The Zahir

by Paulo Coelho

  “What do you want me to do? Stop working? Give up everything we’ve struggled so hard to achieve and go off on a cruise to the Caribbean? Don’t you understand that I enjoy what I’m doing and haven’t the slightest intention of changing my life?”

  “In your books, you talk about the importance of love, the need for adventure, the joy of fighting for your dreams. And who do I have before me now? Someone who doesn’t read what he writes. Someone who confuses love with convenience, adventure with taking unnecessary risks, joy with obligation. Where is the man I married, who used to listen to what I was saying?”

  “Where is the woman I married?”

  “You mean the one who always gave you support, encouragement, and affection? Her body is here, looking out at the Singel Canal in Amsterdam, and she will, I believe, stay with you for the rest of her life. But that woman’s soul is standing at the door ready to leave.”

  “But why?”

  “Because of those three wretched words: We’ll talk tomorrow. Isn’t that enough? If not, just consider that the woman you married was excited about life, full of ideas and joy and desires, and is now rapidly turning into a housewife.”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “Of course it is! It’s nonsense! A trifle, especially considering that we have everything we could possibly want. We’re very fortunate, we have money, we never discuss any little flings we might have, we never have jealous rages. Besides, there are millions of children in the world starving to death, there are wars, diseases, hurricanes, tragedies happening every second. So what can I possibly have to complain about?”

  “Do you think we should have a baby?”

  “That’s how all the couples I know resolve their problems—by having a baby! You’re the one who has always prized your freedom and put off having children for later on. Have you really changed your mind?”

  “I think the time is right.”

  “Well, in my opinion, you couldn’t be more wrong! I don’t want your child. I want a child by the man I knew, who had dreams, who was always by my side! If I ever do become pregnant it will be by someone who understands me, keeps me company, listens to me, who truly desires me!”

  “You have been drinking. Look, I promise, we’ll talk tomorrow, but, please, come to bed now, I’m tired.”

  “All right, we’ll talk tomorrow. And if my soul, which is standing at the door, does decide to leave, I doubt it will affect our lives very much.”

  “Your soul won’t leave.”

  “You used to know my soul very well, but you haven’t spoken to it for years, you don’t know how much it has changed, how desperately it’s begging you to listen. Even to banal topics of conversation, like experiments at American universities.”

  “If your soul has changed so much, how come you’re the same?”

  “Out of cowardice. Because I genuinely think that tomorrow we will talk. Because of everything we’ve built together and which I don’t want to see destroyed. Or for that worst of all possible reasons, because I’ve simply given up.”

  “That’s just what you’ve been accusing me of doing.”

  “You’re right. I looked at you, thinking it was you I was looking at, but the truth is I was looking at myself. Tonight I’m going to pray with all my might and all my faith and ask God not to let me spend the rest of my days like this.”

  I hear the applause, the theater is packed. I’m about to do the one thing that always gives me sleepless nights, I’m about to give a lecture.

  The master of ceremonies begins by saying that there’s no need to introduce me, which is a bit much really, since that’s what he’s there for and he isn’t taking into account the possibility that there might be lots of people in the audience who have simply been invited along by friends. Despite what he says, however, he ends up giving a few biographical details and talking about my qualities as a writer, the prizes I’ve won, and the millions of books I’ve sold. He thanks the sponsors, turns to me, and the floor is mine.

  I thank him too. I tell the audience that the most important things I have to say are in my books, but that I feel I have an obligation to my public to reveal the man who lies behind those words and paragraphs. I explain that our human condition makes us tend to share only the best of ourselves, because we are always searching for love and approval. My books, however, will only ever be the mountaintop visible in the clouds or an island in the ocean: the light falls on it, everything seems to be in its place, but beneath the surface lies the unknown, the darkness, the incessant search for self.

  I describe how difficult it was to write A Time to Rend and a Time to Sew, and that there are many parts of the book which I myself am only beginning to understand now, as I reread it, as if the created thing were always greater and more generous than its creator.

  I say that there is nothing more boring than reading interviews or going to lectures by authors who insist on explaining the characters in their books: if a book isn’t self-explanatory, then the book isn’t worth reading. When a writer appears in public, he should attempt to show the audience his universe, not try to explain his books; and in this spirit, I begin talking about something more personal.

  “Some time ago, I was in Geneva for a series of interviews. At the end of a day’s work, and because a woman friend I was supposed to have supper with canceled at the last minute, I set off for a stroll around the city. It was a particularly lovely night, the streets were deserted, the bars and restaurants still full of life, and everything seemed utterly calm, orderly, pretty, and yet suddenly…suddenly I realized that I was utterly alone.

  “Needless to say, I had been alone on other occasions during the year. Needless to say, my girlfriend was only two hours away by plane. Needless to say, after a busy day, what could be better than a stroll through the narrow streets and lanes of the old city, without having to talk to anyone, simply enjoying the beauty around me. And yet the feeling that surfaced was one of oppressive, distressing loneliness—not having someone with whom I could share the city, the walk, the things I’d like to say.

