The Calligrapher's Secret

by Rafik Schami

  “Well?” she suddenly interrupted his thoughts. “Have you fallen in love yet, or are you still living like a monk?”

  Salman smiled. “Even monks can’t resist love. I read that not so long ago,” he replied. “Her name is Noura. She’d keep any monk from his prayers.”

  “Oh, why not slow your tongue down – or are you still in the early phase of love, when you’re blinded by hormones?” responded Sarah, ready as ever with a reply.

  Salman shook his head. “I’m not exaggerating. Have you seen the actress Audrey Hepburn on film?”

  “Of course. I’ve seen Roman Holiday and Sabrina twice each, but what about her?”

  “Noura could be her twin sister.”

  “Really? Or are you kidding me?”

  “No, really,” he replied, and said no more for a moment. What Karam had said came back to his mind. “But what’s more important than her beauty is that I love her, I’d love her even if she had only one eye and a club foot. She lives in here,” and he tapped his breast. “She’s almost as wonderful as you,” he added.

  “And you’re the greatest charmer ever – how can anyone fail to like you?”

  “Oh, I could mention a few specimens of the human race who manage that. There are plenty of those in the café as well as the studio,” said Salman.

  “And what does this beauty of yours do?” asked Sarah, just as Said came into the yard, greeted them wearily and went straight to his apartment, where he had lived alone since the death of the widow who had adopted him.

  “She’s really a trained dressmaker, but her husband is a rich calligrapher, and he won’t let her work at her profession,” said Salman, unable to suppress a grin, because he could guess what Sarah was going to say next.

  “Salman, Salman, what on earth are you doing? Is she married to your master or to one of his enemies?”

  “She’s his wife. And if I were to love the wives of all his enemies I’d need a harem to keep them in. He has many, many enemies.”

  “Oh, my dear boy, how you’ve changed. You talk like a journalist,” she marvelled.

  “I haven’t changed myself, it’s love that has changed me, and I don’t care in the least that she’s a Muslim.”

  “Oh no! What concerns me is to make sure that you don’t end up lying in the gutter with a hole in your head one of these days. Telling you to keep your fingers off the woman would be stupid, because your fingers can’t help it. But do be careful! I shall pray to the Virgin Mary every night before I close my eyes to protect you,” she said, caressing his head, and then she stood up. She and her mother, who was already waiting, were going to visit a sick aunt.

  “Like your May bug long ago,” whispered Salman, but Sarah couldn’t hear him anymore.

  On Wednesday he was to take Hamid his lunch for the last time that week, because his master was going to the north of the country for three days on Thursday. Salman told Noura that they could meet at Karam’s house, where he spent all day alone on Fridays working.

  “We can spend all day together without being disturbed,” he said hopefully, in pleading tones.

  She got him to give her Karam’s address, writing down the bus lines and tram lines she should take, and kissed him goodbye. “Shall I bring us something to eat?” she asked. He said no. There was always plenty of food in Karam’s house.

  “Just bring me yourself, because I’m hungry for you,” he said, kissing her. She laughed. If anyone were to ask him what was the most beautiful thing in the world, he would say without a moment’s hesitation that it was Noura’s gurgle of laughter.

  She gave him the matbakiyya with the food in it, and a bag containing an ironed shirt and clean socks for Hamid. He had an important appointment to meet an influential scholar that evening, and there wasn’t time for him to come home first.

  “I’ve thought of something else,” said Salman as he was about to go. Noura laughed, because she knew his tricks by now.

  “Yes, that it’s forever since we kissed,” she said, imitating his voice.

  “No, seriously. Do you know anything about calligraphy?” he asked.

  “Only a little. But Hamid has a very good library. Can I look anything up for you?”

  “Who is Ibn Muqla? All the calligraphers revere him. Your husband speaks of him as if he were a saint. And what kind of a society is it that your husband belongs to? But you mustn’t ask him that yourself, because it’s a secret society. I overheard him making a telephone call.”

