by Tahir Shah
'Very good.'
'What's the message?'
'You are to tell him that Hasif Mehdi of Casablanca has asked you to bring some rock salt. I have written him a letter,' he said, pulling out an envelope.
'What's the salt for?'
'It's special to our family, from a particular place,' he said. 'We must use it at weddings for good luck, for purifying the wedding garden. It's a tradition for us. My granddaughter has just become engaged and so we will need some soon. But this time there's no one to go and get some. Without it there can be no marriage.' Dr Mehdi widened his eyes. 'Do you see the problem?' he said.
I accepted the request for a favour willingly and felt my friendship with the doctor strengthen as a result. But I didn't quite understand why he didn't go and fetch the salt himself.
'Do you promise you will do it, as one friend to another?'
I promised.
'Is your nephew living in Casablanca?' I asked.
'No, not in Casa.'
'In Rabat?'
'No, not there either.'
I paused and looked into the surgeon's rock-steady eyes.
'He lives in the south,' he said.
'Where exactly?'
'In the Sahara.'
The length of the Arabian Nights has always been a matter of contention. Even though the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century compilers and translators expanded the collection many times, it has never comprised much more than five hundred stories (Burton's translation has four hundred and sixty-eight tales). But then, the title of the collection refers to the length of nights rather than to the number of stories recounted. In its original form, the treasury of tales may have been far longer, but it's very unlikely. I expect this is due partly to the limit of oral recitations.
A storyteller would surely find his audience satisfied with a few hundred tales at most, and those spread over weeks or even months. The endless repetition and frequent summaries suggest a time when the tales were recounted verbally, a time when the audience would need refreshing on what events had come before.
Before the collection was arranged in a more rigid written structure, oral recitation must have allowed extreme fluidity. It is a point that modern academics sometimes find baffling: how a large body of work, an encyclopedia in itself, could be so free from boundaries. Tales would have come and gone depending on the storyteller, the geographic setting, fashion and the audience waiting to be entertained.
A Thousand and One Nights in its written form allowed the work engine of Victorian scholarship to outdo itself. As with other triumphs, like Hastings' Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics and, of course, Encyclopaedia Britannica, the translations – and especially Burton's translation – pulled out all the stops. Although his edition copied liberally from earlier versions – particularly that of his colleague John Payne – it was its own entity and, in many ways, is the most expansive.
For more than a century, scholars and laymen have railed against Burton at every available opportunity. They have attacked his prejudice, his snobbery and his loathing for the establishment. It's a fact that Burton was no saint. But his translation of the Arabian Nights is a work of titanic achievement. It is so because the translator was a polymath, a man versed in literature and history, expert in multiple sciences, languages and skills. His translation drew upon a lifetime of knowledge to create a magnum opus that has rarely, if ever, been equalled.
The week after my arrival back from Tangier, I remembered my promise to the cobbler, the promise that I would take the Arabian Nights to show him. I had spent days and nights reading the volumes, absorbed by the sheer peculiarity and detail of the footnotes. The morning I went to meet the cobbler, I had read over breakfast a first-hand account of a eunuch's dismemberment.
It was the kind of passage that causes tears to well in any man's eyes.
There-upon she called out to the slave women and bade them bind my feet with cords and then said to them, 'Take seat on him!' They did her bidding, upon which she arose and fetched a pan of copper and hung it over the brazier and poured into it oil of sesame, in which she fried cheese. Then she came up to me and, unfastening my bag-trousers, tied a cord round my testicles and, giving it to two of her women, bade them hawl at it. They did so, and I swooned away and was for excess of pain in a world other than this. Then she came with a razor of steel and cut off my member masculine, so that I remained like a woman: after which she seared the wound with burning oil and rubbed it with a powder, and I the while unconscious. Now when I came to myself, the blood had stopped; so she bade the slave-girls unbind me and made me drink a cup of wine.
The cobbler was standing outside the shop, as if waiting for someone or something to arrive. We greeted and he kissed my knuckles. I asked what he was waiting for. The old man jerked off his navy-blue hat and held it to his heart.
'I spend my life in that shop,' he said. 'It's full of dirt and noise. Sometimes I feel that I am going mad in there.'
'But it's noisy and polluted out here on the street,' I said. 'The traffic's terrible.'
Noureddine the cobbler grinned and put his hand on my shoulder.
'Well, it was very bad here,' he said. 'I used to run from the street into my shop and slam the door closed behind me. But then suddenly this morning everything changed.'
'What changed?'
The cobbler stretched out an arm and pointed to the tree outside his shop. Winter had robbed it of most of the leaves, and the trunk was adorned with a mass of carved graffiti.
'Do you see it?'
'The tree?' I said.
'No, what is in the tree . . .'
I looked up and peered into the naked branches. Noureddine's finger jabbed.
'Up there, up at the top.' The old man guided my gaze. 'Do you see it . . . ? The nest.'
He was right. At the very top of the tree was a frail twig nest, and sitting on the nest was a miniature brown bird. It looked very ordinary.
'Can you hear it?' he said.
I listened hard. The traffic was so loud that it drowned out anything natural. I strained, angled my left ear towards the tree. Then, suddenly, the bird opened its tiny beak and went: 'Tweet, tweet!'
