by Tahir Shah
On the jetty I made out the familiar outline of Ariadne. She was standing against the railing in her trademark Afghan sheepskin coat. I smiled, but secretly I wished she would leave me alone. She handed me a turquoise slip of paper, and pointed to a clinker-built launch.
The craft was low in the water, skulking down like an Alsatian on all fours. Its captain had taken the cowling away from the engine and was huddled at the stern. First he threatened the delicate machinery with a claw hammer, then struck it six times. The blows were accompanied by a string of Quechua swear-words. Miraculously, the engine was running three minutes later, urging us into the cloisonné-blue waters of Titicaca.
As we pushed away from the shore, towards the centre of the lake, I threw back my head. Cumulus clouds hung above us like floating islands. Huddling in the bow of the boat, a family from Taquile were getting a free ride home. The father was holding a baby llama to his chest furled in a blanket.
Ariadne lit a clove cigarette, pushed her sunglasses onto her head, and foraged in a buckram holdall by her feet.
“I went shopping,” she said, through the corner of her mouth.
“Souvenirs?”
She squinted until her eyes disappeared.
“Love potions,” she sniffed, pulling out a tatty plastic bag. It contained an indistinct object, wrapped in bandages like an Egyptian mummy. As Ariadne held the object between her knees, unwinding the cloth, I caught a whiff of what smelled like rotting meat. It reminded me of a Pakistani morgue in which I had once had breakfast. I gagged into the collar of my shirt.
It was a dried llama fetus. Ariadne cupped the trophy in her hands, bent her head down, and touched her lips to it in a kiss.
“Isn’t she beautiful?” she asked.
The father from Taquile looked over, and clutched his llama foal closer.
“What’s it for?”
“An aphrodisiac, of course.”
“How do you prepare it?”
The Frenchwoman turned to give me a poisoned stare.
“Are you knowing anything?” she said. “You make un potage, a soup.”
I wondered silently why humans feel it necessary to do such strange things with their time. All over the world people are at it: eating fish intestines, mealy grubs and monkey brains, dissecting tarantulas and breeding worms, bungee-jumping, bear-baiting and extracting healthy, unborn llamas from unsuspecting wombs.
I explained to Ariadne that, to most of us, the very idea of swilling down a dried llama bisque was deplorable.
She wrapped up her aphrodisiac, ensuring the legs weren’t poking out.
“What’s wrong with eating fetus?” she said.
I squirmed.
“Surely you have heard of Shenzhen?”
“Shen...!”
“In China,” she said, puffing at her cigarette, “across from Hong Kong.”
The family from Taquile and I exchanged a troubled glance.
“Soup made from aborted fetuses... it’s an ancient remedy.”
I squirmed again.
“It’s delicious,” said Ariadne.
“You’ve tried it... you’ve actually drunk fetus soup?”
“Oh, so many times,” she said whimsically, “when I lived in Hong Kong. It’s good for the liver and the kidneys,” she said, tucking the dried llama fetus back in her bag. “And of course,” she added, “there’s nothing like it for a hangover.”
The villagers of Taquile cluster around when they spot a launch arriving. Few tourists journey out to their island. Those that do are offered reed toys and whistles, alpaca tooth charms, and gaudy blankets embroidered with local scenes. Some locals invite the travelers to watch traditional dances, to go fishing, or to stay in their homes. Keeping change at bay, Taquile has resisted the temptation of building hotels or proper restaurants.
Once he had stepped ashore, I asked the man with the llama foal if he knew of any weavers. At first he was wary, something to do with Ariadne’s fixation for dried fetuses, no doubt. I lied, saying she was a vet, with an interest in medical specimens. Then I explained my own interest – Taquile’s textiles.
The man passed the foal to his wife. I looked at his face closely, taking in the ridge of his nose, his chapped lips and the trace of whiskers at the corners of his mouth.
“Are you a believer?” he asked, cryptically.
I nodded.
“Then you can come with me,” he said. “Héctor, my grandfather, will be waiting.”
