by Tahir Shah
'The wise man then said: "You must take to the road and travel far and wide. On your travels you must search for the happiest man in the world. When you find him, you must ask him for his shirt." It sounded like an unusual treatment, but the young man had made a pledge to do as he was asked and so he said farewell to the sage and took to the road.
'He travelled north, and he travelled south, and he travelled east, and he travelled west, and he met all sorts of people. Some of them were rich, others very poor. Some were brave and others were cowards. And he asked them all if they knew where he could find the happiest man in the world.
'The youth got many replies. Some people said to him: "I am very happy, but there is someone much happier who lives over that hill," and other people said: "Leave us alone or we will knock you down." The young man searched throughout his own kingdom and travelled to the next kingdom and the next. Days became weeks, and weeks became months and then years. He didn't rest for a moment. Until, quite exhausted by the search, he stopped to rest under a tree on the edge of a great forest and slipped off his shoes.
'As he sat there, he heard laughter. It was so loud that the birds did not roost, but circled round and round. And it was so thunderous that it caused the leaves to fall off the trees. Anyone else would have been shocked by the sound, but the young man – who by now was not quite so young – grew very excited. He slipped his shoes back on and followed the sound of laughter.
'The forest was thick and dark. It would have been silent, too, but for the rumbling sound of laughter coming from the distance. The man followed the sound and, presently, he came to a lake. On the lake there was an island, and on the island stood a small house. The laughter seemed to be coming from the house. The man could not see a boat and so he jumped into the water and swam over to the island.
'Dripping and cold, he went up to the house and knocked on the door. There was no answer, but the laughing did not stop. So, plucking up his courage, the man pushed the door open. Inside, on a carpet, sat an old man. On his head he wore a big turban, the colour of strawberries. He was laughing so wildly that tears were rolling down his cheeks. The seeker crept up, until he was standing at the edge of the carpet. He said very quietly: "Excuse me, Master, but I am from a kingdom far from here and I have been sent to find the happiest man in the world. You look remarkably happy to me. Please tell me, is there anyone happier than you?"
'The laughing man pulled a handkerchief from up his sleeve and blew his nose. "I am very happy," he said, howling with laughter again, "and I can tell you that I certainly don't know anyone as happy as I am. Hahahahaha!" "Then, sir, could I ask you a favour?" "Yes. What?" "Would you take off your shirt and please give it to me?"
'At that point the old man laughed and laughed and laughed and laughed. He laughed so much that all the animals in the forest called out in fear. "My boy, if you had taken the time to look at me," said the sage, weeping tears of laughter, "you would have seen that I am not wearing any shirt at all."
'The young man's eyes widened as he realized it was true. He was about to say something, but the sage was unwinding his turban. He unwound coil after coil, laying the red cloth on the carpet. It was only as he got to the end that the man realized the truth: that the sage was none other than the wise man who had sent him on his journey in the first place.
'"Tell me, O Master," said the young man, "why didn't you inform me you were the happiest man in the world at the start? It would have saved me a lot of time and bother." "Because," said the sage, "for you to be calmed, you needed to experience certain things, see other things and meet various people. I knew it would be a long process, but if I had told you at the beginning what it would involve, you would have run away and would never have been cured."'
When he had finished the story, I thanked the police officer. Then I sat in silence. He didn't try to speak, as if he understood that the tale was working away at me. I heard the door of the apartment open and close, and knew I was alone. I felt calm, very calm, and, in a way I could not quite fathom, I felt more complete. I just sat there, my mind racing. Then something happened that I find awkward to explain. My chest began to warm up. It got warmer and warmer until it was no longer warm, but quite hot. My mouth had been closed. It was forced open and a blast of air was sucked in. There was nothing I could do about it. My eyes were wide open, my hands bright red.
And all the while 'The Happiest Man in the World' worked away. Like a bank robber cracking a safe, it twisted an invisible dial in my chest, until it had gained entry to my heart. I still do not understand how it worked or quite what happened. But I felt the story penetrate deep through the layers of tissue and muscle with ingenious ease.
