underground.”

“You know, it might not be safe for you to make contact with her, Mr. Swaraswati,” said Moo. “Not yet. It might be better if Philippa and I were to contact her first.”

“Good idea,” said Philippa. “You can stay in our room, too. Nobody will think of looking for you here. Not only that, but I can attach a special djinn binding to this room, to protect you from harm.”

“Thank you,” said Mr. Swaraswati. “You have both been most helpful.”

“We’ll tell Miss Shoebottom that you’re safe,” said Moo. “And take a message from her to you. And from you to her.”

“Please tell her that I am the expected one,” said Mr. Swaraswati. “It is a phrase she will be, er … expecting anyone who knows me to use. Tell her I am quite safe and that I hope to see her soon.”

“And after that we should go and see my uncle Nimrod,” said Philippa. “He’ll know what to do next. He usually does.”

T
he capital of Israel, Jerusalem is an ancient city where religion seems not to unite men in the worship of God but to divide them in the service of several competing religions, each of which regards itself as the one true faith, and where tiny differences of what people honestly believe to be true apparently count for a lot more than their many common points of similarity. Historically speaking, it has always been a good place for an argument, and even today it is an excellent place to visit and then leave.

Nimrod always felt uncomfortable in Jerusalem. Even at the city’s most famous hotel, the luxurious King David, he felt uncomfortable, if only for the reason that the hotel had once been blown up by terrorists. He felt no less uncomfortable walking into the honey-colored Old City with Mr. Burton, who hardly looked unusual in Jerusalem, where there are so many who dress in strange-looking clothes; ragged, half-naked pilgrims, not unlike Mr. Burton, have been turning up in Jerusalem since the fourth century
A.D.
It wasn’t the
oddly attired Mr. Burton who made Nimrod feel uncomfortable, however, so much as the fact that in the Old City everyone looks at you with suspicion, as if trying to decide whose side you are on in this seemingly eternal neighbors’ dispute.

In some respects, the Old City of Jerusalem is not unlike Fez. There are many winding streets, and dark alleys that are full of Arab traders, although perhaps Jerusalem, being on a hilltop, is not as flat as Fez. And, of course, the city is full of tourists buying carpets, or water pipes, or drinking arak, or visiting the many holy places.

In the center of the Old City is the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which is controlled by several different Christian churches in a complicated and sometimes fractious arrangement — the Greek monks have sometimes brawled with the Armenian monks — that has remained in place for centuries. The church is significant for its antiquity, and the visitors who flock there in the tens of thousands have always seemed to greatly appreciate its convenience as the place where Christ was imprisoned and crucified, and also the place where he was anointed and buried — four for the price of one, which counts as great value in an increasingly expensive world.

Entering the cool, dark, echoing interior of the church with its high ceilings and marble floors, Nimrod and Mr. Burton walked quickly away from the many tourists, some of whom were busy thrusting their arms into the brassbound holes of the crosses on Calvary, and found a quiet place to sit and give the appearance of being deep in prayer.

“Mr. Rakshasas used to kneel here,” explained Mr. Burton, “and I knelt beside him. He would take his spirit off into the omphalos and I would remain here to keep an eye on his physical body. Once I caught a man trying to pick his pocket. Can you believe it? In a church, of all places.” Mr. Burton looked around and nodded. “He loved coming here. There were many questions that were answered for him in this church. Once, when he returned from the omphalos, I was so impressed by the expression of peace and enlightenment on his face that I felt able to ask him a question that had been troubling me.”

“Which was?” asked Nimrod.

“The meaning of life,” said Mr. Burton. “I asked him what it was.”

“And what did he say?”

“He said that there is no one meaning that suits everyone. He said that there are as many answers to that question as there are people in the world, because it’s a different answer for everyone. But that once you recognize that fact, then all questions are answered. At the time I didn’t really understand his answer. But I think I do now.”

Nimrod nodded. “Exactly where is the omphalos?” Nimrod asked the fakir.

“On the east side, opposite the rotunda,” said Mr. Burton. “On the floor across from the main altar of the church — what the Greek Orthodox folk call the catholicon, I think. You can’t miss the thing. It looks like a large pie with a thick crust from a very good bakery. Or perhaps a garden urn. The Delphi omphalos looks very different. That
one’s rather more like a shell from the First World War. And completely useless for the purpose of communicating with — well, whatever it is you communicate with. The universe, I suppose.”

Nimrod took a deep breath. “Wish me luck,” he said, and bowed his head.

“Good luck,” said Mr. Burton.

Nimrod had liftoff almost immediately. At his age he’d had so many out-of-body experiences that it was like second nature to the djinn. He floated across the red, white, and black marble floor to the high altar like a ghost. There, in front of a large, round brass table covered with a hundred lit candles, was the omphalos. Mr. Burton had been right. It was quite unmistakable to look at and did indeed look like a garden urn, albeit one with no room for earth or flowers for there was a convex surface in the urn, with a hole in it.

Nimrod slipped invisibly through the hole into the interior of the omphalos, which, like a djinn lamp, was much, much larger than could have been supposed from the exterior, and he floated around for a while, trying to get his bearings. Finally, he sat down, cross-legged — or as near to cross-legged as Nimrod was able, given that he had no actual legs — and tried to give himself up to the ancient forces that once had dwelt there.

It was a solitary feeling being in the omphalos. Time and space had no meaning. After a while — he had no idea how long — Nimrod felt as if he was in the presence of great age and his own terrible insignificance.

“How small I am,” he whispered. “And how little I know.”

This feeling of great insignificance and ignorance was swiftly succeeded by the insight that he was in the actual omphalos from Delphi, and that the omphalos stone had been taken from Greece to Jerusalem by the Emperor Theodosius I in the fourth century
A.D.
How he knew this he had no idea, but he knew it to be true in the same way he knew his own address.