We tramped a mile or two inland, breaching low stone walls and jumping ditches, cutting a path across the burnt sienna farmland. Before I knew it, we had almost crossed the island, which only measures two miles by one.
A few tourists might have found Taquile, but very little has changed there in the last three hundred years. The island is still divided into six agricultural sections, called suyos, each of which has been administered by the same family for centuries. The crops grown on Taquile would have been familiar to the Incas – a long potato called oca, broad beans, maize, wheat and quinua, a staple grain rich in protein.
The Spanish treated the island as a great hacienda, where guests could feast on the lake’s inimitable supply of trout. In the years after Peru’s independence in 1821, Taquile served as a penal colony. Now that they are again left to their own devices, the islanders spend their time tilling the dusty fields, weaving, and preparing for the calendar of festivals.
In the shadow of a doorway, propped up against a low wall, or sitting on a clump of rocks, every man and woman is busy making cloth, or precious fragments of regalia. Most of the islanders have three or four separate costumes – for working, festivities, weddings and daily life. Cloth is a sacred material on Taquile, as it was to the Incas, and the civilizations which preceded them. The colors are blazing: reds and scarlets, peacock greens and brilliant blues.
As I took in the array of women’s attire, flowing skirts dyed with cochineal, and jet-black shawls, I was struck by the similarity with the Kalash tribal dress of Northern Pakistan. The costumes of Taquile and of the Kalash – former inhabitants of Nuristan – were both born of a fierce rugged landscape.
Héctor was sitting on a rounded step outside his ancestral home. From the condition of his fine clothing I could tell that he was a man of status. His white muslin shirt, black pants and two-tone vest were impeccably kept. But then, the sleeves of the shirt were neatly rolled up, exposing his dark, muscular forearms. Around his abundant waist was tied a chumpi, a woven belt, not unlike a Japanese obi. On Taquile Island belts have been important for centuries, embroidered with information about the agricultural and social calendar for the year to come. And on his head, Héctor wore a tomato-red pinta-chullo hat, its point flopped down like a jester’s crown, the sign of a married man.
Spread before him was a wak a loom, upon it a half-finished poncho. The old man stood up when he heard us approaching. He kicked on his rubber-tire sandals, wiped his nose with the side of his hand, and ducked his head low in respect.
“Que camine con fuerza y derecho toda su vida – may you walk tall and be strong your whole life,” he said, pressing his hand into mine. “You must sit on my right.”
As I thanked him, I studied Héctor’s face. It was a sea of elephant skin, wrinkled and heavy, with a crag of a nose running down the centre like an outcrop of granite. His lips were plum-red, his cheeks scattered with gray stubble. Both eyes were frosted with cataracts. Héctor was blind.
Ariadne stepped up to be introduced. The old man drew the lids across his opaque eyes, and held his breath. His expression seemed to sour.
“This is an acquaintance from France,” I said.
“Mal de ojo,” whispered the ancient. “Please tell her to leave us. She has mal de ojo, the Evil Eye.”
Ariadne began to laugh.
“He can’t even see me,” she said. “Poor old man!”
Héctor’s grandson stepped in.
“Grandfather, she has come from so far.”
The old man sta
red at Ariadne, his blind gaze unflinching.
“Her eyes are dangerous,” he said.
Unable to take the humiliation, Ariadne grabbed her holdall, and set off towards the dock. I didn’t try to stop her. But as I watched her stomp back through the fields, I reflected on Héctor’s comment. The Evil Eye was brought to the New World by the Spanish, who had adopted the custom from the Arabs centuries before. In an ultra-superstitious society like Peru, it fits in very well. Across much of the Latin continent, I’ve seen people warding it away. No one remembers that like smallpox, influenza or measles, it’s not native to the continent. As in any North African village or Middle Eastern town, Peruvian children are given amulets to protect them. Everyone is on the lookout for misfortune, ill-health – the signs that mal de ojo is watching them.
Héctor told his grandson to put away the weaving.