I could feel it in there, safe in its own sanctuary. At the same time I knew the story had always been there, been with me. It was lunacy, of course, for there are so many stories in the world and such slim probability of finding the one in your heart.
As I was going over the odds stacked against fortune, the door to the apartment opened again. It was the policeman. I had quite forgotten I was taking refuge in his home. He had bought kebabs. The room filled with the aroma of grilled lamb.
'The story is inside me,' I said as he opened the package.
He nodded very gently and smiled.
'It's inside us all,' he said.
Once back in Casablanca I rooted through my books for any mention of the streams. There were none, not even in Westermarck's thousand-page magnum opus, Ritual and Belief in Morocco. I strolled out into the garden at dusk and petted my dogs, who were lazing on the lawn. The air was perfumed with datura flowers, the sky still and steel-blue. Marwan had just arrived for his shift. He clambered through a hole in the hibiscus hedge and shook my hand. I wished his family well.
'Thanks be to God,' he said. 'We can afford my wife's cataract operation now. She will see clearly again.' He paused for half a breath. 'Inshallah, if God wills it,' he said.
I asked him if he had ever heard of the streams of words, stories, running underground.
'Yes, I have,' said Marwan. 'They keep the world level and when they hit a stone they burst up into a spring.'
'But there's no water in them,' I said. 'So how could you have a spring?'
Marwan patted down his grey hair with a hand.
'They are not springs like that,' he said. 'Change your thinking. Then you will understand.'
'I will try,' I said.
'The springs are places of wisdom, sometimes where a saint has lived, taught, or died. They are places where stories are told and where healing is done. The "water" in them, the words, the stories, are energy, and they are knowledge.'
'But why can't I find any mention of these streams in any books?'
The carpenter glanced down at the grass and then up at my face.
'This is an ancient tradition,' he said. 'It is part of the fabric of our country. As you live here longer you will see that, in Morocco, there are many things you will never find in books.'
In June I travelled to Afghanistan to film the documentary about my search for the lost treasure of the country's first modern king, Ahmed Shah Durrani. The journey was wrapped in worry, not so much about the danger we faced, but about what I knew Rachana would be feeling at home. Most of the time I felt sick in my stomach, sick at the thought of her feeling sick wih anxiety about me. The flight from Casablanca to Kabul took me across north Africa, the Middle East and to the crossroads of Central Asia. I found it incredible to think that the aeroplane didn't pass over a single non-Muslim land, that the early followers of Islam had covered the same ground in the century after the Prophet's death, converting as they went. I tried to imagine the battle-worn champions of Islam finally arriving at the azure waters of the Atlantic, their Sea of Darkness.
Many of the tales I found in Morocco had been brought from the Bedouin heartland of Arabia. A great number of them must have originated even further east, from Persia, India or Afghanistan. North Africa's pilgrimage route stretches through Morocco and
down into Mali, as far as Timbuktu, and across Algeria and Libya, to Egypt. For well over a thousand years, pilgrims have travelled the path in caravans across the desert, in fear for their lives. It's easy to imagine them huddled in caravanserais and under the stars, their camels hobbled around them for warmth, telling and retelling tales.
Just as pilgrims made the Hajj from the Maghrib, they travelled from the east as well, from as far as India and beyond, from China's province of Xinjiang. To go on the pilgrimage at least once in a lifetime is one of the five Pillars of Islam, a solemn duty of every Muslim. The reason is, of course, to pledge devotion to God at the Kaaba, Mecca, the birthplace of the Islamic faith. But the impact of people travelling over centuries in wave after wave, heading to the holy city and back to their far-flung lands, has been even more profound.