Then Noureddine kissed his hat, praised God and led me into the shop. Once in position behind his counter, he swivelled round and rummaged in the pigeon-holes. He brought down my suede brogues, soled in the fifty-year leather. They looked brand-new. I thanked him effusively.
'It is you whom I should thank,' he said. 'Because you know the value of fine shoes.'
I opened my satchel and pulled out the first volume of the Arabian Nights. The gold on the jet-black cloth caught the light. The cobbler touched one of the books and kissed his hand. He praised God again.
'This is one of the books I bought in Tangier last week,' I said.
The cobbler looked out of the window at the tree and up at the nest. Then he gazed down at the book.
'This day has been full of wonder,' he said.
He asked if he might open the book.
'Of course you may.'
His callused fingers prised the covers apart and he scanned a page.
'This is Alf Layla wa Layla,' he said in a whisper.
'Yes, Alf Layla wa Layla, A Thousand and One Nights.'
Noureddine slumped on his stool. He seemed overcome with emotion.
'My grandmother told me these tales,' he said softly. 'I remember them all.'
'Did you read them to your sons?'
'Of course! It's a tradition. Stories are our culture.'
'Did your sons read them to their sons?'
At first the cobbler didn't answer. He looked out at the nest again, his enthusiasm gone.
'No, no,' he said despondently. 'They didn't read the stories. The old ways are disappearing. My sons are too busy with their foolish friends. Too busy ever to see their father and too busy to read a word to their children.' The cobbler wiped a finger across his eye. 'My grandchildren spend their time watching television,' he said.
Rachana and the children were waiting for me nearby. Apologizing, I put the book away and opened the door. Just before I pushed out into the traffic and fumes, the old man called back.
'Come here any day,' he said, 'and I will tell my favourite story from Alf Layla wa Layla.'
'Which story is it?'
Noureddine grinned again.
'The "Tale of Maruf the Cobbler",' he said.
On my fifth birthday my father gave me an exquisite box. It was crafted from turquoise micro-mosaic, with ivory beading along the edges, was about twelve inches long and half as wide. My father said it came from Paghman, the ancestral home of our family in Afghanistan, and it had been passed down through generations. I was used to being given wooden blocks and plastic toys, and so the box caught my attention. It was the sort of thing that is sometimes kept away from children because of its delicacy and value. I laid it on my bed and carefully removed the lid.
Inside were three sheets of paper, all folded up.
I pulled out the paper, looked at the lines of type and asked what all the writing meant. My father sat on the edge of my bed and said that the writing was a story, a story as old as the world. He said it was very important and that I would learn to love it like one of my friends. I asked him about the box. I was so small, but I remember his exact words.
'This box is very lovely,' he said. 'You can see the colours, and the work on the sides. But don't be fooled, Tahir Jan, this box is only the container. What's held inside is far, far more precious. One day you will understand.'
I didn't understand. I didn't know what he was talking about.
To my eyes, the box was the box, and the story on the paper was a story, and just that. The gift was put on a high shelf in my bedroom and brought down from time to time to be admired. The pages inside stayed protected by the box, but yellowed with time. They are still in there, in the very same box, which now sits in my library on my desk.
Sometimes when I feel the need, I open the box, take out the story and read it.
It is the 'Tale of Melon City'.
TWELVE
Sleep with the remembrance of death, And rise with the thought that you will not live long.
Uwais el-Qarni
ONCE UPON A TIME THE RULER OF A DISTANT LAND DECIDED TO build a magnificent triumphal arch, so that he could ride under it endlessly with great pomp and ceremony. He gave instructions for the arch's design, and its construction began. The masons toiled day and night until the great arch was at last ready.
The king had a fabulous procession assembled of courtiers and royal guards, all dressed in their finest costumes. He took his position at the head and the procession moved off. But as the king went through the great arch, his royal crown was knocked off.
Infuriated, he ordered the master builder to be hanged at once. A gallows was constructed in the main square, and the chief builder was led towards it. But as he climbed the steps of the scaffold, he called out that the fault lay not with him, but with the men who had heaved the blocks into place. They, in turn, put the blame on the masons who had cut the blocks of stone. The king had the masons brought to the palace. He ordered them to explain themselves on pain of death. The masons insisted the fault lay at the hands of the architect whose plans they had followed.
The architect was summoned. He revealed to the court that he was not to blame, for he had only followed the plans drawn out by the order of the king. Unsure who to execute, the king summoned the wisest of his advisers, who was very ancient indeed. The situation was explained to him. Just before he was about to give his solution, he expired.
The chief judge was called. He decreed that the arch itself should be hanged. But because the upper portion had touched the royal head, it was exempted. So a hangman's noose was brought to the lower portion, for it to be punished on behalf of the entire arch. The executioner tried to attach his noose to the arch, but realized it was far too short. The judge called the ropemaker, but he stated it was the fault of the scaffold, for being too short.
Presiding over the confusion, the king saw the impatience of the crowd. 'They want to hang someone,' he said weakly. 'We must find someone who will fit the gallows.'
