The Pen- Sultan's Wisdom

by Dennis Galloway

  The pen completed a paragraph, then stopped. Harold wrestled his arm from the pen’s grip and dropped it to the floor with a grunt. Its stem slowly uncurled until it lay flat and straight on the floor.

  Harold pulled his hand to his chest, feeling the fingers, the wrist, the forearm with his left hand, looking for harm. It felt fine, just a bit tingly, but not hurt.

  “It’s an automatic pen, that’s what it is,” Harold whispered to himself to calm his nerves. “I don’t want an automatic pen, just a plain old writing pen!” he said out loud. “I’m taking it back this instant! What a cheat, what a fraud that old man was!”

  Gingerly, with two fingers, Harold lifted the pen off the floor and placed it in its box.

  Harold slammed the lid shut, afraid the pen might jump out. Then he rushed out of his study and down the stairs. At the bottom of the stairs, he swiftly put on his hat and coat, opened the door, and ran down the street.

  Harold headed straight back to the store to confront the shopkeeper.

  “It’s under that stone bridge,” he said to himself almost hysterically. Into the shadow of the bridge, he went and stopped.

  “What?”

  No store. He looked left, then right. Nothing but a wall of stone. He ran on.

  Tearing around a corner and onto a quiet street, Harold again looked for the storefront. He knew it was here somewhere. He ran up and down the street, but to no avail. It was nowhere to be found.

  “Must be on another, similar street,” he muttered to himself.

  Harold ran a block and turned on to another street. He looked back and forth across the street at all the storefronts. A bakery, a bookstore, a mercantile, but nowhere could he find the store he had bought the pen from.

  In desperation, Harold entered the bookstore, seeking the owner.

  “Excuse me, sir, but I am a bit lost. I am looking for an old antique store that used to be on this or a nearby street. Could you please direct me to it?”

  The bookstore owner looked at Harold in a strange way.

  “There’s never been an antique store in this neighborhood. Are you sure you are in the right side of town?” asked the owner.

  “Yes, yes, I’m sure,” said Harold. “Are you sure there is no antique store?”

  “I am quite sure,” said the owner with a frown.

  “Oh,” said Harold.

  “If you’ll excuse me, I need to attend to my customers. Unless you intend to buy a book?” asked the owner, raising his eyebrows.

  “No, no, but thank you,” said Harold as he turned and left the bookstore.

  Confused and dejected, Harold shuffled back to his apartment with the pen in hand.

  Al-Hamid Akbar

  Harold returned to his apartment, dutifully hanging his hat and coat on the wall rack before trudging up the stairs to his study. There, he placed the pen case on the shelf with the other pens and left the room.

  For more than two weeks, Harold avoided using the pen at all, even though it tugged at his heart whenever he picked up a rival writing utensil.

  He went about his life, bored, unchanged, or so he thought.

  Harold Duncan was thirty-seven, short, with thinning hair and stood slightly hunched over as a rule. He had a paunch and a pale complexion. He was clean shaven, and wore neat, clean clothes that had gone out of date two decades earlier. His small hands and roundish face made him seem delicate. He was shy and a bit reclusive, and his gentle disposition shone quietly behind unremarkable brown eyes. He did not like confrontation and would go out of his way to avoid it. At work, he did what was expected and no more—the perpetual frown on his face effectively shielding him from mundane inquiries or requests to work late. He responded to others with a slow wave but uttered no words. His coworkers could see his sullen mood, but no one asked what was wrong. They just let him be.

  Harold had many restless nights. He had a general uneasiness and could not get his mind focused. It was as if there was something he was supposed to do, but he could not name it.

  “Maybe it was something I ate,” he said out loud. “Maybe I was tired and just imagined it. Maybe it was…well…what?”

  One evening, his uneasiness was more intense. He tossed and turned in his bed, sweating profusely. He sat up, suddenly, with a thought:

  Maybe my experience with the pen was just my imagination.