  “I don’t know anything about a secret society. Hamid and a secret society? That’s so unlikely! But I’ll try to find out something about that, too, and have something to tell you when we meet on Friday,” said Noura, giving him a long kiss on the lips. “Why do you always taste so good?”

  “Samad’s teaching me the art of reflection in calligraphy at the moment, and when I first kissed you all your fragrance was reflected in my mouth. You’re tasting yourself,” he said confidently, and he left. A boy had made himself comfortable on the carrier of the bike, but when he saw Salman coming with the matbakiyya he jumped off and ran away.

  28

  Noura hadn’t been out of the house so early since her schooldays as she was that Friday. She hesitated for a long time, wondering whether to wear a veil for the sake of caution or not, and decided against it.

  A strong wind was blowing dust, scraps of paper and leaves along the road ahead of her. Pigeons and sparrows flew low through the streets. Was she a sparrow or a pigeon, she asked herself, and didn’t know why she wanted to be neither one nor the other. A woman neighbour had once said she thought Noura was more like a cactus than any member of the animal kingdom. “I’m the Rose of Jericho,” whispered Noura. The wind has its way with the desert rose for years, and then it thinks it has mastered the Rose of Jericho. But the first drop of rain reminds the rose that it was once a little green oasis.

  Her husband had better look out for himself. She had already tasted that first drop of water.

  At six-thirty she caught the bus at the stop opposite her street. The face of Damascus was innocent at that early hour of the morning. Even the Damascenes who were out and about still looked sleepy and peaceful as small children. She saw Tamer the beggar, whom she hadn’t met for a very long time. People said he had suddenly disappeared, but there he was before her all at once, alive and well, washed and with his hair combed. His face was still wet and his hair was dripping. Tamer played his nay flute outside Hejaz railway station. He played beautifully; he had been a highly respected member of the Syrian Radio orchestra until something threw him off track. Now he lived in the streets.

  When Tamer played, if you closed your eyes while you listened you heard the wind singing in the desert. This morning the melancholy sound of his reed flute made its way to her even through the racket of a bus full of schoolchildren.

  She suddenly thought of her diary. She would certainly have written about Tamer the beggar if she hadn’t burnt the exercise book a week ago. Since Salman’s first kiss she had written in the diary only occasionally, and if she did she said nothing clear and direct. No one else must know the secret of her love for Salman. And she was no longer interested in writing about her husband, so she wrote only about her own emotional turmoil. Again and again she had written that she was determined never to see Salman again. But as soon as it was eleven o’clock, she found herself hoping he would arrive a little earlier than usual today. An animal force drew her heart to him. Not only did she feel a deep desire to protect Salman, as if he were a vulnerable child, the smell of him, the taste of his mouth, and the look in his eyes also roused her to physical craving such as she had never known before, had never even heard or read about. She kept the secret to herself. There was no need even for him to know that more than once, on their very first kiss at meeting, she had been transported to the Paradise of pleasure and lingered there for a long time in ecstasy. And afterwards she would swear to herself, yet again, to call a halt to their love. Her reason warned her than an affair
between a Muslim married woman and a Christian could end only in catastrophe. And where else was this love going to lead them? But that question in Noura’s mind spoke as softly as a little girl might ask for the time of day in all the tumult of a wild folk-dance.

  She had so often prepared a sensible conversation with him in which she would calmly and objectively set out all the reasons against that animal longing, but as soon as he knocked on the door she changed her mind. She decided to tell him later, when they were lying side by side, relaxed and mellow with exhaustion. Yes, that was the moment for it. But when the time came she had forgotten all about it: “forgotten on purpose,” as she wrote in her diary. However, when the diary did nothing but torment her, like a pitiless mirror of the vows she had made and failed to keep, and she couldn’t help realizing that, although she did not mention Salman by name, anyone would recognize him after reading two lines, she decided it was foolish of her to put him in mortal danger. She burned the exercise book in a copper bowl and sprinkled its ashes round a rose-bush.