  “I got out my cell phone; after all, I had a reasonable number of friends in the city, but it was too late to phone anyone. I considered going into one of the bars and ordering a drink; someone was bound to recognize me and invite me to join them. But I resisted the temptation and tried to get through that moment, discovering, in the process, that there is nothing worse than the feeling that no one cares whether we exist or not, that no one is interested in what we have to say about life, and that the world can continue turning without our awkward presence.

  “I began to imagine how many millions of people were, at that moment, feeling utterly useless and wretched—however rich, charming, and delightful they might be—because they were alone that night, as they were yesterday, and as they might well be tomorrow. Students with no one to go out with, older people sitting in front of the TV as if it were their sole salvation, businessmen in their hotel rooms, wondering if what they were doing made any sense, women who spent the afternoon carefully applying their makeup and doing their hair in order to go to a bar only to pretend that they’re not looking for company; all they want is confirmation that they’re still attractive; the men ogle them and chat them up, but the women reject them all disdainfully, because they feel inferior and are afraid the men will find out that they’re single mothers or lowly clerks with nothing to say about what’s going on in the world because they work from dawn to dusk to scrape a living and have no time to read the newspapers. People who look at themselves in the mirror and think themselves ugly, believing that being beautiful is what really matters, and spend their time reading magazines in which everyone is pretty, rich, and famous. Husbands and wives who wish they could talk over supper as they used to, but there are always other things demanding their attention, more important things, and the conversation can always wait for a tomorrow that never comes.

  “That day, I had lunch with a friend who had just got divorced and she said to me: �
��Now I can enjoy the freedom I’ve always dreamed of having.’ But that’s a lie. No one wants that kind of freedom: we all want commitment, we all want someone to be beside us to enjoy the beauties of Geneva, to discuss books, interviews, films, or even to share a sandwich with because there isn’t enough money to buy one each. Better to eat half a sandwich than a whole one. Better to be interrupted by the man who wants to get straight back home because there’s a big game on TV tonight or by the woman who stops outside a shop window and interrupts what we were saying about the cathedral tower, far better that than to have the whole of Geneva to yourself with all the time and quiet in the world to visit it.

  “Better to go hungry than to be alone. Because when you’re alone—and I’m talking here about an enforced solitude not of our choosing—it’s as if you were no longer part of the human race.

  “A lovely hotel awaited me on the other side of the river, with its luxurious rooms, its attentive employees, its five-star service. And that only made me feel worse, because I should have felt contented, satisfied with all I had achieved.

  “On the way back, I passed other people in the same situation and noticed that they fell into two categories: those who looked arrogant, because they wanted to pretend they had chosen to be alone on that lovely night, and those who looked sad and ashamed of their solitary state.

  “I’m telling you all this because the other day I remembered being in a hotel room in Amsterdam with a woman who was talking to me about her life. I’m telling you all this because, although in Ecclesiastes it says there is a time to rend and a time to sew, sometimes the time to rend leaves deep scars. Being with someone else and making that person feel as if they were of no importance in our life is far worse than feeling alone and miserable in the streets of Geneva.”

  There was a long moment of silence before the applause.

  I arrived in a gloomy part of Paris, which was nevertheless said to have the most vibrant cultural life of the whole city. It took me a while to recognize the scruffy group of people before me as the same ones who appeared on Thursdays in the Armenian restaurant immaculately dressed in white.

  “Why are you all wearing fancy dress? Is this some kind of tribute to a movie?”

  “It’s not fancy dress,” replied Mikhail. “Don’t you change your clothes to go to a gala supper? Would you wear a jacket and tie to play golf?”

  “All right, let me put the question another way: Why have you decided to dress like young homeless people?”

  “Because, at this moment, we are young homeless people, or, rather, four young homeless people and two homeless adults.”

  “Let me put the question a third way, then: Why are you dressed like that?”

  “In the restaurant, we feed our body and talk about the Energy to people with something to lose. Among the beggars, we feed our soul and talk to those who have nothing to lose. Now, we come to the most important part of our work: meeting the members of the invisible movement that is renewing the world, people who live each day as if it were their last, while the old live each day as if it were their first.”

  He was talking about something I had already noticed and which seemed to be growing by the day: this was how young people dressed, in grubby, but highly imaginative outfits, based on military uniforms or sci-fi movies. They all went in for body piercing too and sported highly individual haircuts. Often, the groups were accompanied by threatening-looking Alsatian dogs. I once asked a friend why these people always had a dog with them and he told me—although I don’t know if it’s true—that the police couldn’t arrest the owners because they had nowhere to put the dogs.

  A bottle of vodka began doing the rounds; we had drunk vodka when we were with the beggars and I wondered if this had to do with Mikhail’s origins. I took a sip, imagining what people would say if they saw me there.

  I decided they would say, “He’s probably doing research for his next book,” and felt more relaxed.