  All Harold felt now was a compelling need to see the pen, to hold the pen, and to write. He got up from his bed, put on his slippers, wrapped his robe about himself, and shuffled off to the study.

  As Harold entered the room, his eyes were drawn immediately to where the pen sat on the shelf. The case seemed to glow in the dim night. He reached over and turned on a low lamp that illuminated the room a bit more. The black velvet pen case looked inviting. He felt the pen calling him, inviting him, begging him, to open the case and pick it up.

  “Well, we will just see. It is just a pen after all. Nothing but a pen…” he whispered to himself.

  Harold walked over to the shelf where the pen case lay. Reaching out his arm, he picked up the case lightly, with a gentle hand. It felt warm, almost comfy in his grip.

  He went over to the desk, turning on the lamp as he sat down. Still holding the pen case, he opened a drawer with his other hand, got out a clean sheet of paper and placed it on the desk. Setting the pen case down carefully, he opened it and gazed at the instrument a little apprehensively. Seeing the pen there, he smiled, admiring its ebony beauty.

  “What a beautiful pen. How could anyone be afraid of you?” Harold asked it.

  He reached inside the case and picked up the pen. His mood brightened immediately. He was instantly happier than he had been for the last two weeks. With the smile still on his face, he began to write.

  For a moment or two, Harold’s sentences lay down smoothly on the paper. Every thought flowed smoothly out of his head and onto the paper.

  Then, it happened. His hand was lovingly frozen to the pen, as it began to twist and gently bend down to wrap itself around his wrist and forearm. The writing changed again to the swirly, beautiful, unrecognizable letters Harold had written during his first encounter with the pen. He hadn’t written them. He didn’t even know what he was writing.

  Harold’s eyes grew wide, but this time he was not terrified; he was fascinated by this amazing instrument and its ability to guide his hand across the page. The pen wrapped around his wrist and forearm like a lover taking his arm as they strolled through an unknown garden. It did not hurt, nor give him any discomfort. In fact, he felt pleasure as he witnessed this magic happening before his eyes.

  As the pen came to the end of a page, it stopped writing, as if waiting. Harold instinctively replaced the page with a blank one, on which the pen continued in its foreign script.

  Soon, Harold had several sheets of paper piled up on the desk. He kept at it for hours, late into the night. Finally, exhausted, he removed the pen from his forearm, put it in its case, and gently closed the lid, leaving it on the desk.

  He folded his arms across the desktop and laid his head down.

  Just a bit of rest, he thought and fell fast asleep. The clock struck midnight.

  As Harold slept, head down on his crossed arms, the words on the paper began to rise off the page, floating into the air and swirling around his head. Then the letters formed a line and entered his head through his left temple.

  Harold woke with a start. No, he wasn’t awake. Maybe. He felt he was in a fog that was slowly clearing. He saw himself looking at a wealthy man, in a richly adorned robe, perhaps sixty years of age, sitting on an elegant, richly embroidered cushion. The man was writing on parchment upon a small…desk, Harold supposed. It was wood and had a hinged lid. It looked like a desk with no legs and sat across the rich man’s lap.

  Harold looked around the room. It appeared to be a palace of some sort. O
n the walls hung very large tapestries on golden ropes. In the corners of the room were large potted palms. One end of the room opened onto a veranda, outside of which Harold saw stars twinkling in the dark sky. He felt he was not actually present, but merely observing. He looked down again at the man and what he was writing. It looked like the swirly, twirly script the pen had written earlier.

  The man wrote with Harold’s pen.

  Words entered Harold’s mind, not through his ears, but spreading outward. He knew they were not his own. They were in some dialect strange to him. And the voice that recited the words was deeper than his. The words had a melodic tone. He concentrated on them, trying to understand their meaning. Then they started to make sense. He slowly began to grasp the meaning of each word, its nuances, connotations as well as denotations. In moments, he was fluent in what he felt was a foreign tongue. Harold listened as the voice narrated, and he saw the man writing, telling the story in Harold’s head as the man scratched out the words on the parchment.