  In the bus, she couldn’t help smiling at all her childish decisions to give up seeing Salman. She reached her destination after almost an hour, pressed down the handle of the garden gate, as Salman had told her to do, and walked quickly to the house. Suddenly the front door opened. Noura was scared to death, but Salman smiled at her and drew her inside the house. She stumbled into his arms, and before she could even get her breath back she sank into his deep kiss.

  “Breakfast is served, madame,” he said, taking her coat and putting it over the chair in his room.

  She was deeply moved. There was a lovingly prepared breakfast waiting in the kitchen: jam, cheese, olives, fresh bread, and tea. All very modest, but it was the first time in her life that a man had made breakfast for her.

  Seeing Noura’s emotion, Salman felt awkward. There was so much he wanted to say to her, but all he could get out was the silliest possible phrase: “Let’s eat!” Years later he was still annoyed with himself because, instead of any of the poetic opening remarks he had carefully prepared, that prosaic “Let’s eat!” was all that remained.

  Later, Salman didn’t know how many times they had made love that morning. Finally he kissed Noura once again. “If I am ever asked whether I believe in Paradise, I’ll say I not only believe in it, I’ve been there already.” He caressed her face, she kissed the tips of his fingers.

  When she got out of the bed and put on her wristwatch, she whistled silently through her teeth. “Four hours of love, Madame Noura, congratulations on your long stay in the Paradise of the senses,” she told herself ironically.

  “You’re not going now, are you?” asked Salman in concern.

  “No, no, but I’d like to be dressed before I read you something very sad,” she said. “I can’t read something like that lying down, and certainly not naked or in night-clothes. I get that from my father. He was always very correctly dressed when he read, as if he were going to meet the author of the book or the hero of the story. And when I’ve finished reading it, I’ll go back to bed and we can make love as wildly as a couple of monkeys.”

  Salman jumped up. “Then I must get up properly too. I’m the host, and it’s not right for a guest to sit there reading in an elegant dress while her host lounges around stark naked.”

  He quickly dressed, tidied his bed, and sat down opposite her.

  “Well, I couldn’t find out anything about the secret society. You must have misunderstood, or maybe you got something mixed up. My father didn’t know anything about it either. I pretended to him that I’d read a journalist’s story about a secret society of calligraphers. He told me not to take journalists so seriously, because it must be a tough job having to write news stories every day, and a newspaper that didn’t exaggerate would very soon fail. However, I did find out something about Ibn Muqla. It’s a very sad story that my husband once wrote and published in a journal. I copied it out for you, all I’ve done is to convert Islamic dates into Christian dates. Would you like to read the story yourself, or shall I read it aloud?”

  “Read it aloud to me, please,” said Salman.

  “Ibn Muqla,” she began to read, “was born in the year 885 or 886 in Baghdad. No one knows which for certain, because he was born into a very poor family. He died in July 940, and the date is known so precisely because he died while he was being held in prison, and because he was famous at that time throughout the entire Arab and Islamic world. His name itself is a curiosity. Muqla, a poetic word for ‘eye,’ was the affectionate nickname given to his mother by her father, because he particularly loved this daughter. She married a poor calligrapher, and the family was then called not after her husband or his clan, but simply after her, which was rare in Arabia at that time and still is. Muqla’s children and grandchildren were all calligraphers, but without a shadow of doubt Muhammad Ibn Muqla was the most famous of them all.

  He was the greatest Arabic calligrapher of all time, an architect of script. He not only developed and improved several styles, he was also the first to draw up a doctrine of the dimensions of written characters, keeping them in harmony and symmetry with each other. His proportional doctrine holds good to this day, and can easily be used to check whether the proportions of a work of calligraphy are correct or not.