  “I’m ready now to go and find Esther, but I need some more information, because I know nothing about your country.”

  “I’ll go with you.”

  “What?”

  That wasn’t in my plans at all. My journey was a return to everything I had lost in myself, and would end somewhere in the Central Asian steppes. It was something intimate and personal, something that did not require witnesses.

  “As long as you pay for my ticket, of course. I need to go back to Kazakhstan. I miss my country.”

  “I thought you had work to do here. Don’t you have to be at the restaurant on Thursdays for the performances.”

  “You keep calling it a performance. I’ve told you before, it’s a meeting, a way of reviving what we have lost, the tradition of conversation. But don’t worry. Anastásia here,” and he pointed to a girl wearing a nose stud, “is already developing her gift. She can take care of everything while I’m away.”

  “He’s jealous,” said Alma, the woman who played the instrument that looked like a cymbal and who told stories at the end of each meeting.

  “Understandable, really,” said another boy, who was dressed in a leather outfit adorned with metal studs, safety pins, and buckles made to look like razor blades. “Mikhail is younger, better-looking, and more in touch with the Energy.”

  “He’s also less famous, less rich, and less in touch with those in power,” said Anastásia. “From the female point of view, things are pretty evenly balanced, so I reckon they’re both going with what they’ve got.”

  Everyone laughed and the bottle went the rounds again. I was the only one who didn’t see the joke. I was surprising myself, though; it had been many years since I had sat on a pavement in Paris, and this pleased me.

  “The tribe is bigger than you think. They’re everywhere, from the Eiffel Tower down as far as the town of Tarbes where I was staying recently. But I can’t honestly say I understand what it’s all about.”

  “They can be found farther south than Tarbes, and they follow routes every bit as interesting as the road to Santiago. They set off from somewhere in France or somewhere else in Europe, swearing that they’re going to be part of a society that exists outside of society. They’re afraid of going back home and getting a job and getting married—they’ll fight against all that for as long as they can. There are rich and poor among them, but they’re not that interested in money. They look completely different, and yet when people walk past them, they usually pretend not to see them because they’re afraid.”

  “Do they have to look so aggressive?”

  “Yes, because the passion to destroy is a creative passion. If they weren’t aggressive, the boutiques would immediately fill up with clothes like these; publishers would soon be producing magazines about the new movement ‘sweeping the world with its revolutionary attitudes’; TV programs would have a strand devoted to the tribe; sociologists would write learned articles; psychiatrists would counsel the families of tribe members, and it would lose all its impact. So the less they know about us, the better: our attack is really a defense.”

  “Actually, I only came tonight so that I could ask you for some information, but, who knows, perhaps spending the night with you will turn out to be just the kind of rich and novel experience to move me on from a personal history that no longer allows for new experiences. As for the journey to Kazakhstan, I’ve no intention of taking anyone with me. If I can’t get help from you, the Favor Bank will provide me with all the necessary contacts. I’m going away in two days’ time and I’m a guest at an important supper tomorrow night, but after that, I’m free for two weeks.”

  Mikhail appeared to hesitate.

  “It’s up to you. You’ve got the map, the name of the village, and it shouldn’t be hard to find the house where she’s staying. I’m sure the Favor Bank can help get you as far as Almaty, but I doubt it will get you much farther than that, because the rules of the steppes are different. Besides, I reckon I’ve made a few deposits in your account at the Favor Bank too. It’s time to reclaim
them. I miss my mother.”

  He was right.

  “We’ve got to start work,” said Alma’s husband.

  “Why do you want to go with me, Mikhail? Is it really just because you miss your mother?”

  He didn’t reply. The man started playing the drum and Alma was clanging the cymbal, while the others begged for money from passersby. Why did he want to go with me? And how would I be able to draw on the Favor Bank in the steppes, if I knew absolutely no one? I could get a visa from the Kazakhstan embassy, hire a car and a guide from the French consulate in Almaty—what else did I need?

  I stood there observing the group, not knowing quite what to do. It wasn’t the right moment to discuss the trip, and I had work to do and a girlfriend waiting for me at home. Why didn’t I just leave now?

  I didn’t leave because I was feeling free, doing things I hadn’t done for years, opening up a space in my soul for new experiences, driving the acomodador out of my life, experiencing things that might not interest me very much, but which were at least different.

  The vodka ran out and was replaced by rum. I hate rum, but since that was all there was, it was best to adapt to the circumstances. The two musicians continued to play and whenever anyone was brave enough to come near, one of the girls would hold out her hand and ask if they had any spare change. The person approached would normally quicken their pace, but would always receive a “Thanks, have a nice evening.” One person, seeing that he had been offered thanks rather than abuse, turned back and gave us some money.

  After watching this scene for more than ten minutes, without anyone in the group addressing a single word to me, I went into a bar, bought two bottles of vodka, came back, and poured the rum into the gutter. Anastásia seemed pleased by my gesture and so I tried to start a conversation.