  I am Akbar al-Hamid, Sultan, ruler of the Bashihin desert. The year is A.H. 323. I am writing with this wonderful instrument that seems to have no end to its supply of black pigment. This wondrous device was a gift from Wazir Quadra Kaheem, my good friend.

  Al-Hamid paused his writing and looked up. He sensed that perhaps someone was in his room. Harold stood absolutely still. After a few moments, Al-Hamid shook his head and bent his eyes back onto the parchment upon which he was writing.

  Kaheem told me that this device was blessed with remembrance because it will watch what I write and never forget it. And, whoever holds this pen after me will see the pen pour forth my memories. He said he had obtained it from a dealer in antiques in a bazaar in Marmaris, Turkey. It gives me much pleasure just to hold it. Allah be praised.

  At my age, I now have time to recall my life and its lessons so that I may pass them on to others. In doing so, I hope the reader of my writings gains some wisdom to apply to their life and, therefore, improve it. With this instrument, I will write my life story from its humble beginnings to the ruling of a sultanate. Allah be praised.

  The fog had gathered around Harold again. As it cleared, he found himself standing on hot sand. He could see a caravan passing in the distance. The narration continued.

  I was born on a caravan route that went through Qasr al-Farafra. I was told later that my mother had died giving me life. I was raised by a local tribe until the age of ten.

  The scene switched again, and Harold was watching a young boy being treated badly by an older man, who looked Arabic by his clothing.

  I was then sold into bondage to a wandering merchant who needed someone to tend to his camels and do his bidding. It was a difficult life. The merchant chained me up at night and beat me regularly to ensure I never tried to run. But the beatings created a resolve in me to escape and be free.

  All of a sudden, Harold was standing at the edge of a large plaza, at night, looking at several camels, tents, and sleeping people. He could smell the camels, the smoke in the air from the dim fires around the plaza, which glowed in the night. He saw the young boy who had resolved to run away. The narration continued.

  Which is what I did when his caravan entered Cairo, late one night in my thirteenth year. It was a moonless night. The merchant had too much to drink, fell asleep after his evening meal, and was softly snoring in his tent. We were bedded down in a small enclave near the main marketplace. The smell of the market was strong, with a mixture of cooking lamb, spices, and camel dung. The stars shone brightly above, and the air was cool. Cooking fires and small torches lit the night here and there, but not too brightly.

  My eyes grew heavy and I was starting to drift off to sleep as I lay there on a heap of rags I used for a bed, when I realized the old master had neglected to secure my ankle shackle to the rod that kept me tethered at night. My eyes popped open wide. It was time to run!

  Afraid of being caught, I slowly rose on my elbows to look around the camp. No one was awake. I stood up quietly, like a shadow rising up from the ground. I gathered up my courage—and the short chain attached to my shackle—and sneaked away from my master’s tent. Since I tended the camels, they were used to my smell, so I did not disturb them upon passing by. I gathered a bit of bread and a mashq full of water from the master’s supplies and slipped into the night.

  I was free.

  Harold watched the young boy vanish down some dark alley. Not sure what this was all about, he stood there for a little while, then began to follow down the alley.

  The narration stopped and his vision went dark.

  In Harold’s study, his head was still on his desk, resting on his folded arms. In the dim light, swirly words emerged from his temple, whirled around his head, and then settled back on the paper they had come from.

  Miss Priscilla Robertson, Principal Librarian

  Harold awoke at his desk, cold and shivering. He had a slight headache and a stiff neck.

  What a strange dream, he thought, as he got up from his desk, stretched his arms above his head, rubbed his neck, shuffled off to his bed, and fell into a deep, peaceful sleep.

  He dreamt no more.

  Harold woke up and went to work the next day, and it was uneventful—a regular, boring day at work.