Almost like bees pollinating flowers in gardens far from their hives, the pilgrims have had an extraordinary effect in spreading knowledge and Islamic culture over a vast region. Works of mathematics, astronomy, chemistry and the arts were disseminated and studied from China to Morocco. In the same way, the matrix formed by the pilgrims and their routes dispersed stories, too, scattering them across much of the known world. The effect has led to a cultural harmony and a likeness in design, whether it be in Morocco, Arabia, Iraq or northern India.
The Americas have been affected by Arab culture, too, in ways that are sometimes overlooked. In my travels through Mexico and Latin America, I have found the belief in Mal de Ojo, the Evil Eye, and have seen terracotta tiles and 'Moroccan' architecture, cuisine and other traditions brought west by the Spanish conquistadors five centuries ago. Spanish culture is, of course, steeped in medieval Arab culture, an underbelly awaiting visitors with observant eyes.
My one recurring dream now is of the prisoner who was chained in the cell beside mine. I used to hear him groaning at dawn, after a night in the torture cells. Once, towards the end, I was led back to my own cell without a blindfold and caught a glimpse of him. He was crouched, huddled in the corner, his face hidden by a black beard, his hands wrapped in blood-soaked bandages. Unlike mine, the cell was painted with large black-and-white spirals. They covered the walls, the ceiling, the floor and even the bars. For a fleeting moment we made eye contact. My fear was echoed in his gaze. I don't know who the prisoner was, or what he was guilty of doing, but there was a sense of understanding between us.
The journeys through Afghanistan, and the film we made there, helped me to have closure on the nightmares I suffered after being released from neighbouring Pakistan.
We never found the lost treasure of Mughal India in Afghanistan, a treasure reputed to be valued at current rates at more than five hundred billion dollars. But in many ways we found far more.
The legend goes that, falling ill with cancer, Ahmed Shah concealed the vast hoard of gold and precious gems in a cave system. He supposedly ordered the men who had been charged to conceal the loot to be executed, along with the horses that transported the treasure into the caves. We may not have found the fortune itself but, in a cave system near Bamiyan in central Afghanistan we came upon dozens of human skeletons deep in a mountain. In one of the tunnels, even further into the mountain, we found the bones of horses.
On my travels through Afghanistan, there were two small episodes that pricked my consciousness like smelling salts. The first was while visiting the magnificent Friday Mosque in Herat, located on the western edge of Afghanistan. The building is celebrated throughout the Islamic world for the fine mosaics that adorn its façade. I had heard that beside the mosque was a small workshop in which master craftsmen continued to cut mosaics as had been done for almost a thousand years. I asked if I could visit the craftsmen and immediately found myself ushered into their atelier.
Half a dozen old men were chipping away at glazed tiles, making the mosaics. They didn't look up, just kept on chipping with their hammers, their heads wound with turbans, their legs crossed.
Drawing closer to get a good view of their work, I noticed something, something that I found quite astonishing. I was at the far end of the Islamic world, almost as far as I could have been from Morocco. But the hammers used by the craftsmen were identical to the ones used in Fès, where they are called manqash.
The other incident that touched me was while sitting in a chaikhana at Balkh in northern Afghanistan, where Alexander the Great had made his headquarters in the third century BC. The room was thick with conversation and with wood-smoke from the samovar. I got chatting to a Pushtun who was in the carpet business, transporting Turkoman rugs down to his native Qandahar. There was a lull in the conversation. We sat sipping our tea, pondering our circumstances. Then, as happens in Afghan teahouses, the trader touched my knee.
'I will tell you a story of Mullah Nasrudin,' he said. Nasrudin is, of course, the Afghan incarnation of Joha, the Arab folk hero. The Nasrudin story that the carpet-dealer recounted in Balkh was one that had been imparted to me a few weeks before, by a student in Marrakech.
This is how it went.
One day Mullah Nasrudin knocked at his neighbour's door and asked him if he could borrow his biggest cooking pot, as his in-laws were coming for dinner. The neighbour, who was a very greedy man, resisted, but eventually agreed. The next day, Nasrudin returned the pot and thanked the neighbour. After handing it over, he gave the greedy neighbour a smaller pot. 'What's this for?' said the neighbour. 'Oh,' said the mullah, 'you see, while your big pot was with me it gave birth to this little pot. As it is the offspring of what is yours, I am giving it to you.'