“Now the sun has passed the highest point,” he said, “we must not work, but drink.”
A bottle of chicha was brought out by Héctor’s daughter, a woman with a soft, innocent face.
“Respected Señor,” I said, as Héctor downed his third glass of the cloudy liquid. “I have come to your island, drawn by my fascination for los tejidos antiguos.”
The old man put down his glass and sniffed the air.
“The ancient textiles... all handmade textiles, have strength,” he said.
Héctor leaned back, slapped my knee with his hand, and urged me to drink some chicha.
“This will make you strong,” he said. “Strong like the condor.”
I declined the offer.
“Now, we make the fabric for the wrong reasons,” he mumbled. “These ponchos which we weave are made to be sold.” Héctor paused to sip his glass. “To be sold to people like you,” he said. “But when I was a child we understood that this cloth was sacred. We used to sacrifice it to the spirits.”
“Did you burn it... like the Incas did?”
“Yes, yes! We would light a sacred fire,” said the old man, “and throw upon it our most valued work.”
The Spanish invaders documented well how the Inca himself would wear new robes each day. The previous day’s costume would be committed to the flames. I gave thought to the Incas and their ancestors, for whom cloth was a cornerstone of culture. The link between ancient flight and textiles was as unlikely a link as I could imagine. But then, in my travels, I have found that the true answer often lies behind the most improbable door.
Héctor tugged at my arm.
“We no longer make such sacrifices,” he said. “That is why we are so poor.”
“Estimado Señor,” I said, “could I buy a piece of cloth for us to sacrifice?”
The old man’s blind eyes seemed to light up for a moment.
“A sacrifice,” he said gently. “To rid us of mal de ojo.”
An hour later Héctor was weighing a fine, hand-woven chumpi, a traditional belt, in his hands. Made from llama hair, dyed claret-red, and about six inches in width, it was embroidered with vertical stripes. A central band of hexagonal motifs ran down the length of the belt. I had paid one of Héctor’s neighbors an exorbitant sum for the item, and was beginning to regret the decision to burn it.
“It’s a fine one,” remarked Héctor, kindling a fire with some dry leaves and a knob of butter. “The sacrifice will bring us good fortune.”
Once the flames were licking the sticks like serpents’ tongues, Héctor began to sing. It was a solemn song. His daughter opened the windows of the two-room shack, perhaps so that his words could waft into the home. The neighbor’s children watched from a distance as Héctor, still singing, laid the chumpi on the flames.
Harsh, asphyxiating smoke rose from the fire.
“Breathe it,” said Héctor, inhaling.
I took a deep breath, and coughed violently, until I tasted blood at the back of my throat. The colors of the chumpi were washed by the flames – golden yellows and aurora reds.
“The textiles from Taquile have special strength,” said Héctor. “They can make a man invisible.”
“What do you mean?”
“Breathe it... taste what is secret.”
Again I breathed in, filling my chest with the llama hair smoke.
“Once more... breathe it once more...”
I was soon reeling, light-headed, my mind floating.
Héctor poured a few drops of chicha on the flames. More smoke spiralled upward, choking us.
“Nuestros antepasados podían volar – our ancestors flew,” he said.
I turned sharply to look at Héctor.
“They flew?”
“They used the magic of the textiles to fly.”
“How!”
“They wove wings, covered in stork feathers... then they flew to the gods – they were messengers.”
As we sat in the cloud of llama hair smoke, the chumpi still burning ferociously, I tried to make sense of the old man’s words. I thought of the Volador ceremony: of men striving to be airborne, to be in the realm of their gods. I thought, too, of the man I’d met at the top of Huayna Picchu. He had also spoken of messengers. Then I thought of William Deiches with his blueprints for a flying carpet, and about the bloodied feather with its triangular notches.
The smoke seemed to be getting denser.
“Did your ancestors run out of their houses and simply flap their wings to fly? Can you tell me about the Birdmen, Señor?”