  When he got home that evening, Harold ate a quick, cold supper and went upstairs to his study. He was getting more and more curious about what exactly he had written. He had never seen anything like it before. He picked up the pages with the strange writing on them and stared at them for a long while, turning the papers this way and that in hopes of understanding the writing. He assumed it was a foreign language he was unfamiliar with, maybe from the Middle East, so he decided to find something that could help him translate what he…the pen…had written. He thought he better wait on using the pen again until he understood more about what was going on.

  On the next weekend, Harold took one of the pages with him to the Central Library, which was in a huge, gothic-style building that had opened in 1890. The massive windows were amazing, and the large, tall oak doors could have withstood an invading army. He walked up the wide steps, grabbed a large brass door handle, and pulled open the door, which moved easily despite its size. He entered a vast atrium where the ceiling was high and the lights hung low on long chains. When the doors closed, the large room echoed with the sound. He stood there a moment, adjusting his eyes. He looked around and saw row upon row of tall bookshelves and some tables and chairs with a few people scattered about. In the distance, he spotted, centered on the marble floor, a large desk. Behind it was a small woman, intensely reading a book.

  Approaching the woman, he said, “Excuse me, madam, but could you help me with something?”

  The librarian had auburn hair, which she tied back in a large bun, and her shoulders were covered with a white shawl. Her face was smooth, with green eyes, and adorned with a set of large, oval-shaped, thick glasses that sat at the end of her nose.

  She raised her head with a smile, happy that someone had asked for her help. “Why yes, sir. What can I do for you?” she quietly asked.

  He noticed a small sign on her desk “Priscilla Robertson, Principal Librarian.”

  “I have here a page from a manuscript I wish to translate. I need to find a book to help me do that.”

  He set the paper down on her desk. The librarian picked it up, pushed her glasses back on her nose, brought the paper closer, and studied the writing. A firm look crossed her mouth, then a smile began to form. She recognized the writing style. She stood up and came around to the front of her desk.

  “Yes, I think I can help you. Follow me, please,” Miss Robertson said, the smile now fully formed on her face. She handed back the page.

  As the principal librarian stepped out in front of him to lead the way, Harold, despite knowing better, could not help but admire her shape. The librarian wore a long, matronly dres
s that was completely conservative in every way, yet caused Harold pleasurable feelings.

  Miss Robertson led him to a room labeled Special Collections and to a shelf that held various-sized books, in faded covers, looking very old indeed. She ran her finger along the edges of the books until she found what she was looking for. She carefully removed the book from the shelf.

  “I think this will help. However, due to age, rarity, and so forth, volumes in Special Collections cannot be removed from the library. You will have to do your translations here,” the librarian said sternly, “wearing these,” she said, taking a pair of white cotton gloves from a box on one of the shelves and handing them to him. Her tone and demeanor confirmed there would be no discussion of these terms.

  “Why, yes, of course,” said Harold.

  Miss Robertson led him over to a large table with low lamps running down the center. It had several soft, leather-covered chairs on each side. She carefully placed the book on the table and opened it.

  “This book dates from the early nineteenth century, when the Arabic monarchy was interested in education for the elite of their society. Please use it carefully,” Priscilla said, again with a stern look, but softer.

  “Why, yes, of course. I will treat it with utmost respect,” said Harold.

  “Good. I will leave you to it then,” Priscilla said with a smile as she turned and left the room. It was an old, leather-bound school book for Arabic children. In it, Harold saw the letters he had been writing for weeks now. The book was written to teach children English, so it included a small Arabic to English dictionary he could use to translate what he’d written. He sat down, took a blank piece of paper from his pocket, and laid the written page next to it. He then turned the pages of the book and began to translate the scrolling script into English. As he translated the words one at a time, they were next to meaningless, but when he began to put them together, the hairs on his neck stood up. The story, as translated from the pages he had written, was exactly like the narration in his dream.