  Alif, the Arabic letter A, is a vertical stroke, and Ibn Muqla chose it as the criterion for all written characters. Ever since then, every calligrapher has begun by establishing the length of the Alif in his chosen script. The calculation is worked out by means of vertically placed dots. The size of the dot, in turn, depends on the pen that is used and is made by pressing the pen down on the paper. All the other letters, whether horizontal or vertical, are adjusted to the size worked out by Ibn Muqla and determined by a certain number of dots. In addition, the curves of many letters lie along a circle with a diameter corresponding to the length of the Alif. Maintaining these proportions is like maintaining the rhythm in a musical composition. It is the only way to make the script harmonious, so that it becomes music for the eye. After years of practice, every master calligrapher automatically knows the rules. However, the dots always allow a quick check of whether the proportions are correct.

  Ibn Muqla was a gifted mathematician, calligraphic scholar, and natural scientist. He also studied the works of both theologians and atheists, writers like Ibn al-Rawandi, Ibn al-Muqaffa’, al-Rasi, and al-Farabi. Most of all, he was fascinated by the polymath scholar al-Jahiz. But unlike al-Jahiz, Ibn Muqla enjoyed being close to the rulers of his time. Al-Jahiz could not endure more than three days at the court of Caliph al-Ma’moun, the great patron of science and literature, son of the legendary Haroun al-Rashid.

  Ibn Muqla was First Vizier – the equivalent of a prime minister today – to three caliphs in succession. But his proximity to them, which he sought again and again, was his undoing in the end.

  Ibn Muqla realized that Arabic script was not of divine origin, but the work of the human hand. He was fascinated by its beauty, but he also recognized its weaknesses. So at quite an early date he began devising ways to introduce cautious reforms into the alphabet, the source of the script itself. He experimented, made notes, and waited for a suitable moment. At this time Baghdad was the capital of an international empire, the centre of the secular and religious power of Islam.

  Many calligraphic scholars and translators of Ibn Muqla’s day criticized the lack of letters that would allow them to reproduce, in Arabic, certain sounds and names from other countries and other languages. This criticism encouraged Ibn Muqla to go further. And now his study of natural science helped him to find the crucial idea. He knew, of course, that religious fanatics regarded Arabic script as sacred because the word of God was written down in Arabic in the Quran. Yet he also knew that Arabic script had been reformed several times already.

  The most radical change had been introduced, also in Baghdad, almost a hundred years before Ibn Muqla’s birth. Up to the time of that reform the Arabic language had no letters with dots,
and since many letters resembled each other uncertainty, misunderstanding, and misinterpretation were always likely to occur during the reading process, even when scholars read aloud. Several minor reforms had been tried in the attempt to improve Arabic script, but the greatest and most radical reform came twelve centuries ago.

  Fifteen letters, over half the Arabic alphabet, had dots situated above or below the characters added to them. As a result, mistakes in reading could be almost eliminated. At the time Caliph Abdul-malik bin Marwan and al-Hajjaj, the bloodthirsty governor of his eastern province, stifled all the conservative voices that were raised against any kind of reform. The caliph had the Quran recopied in the reformed script, and after that anyone could read the holy book without making mistakes.

  Religious texts were not the only kind to gain in clarity. The Arabic language of poetry, science, and everyday life also became clearer and more precise. But without the strong hand of the caliph, such a step could never have been taken.

  Ibn Muqla knew that. And he himself needed the support of an enlightened and farsighted caliph to push through the great reform of Arabic script that was now overdue.

  Ibn Muqla loved calligraphic script like his own child. He gave all he had in its service, and in the end he lost everything.

  Did he want to gain power, as his enemies claimed, when they published hostile accounts of seditious plans, filling page after page with their flimsy reasoning?

  No, Ibn Muqla had already achieved so much before he introduced the radical step leading to reform and to his ruin.

  He was tutor to the last Abbasid caliph, al-Radi Billah, and taught him philosophy, mathematics, and language. Ibn Muqla was to the caliph what Aristotle had been to Alexander the Great, but Caliph al-Radi Billah lacked the great soul of the Macedonian conqueror of the world.