Héctor poured a little more chicha onto the fire, before wetting his lips with the bottle’s rim. He shook his head from side to side.
“No, no, they never flew here,” he said. “Isla Taquile is too sacred a place. It was here that mankind was born.”
“Then where did they fly?”
“They journeyed onto the mainland,” he replied.
“At Puno, did they fly at Puno?”
Again, Héctor shook his head.
“From the towers, they flew from the towers.”
“Which towers? Where?”
The old man stirred the flames with his cane.
“They flew from the towers at Sillustani,” he said.
SIX
Tower-Jumpers
Ariadne regarded me with eyes fired by fury on the journey back across Titicaca to Puno. She felt certain that Héctor and I had dreamed up a scheme to keep secret knowledge from her. Gathering the bulk of her hair in her wiry hands, she teaseled it through her long ebony nails. I ignored her, hoping that she would latch onto another unsuspecting traveler.
I trawled my hand through the water and thought about the meeting with Héctor. What had he meant when he said that the textiles from Taquile could make one invisible? Perhaps flight and invisibility were the same experience to the Inca. The boatman jerked me back to the present. He was docking at the jetty and expected payment.
“Señor Héctor is an old fool,” he said as I gave him the fare.
I was taken aback by his remark.
“How do you know that I met Héctor?”
The boatman tied the tether to the jetty in a bowline.
“I am from Isla Taquile,” he said, as if answering my question. “I remember when the Señor was not blind, when he could dance and drink all night.”
He handed me my change.
“His feet no longer dance,” he went on, “but Héctor likes his chicha. It makes his tongue wag like a dog’s tail.”
To step ashore at Puno once again, was to leave the mysteries of the great lake to another boat load of travelers. I wondered whether I would ever stand on its shores again. A stray nerve nudged me in the spine. Somehow I felt certain that I’d never return to Titicaca. I left the boatman with a common phrase, “Hasta la vista”, until we see each other again. As he passed my canvas bag up to me he winked.
“You will not come back,” he said.
Over a dinner of ceviche de trucha, raw trout marinated in lemon juice, I explained to Ariadne that henceforth I would be traveling alone. I did not say it was because she was driving me mad, just
as she had done to Sven. Nor did I tell her that I was heading for Sillustani, or that I had already hired a llamateer.
Picking a bone from her mouth, the Frenchwoman said nothing. Perhaps she was thinking of her turbulent childhood, or of the invented pain which encircled her life. When she had finished eating, she removed something from her oversized handbag and placed it on the table. I recognized the tatty plastic wrapping.
“I wish you luck to find the Winged Ones,” she said tenderly. “I’m sure that you will.”
I thanked her. It was an awkward moment.
“You will need strength,” she said. “Make a broth with this and drink it at dawn.”
As Ariadne slid over the dried llama fetus, I felt a jab of pity in my ribs. What a tragedy, I thought, that such a proud person should believe in such nonsense.
*
Manuel arrived, as planned, before the first rays of almond light had broken the horizon injecting life into the Altiplano. His shadowy face was locked in a frown, even when he was laughing. He owned three llamas. They seemed uninterested in the twenty-mile walk north-west to Sillustani. Woken early by their master, they were ready to start grazing. Whipping the largest of the beasts with the back of his hand Manuel demonstrated their sturdiness.
“They’re strong as oxen,” he said, smirking.
“How long to the towers of Sillustani?”
The llamateer cleared his throat and spat at the dust.
“Four hours,” he said, “perhaps less.”
Taking the reigns of Julia, the smaller female, I walked at the rear.
I had left the dried llama fetus with Ricardo, as an extra amulet to bring good fortune to his home. He had put it on the mantelpiece, beside a figurine of Christ.
Most visitors to Sillustani take a taxi or tourist bus. I wanted to slow the pace, to deviate from the beaten track. I had much to think about along the way. Rather than arriving at any solid answers, my journey so far had been a string of irresolvable questions. Stumbling along with llamas would, I hoped, put me in the right frame of mind to notice a breakthrough when it came.