The greedy neighbour was very pleased at getting a second pot for nothing. So, the next time that Nasrudin came over and asked to borrow his big pot he was only too happy to oblige. The day after, the neighbour hammered on his door and demanded his pot back. Nasrudin opened the door. 'We have established, have we not, that a pot can give birth to another pot?' he asked. The neighbour nodded his head, hoping for another free vessel. 'Well, just as one pot can give birth to another pot, a pot can also pass away. I have the unfortunate task to inform you that at ten o'clock last night your big pot dropped dead!'
TWENTY-FIVE
Much travel is needed before a raw man is ripened.
Arab proverb
THREE DAYS AFTER MY RETURN FROM AFGHANISTAN, I RECEIVED a call from Waleed in Fès. The line was very bad. I could hardly make out what he was saying.
'I will call you back,' I said.
'No, do not hang up!' spat Waleed.
'Why not?'
'Because the air is filled with words,' he said. 'Millions of conversations. How do I know that you will find me again?'
'Then, shout what you want to tell me.'
'Monsieur Tahir, there is something very important!'
I swallowed hard. When a Moroccan tells you something is important, it generally involves asking the favour of a loan.
'Please explain.'
'Can you keep a secret?'
'Yes. What is it?'
'There's a house,' Waleed replied. 'A house in the medina. It's for sale. But you must not tell a soul.'
'Look, I don't have any money,' I said. 'I've already got a house in Casablanca and it's taken up all my money. I'm broke.'
'You don't understand, Monsieur,' said the voice amid the crackles and distortion.'
'Yes, I do.'
'No, no.'
'What don't I understand?'
'This house is very different.'
'How?'
'It's very old.'
'But all the houses in the medina are old!'
'It's different from all the others,' he said, repeating himself.
'Tell me how is it different, Waleed?'
'Because it's the House of the Storytellers,' he said.
At first, finding the story in my heart filled me with a new kind of energy. It was as if I had tapped into a reserve of power deep inside me. Rachana noticed right away. She said I seemed happier about myself, that I was calmer. She was right. I was more content than I h
ad been in a very long while. But at the same time, finding my story had been something of an anticlimax and I found myself confused. It's often like that in life. The search for something tends to create its own energy, so much so that when you eventually find what you think you have been searching for you feel short-changed. I began to ponder the matter a great deal, wondering why reaching a conclusion could be such a dissatisfying experience. The more I thought of it, the more depressed I began to feel. It was then I remembered something my father had once told me. He was observing how people would come to him for answers, and how, when they were presented with an answer, they often felt miffed, as if they deserved more. He said to me: 'It is not that the answer is wrong, but that the seeker does not yet realize its value.' I asked if he could elaborate. He said he would do so, that he would answer my question with a story.
'Once upon a time there was a farmer's wife. She was out in an orchard, picking apples from a tree, when one of the apples fell down a hole in the ground. She tried to reach it, but could not. So she looked all around for someone to help her, and she saw a little bird sitting on the branches of the tree.
'She said to the bird: "Little bird, please fly down the hole and bring the apple back to me!"
'The bird said, "Tweet! Tweet!" which, in bird language, means, "No, I won't!"
'The farmer's wife was angry at the bird, and she said, "You are a very naughty little bird!"
'And then she saw a cat. She said to the cat: "Cat, cat, jump up at the bird until he flies down into the hole and brings the apple for me."
'But the cat just said, "Miaow, miaow!" which, in cat language, means, "No, I won't!"
'And the farmer's wife said, "You are a very naughty little cat!"
'Just then she saw a dog, and she said to the dog: "Dog, dog, please chase the cat so she jumps up at the bird, so that he flies down the hole and brings back the apple for me."