At the same time he seemed to hear some of the oracular statements that had once been forthcoming from the priestess at Delphi who, legend had it, would breathe the air of the omphalos — and very likely something stronger — before making her keenly attended statements:

Nimrod smiled to himself as he almost seemed to hear the Irish voice of Mr. Rakshasas in some of these words. Was it possible that some of his proverbial wisdom had been
inspired by the time the old djinn had spent in the omphalos?

An intoxicating smell like incense filled the dank air of the omphalos and, not having any nostrils to smell it, Nimrod wondered how he did. And yet it was there and getting stronger until he perceived it wasn’t a smell at all but some powerful force — older than antiquity itself — that seemed intent on becoming mixed in with Nimrod’s own spirit. Instinctively, Nimrod felt himself pull away and, for a moment, the force fragmented like a broken window and a hundred ancient voices suddenly crowded in sharply upon his thoughts, as if in recrimination for his desire to be a thing apart.

“See not what
you
see and hear not what
you
hear,” he seemed to tell himself, but when he tried to give himself up to the voices, he experienced a brief moment of panic as his mind struggled to accommodate all of these whispered sounds, and he cried out as the clamor of what he heard was too much for him.

And almost immediately, he realized that hearing wasn’t required so much as feeling and, relaxing a little, he gave himself up to it and soon enough, their separate voices and his became one clear thought. It was as if his mind had suddenly expanded tenfold and he experienced insights into existence and the universe he had never even suspected were possible. Most of these insights could never have been put into words, for they were beyond articulation, which is sometimes the way with revelation. But gradually, one omniscient
voice seemed to make itself plain. Nimrod could not have put a name to the voice that seemed like his own and yet was not; nor did the voice identify itself, but Nimrod was quite certain that the voice he heard inside his head was nothing less than Wisdom itself. And yet it was Wisdom with a definite love of the obscure:

“When a man shall become a mule, you will begin to have found what you are looking for,” said the voice.

“I don’t understand,” said Nimrod. “Speak again.”

“The way to the stars is not signposted, nevertheless it does exist. If you don’t know the way, then walk slowly, in thin air, and you will find it between a rock and a hard place.”

“You speak in riddles,” said Nimrod.

“Of course. It’s up to you to find the meaning.”

“Really,” said Nimrod, “this is most frustrating.”

“A man may die of frustration, perhaps, but he’ll never die of wisdom. The beginning of wisdom is the fear of God.”

“Nevertheless, I would ask you to speak again,” said Nimrod. “My mission is an important one. And not for myself, but for all mankind.”

“I count the grains of sand on the beach and measure the sea; I understand the speech of the dumb and hear the voiceless. So, believe me, I know what your mission is.”

“Well then,” said Nimrod.

“Sharpen the claws on your feet and the one in your hand,” said the voice. “Take hold of the field and don’t let
go. Stand on a shelf and reach for the sky. Hang yourself from a face and rejoice at every hammer blow for you will still be alive.”

Nimrod sighed. “I was hoping for something a little more obvious.”

“Look, you have to guess or I can’t help.” “Very well,” sighed Nimrod.

“You must climb over the bodies of those who went before,” said the voice. “Those whom a winter blanket now covers and whose faces are hardened to you forever.”

“Yes. Go on. I think I’m getting warmer now.”

“There are several routes you can choose,” said the voice. “They all reach the same place, but not all of them will get you to where you most want to go. When it becomes impossible to breathe then you will have succeeded where others failed.”

Nimrod groaned. “Yes, all right, I get it now,” he said. “You’re talking about a mountaineering expedition, aren’t you?”

The voice tutted loudly. “Yes, of course, I thought you’d never get it. Duh!”

“Sorry.”

“All right. Let me unpack some of what I’m talking about here.”

“I wish you would,” said Nimrod.

“You wish to bring about the impossible: suddenly to make a great many people feel that the world is a better, happier place than it was before and that they themselves can actively share in the world’s new good fortune.”

“Yes. That’s it exactly. Now we’re getting somewhere.”

“To do this is no small thing because you can’t build a barrel around a bunghole,” said the voice. “Nevertheless, you must do something very like it and make people believe that there is much more than there is. So look for that which is impossible or that which cannot be found.”

“I thought this was you being a little less obscure,” observed Nimrod. “We seem to be losing sight of clarity again.”

“Such as,”
said the voice, raising its voice, “the cure for a disease, the white whale, the Holy Grail, El Dorado, the fountain of youth. Something like that. Or perhaps some utopia, a perfect paradise that exists hidden from man. My opinion is that this is the best thing to look for. Shangri-la. Hence all the mountaineering references.”

“Shangri-la? That old fairy story about a secret earthly paradise in Tibet?”

“Is it? A fairy story?”

“I always thought so,” admitted Nimrod. “Either that or something dreamed up by people suffering from oxygen deprivation.”

“Maybe you’re wrong. But you won’t know unless you look, will you?”

Nimrod sighed. “Gosh, that’s quite an undertaking. Finding Shangri-la. But you really think that might do the trick?”

“Yes. For while it’s true that all men must die, be sure it takes much more than a lifetime to get used to the idea. Remember, the seeking of one thing will find another.”

“The seeking of one thing will find another what?”

“That is my advice. I have spoken. Good-bye.”

Nimrod shook his head, or at least he did something as close to shaking his head as he was able given that he had no head. “What a cryptic fellow,” he muttered.

“I’m an oracle,” said the voice. “Not a stupid fortune cookie. None of this is supposed to be obvious.”

“It isn’t,” said Nimrod. “Really, it isn’t obvious at all.”