Every man, woman and child in the kingdom was measured by a special panel of experts. Even the king's height was measured. By a strange coincidence, the monarch himself was found to be the perfect height for the scaffold. Victim procured, the crowd calmed down. The king was led up the steps, had the noose slipped round his neck and was hanged.
According to the kingdom's custom, the next stranger who ventured through the city gates could decide who would be the new monarch. The courtiers ran to the city gate and waited for a stranger to arrive. They waited and waited, and waited and waited. Then they saw a man in the distance. He was riding a donkey backwards. As soon as his animal stepped through the great city gate, the prime minister ran up and asked him to choose the next king. The man, who was a travelling idiot, said, 'A melon.' He said this because he always said 'A melon' to anything that was asked of him. For he liked to eat melons very much.
And so it came about that a melon was crowned the king.
These events happened long, long ago. A melon is still king of the country and, when strangers visit and ask anyone there why a melon is the ruler, they say it's because of tradition, that the king prefers to be a melon and that they as humble subjects have no power to change his mind.
As Ariane's fifth birthday was approaching, I decided to have a special box made for her, a container for the 'Tale of Melon City'. The next time I met Abdelmalik at Café Lugano, I asked if he knew a carpenter skilled in the art of box-making. He leaned back and flipped his sunglasses from his face up on to his hair.
'What do you need to be made?' he asked.
I told him about the 'Tale of Melon City' and my wish to pass its gift on to my little daughter. Abdelmalik said that Casablanca's carpenters were mostly thieves. It was something I already knew. During the renovation process at Dar Khalifa, we had employed dozens of them. If they didn't steal from us, they lied, and if they didn't lie, they cheated us. Most of them had stolen, lied and cheated. We sat in silence for a while, reflecting on the sad situation of carpentry.
Abdelmalik clapped his hands.
'I will send you to Reda,' he said.
Since my previous visit to the astrologer, I had tried to put out of my mind her conclusion that Dar Khalifa had been a refuge of a holy man. In more usual circumstances I might have embraced the idea, but after dragging Rachana and the children to live in Casablanca I felt I had too much to lose. For months I had tried my best to steer our lives away from talk of the supernatural and follow Rachana's dream . . . the dream of living in an ordinary house, stripped clean of surprises.
Seeking answers, I stopped in at the mattress shop in search of Sukayna. The place was awash with daffodil-yellow cushions, an order from a restaurant. The mattress-maker said the astrologer was attending to a purification rite at someone's home.
'Casablanca is filled with evil,' he said darkly.
'Not all of it, surely?'
The mattress-maker threaded a needle.
'Every inch of this city is wicked,' he said. 'Why do you think Sukayna has so many clients?'
'If it's so wicked,' I asked, 'why do you live in Casablanca?'
The tailor pulled a stitch through a square of yellow cloth.
'Because we have Sukayna,' he said.
The mood at Dar Khalifa depended greatly on the weather. At the end of December it rained for five days and five nights. It wasn't the usual light rain, but the kind of squall you get on the high seas. We stayed cooped up indoors, all of us depressed beyond words. The children caught flu, the maids spent their time fighting for pole position at Timur's bedside and the guardians shut themselves up in the stables and refused to come out. Struggling against the lashing rain, I made my way down to their retreat.
Marwan, Osman and the Bear were clustered round their makeshift table playing car
ds and drinking watery mint tea. They sat upright when they saw me and looked uncomfortable. My presence tended to conclude in a demand, and demands were always unwelcome, especially in the rain. For once, though, I had nothing to ask of them. I had come to check how Osman was bearing up. I hadn't seen him for days. He was sitting in a shadow, his shoulders rounded forwards with melancholy, his mouth turned down at the corners like a cartoon. A steady stream of water was dripping on to his back, soaking him.
But he was too sad to care.
I took Marwan outside. We stood in the rain, sheltering under the foliage of a banana plant. I asked whether there was any news from Osman's wife. Marwan shook his head.
'Osman is miserable,' he said.
'Do you think he will ever be happy again?'
'Perhaps,' said Marwan. 'Perhaps, many years from now.'
'Maybe his wife will come back,' I said.
Marwan the carpenter scowled.
'He will never take her back,' he said.
'Why not?'
'She has brought shame, terrible shame. As far as Osman is concerned, his wife is dead.'
Opposite the small railway station of Oasis, I found the address Abdelmalik had written down. There was a newsagent on one side and a pharmacy on the other. Between them was a narrow furniture shop. It went back very far, like a bowling alley. There was no sign, no name. I must have passed it thirty times before and never noticed it. Most of our furniture had been shipped to us from India, or was made from cane, bought cheap from a stall on the highway to Rabat. We had never bought anything in a Casablanca furniture shop.
In Moroccan homes there tend to be two types of furnishings. The first are everyday items for use by the family. Such pieces are usually simple, lacking expensive detail, but solidly made. The second type of furniture is generally reserved for guests. Those pieces are far more elaborate. They are beautified with attractive upholstery and gilt, carved with pleasing geometric designs. In Arab culture a visitor is held in very high esteem. No amount of expense is ever too great to make sure he is more comfortable than he would be in his own home.