A Poet of the Invisible World

by Michael Golding

  He wrote. And he wrote. And he wrote. And he wrote.

  When he was finished with a page, he would place it in the wooden chest beneath his window, where the winter blankets—which he unfolded and laid beneath his bed—had been stored. Then he would reach for the quill and the next sheet of paper and continue writing. It was like traveling back to his cell in Tan-Arzhan or the Court of the Speckled Dove. This time, however, he did not write to celebrate the roses or the sunset or anyone’s arms, but to stave off the voices inside his head.

  There were times when Nouri wondered if Sharoud, in the deepest part of his being, had known that the explosion would occur, had coaxed him to the workshop in the hope that he would lose his hearing—perhaps even lose his life. What he did not realize was that Sharoud wondered the very same thing. And that even he could not see into his own heart deeply enough to know the truth.

  * * *

  IT TOOK TIME FOR THE BROTHERS to get used to the fact that Nouri now lived in a world of silence. If Abbas al-Kumar asked him to pass the lentils, he would sit there as if nothing had been said. If Omar al-Hamid called his name while he was tending the roses, he would not turn around. Eventually, however, Nouri learned to discern what the others were saying by the movements of their lips, and it was not long before he was able to engage in conversation. So in time his inability to hear simply became another fact of life at the mountain lodge.

  Despite the pleasure it gave him to write, Nouri was careful to shield the activity from the eyes of the brothers. He’d learned the danger of being praised for his verse, and he did not wish to lose what he’d struggled so hard to reach by seeming to boast of what he knew. Yet the daily act of transforming the world into words had a curative power. It stilled his mind. It allowed him to bear the silence that surrounded him like a fortress. So he continued on, taking pains to keep his writing hidden from sight.

  Sharoud and Abbas al-Kumar and Omar al-Hamid had no idea that Nouri was writing. They noticed the extra time he spent in his cell, but they assumed the sudden silence he’d been thrust into had increased his desire to be alone. Only Sheikh al-Khammas seemed to understand the truth. For one thing, Nouri came to his cell over and over to get paper and ink. But more than that, as Nouri floated from room to room, Sheikh al-Khammas could see the words taking shape behind his eyes. The Sufi master would never have brought the subject up, however, had not fate—that old juggler—arranged for him to stumble upon the verses one day.

  It was a quiet morning, even for the mountain lodge. Abbas al-Kumar had gone to town to buy provisions. Omar al-Hamid had wandered high into the mountains. Nouri and Sharoud had ventured off to their respective work at the hospice. So Sheikh al-Khammas was alone, and as he moved through the empty halls, it seemed as if the world had completely disappeared. He ate his breakfast in his cell, taking pleasure from the shapes the rising sun cast through the window. He sat in the garden and listened to the wind stir the argan tree. It was a cold morning, and as the day waxed, the chill in the air did not recede. And that was when Sheikh al-Khammas knew that winter was on its way.

  He’d have to make sure that the larder was stocked with dried beef and chickpeas and grains. He’d have to check that the windows were sealed tight and that the brothers kept warm at night. And since the last of these tasks was the only one he could take care of alone, he decided to fetch the winter blankets from the chest beneath the window of Nouri’s room.

  He would never have thought to invade Nouri’s privacy. But when he knelt down and raised the lid of the wooden chest he was so surprised to find the stack of written pages he could not help but pull one out and begin to read. Once he’d read one, he could not help but read another. And another. And another. Until he sank to the cold tiles and read them all.

  When he’d finished, he gathered the pages, placed them back in the chest, and lowered the lid. Then he rose, brushed the creases from his robe, and continued on with his day. That evening, however, when Nouri returned, Sheikh al-Khammas went to see him.

  “May I enter?” he asked, as he stood at the open door.

  “Of course,” said Nouri.

  The Sufi master stepped into the room. “I must apologize to you.”

  “For what?”

  “I came to your cell today while you were gone. My intention was to fetch the blankets. But I found your verses.”

  “And you read them?”

  “I didn’t mean to. But once I began reading, I couldn’t stop. You have a gift, Nouri.”

  “They’re a distraction,” said Nouri. “A diversion. That’s all.”

  Sheikh al-Khammas shook his head. “They’re a sign that you need to empty your cup.” He gazed into Nouri’s eyes. “I think it’s time that you took on a disciple.”

  Nouri furrowed his brow at the Sufi master’s words. “But who would I teach? No one has come to join the order in years.”

  “He will appear. If he’s what you need, I assure you. He will appear.”

  Nouri knew better than to question his teacher. So he thanked him for his words, and Sheikh al-Khammas left the room.

  For a long while after the Sufi master had gone, Nouri stood at the window of his cell watching the light fade from the sky. He knew that what Sheikh al-Khammas had said was true: at a certain point, the only way to progress on the spiritual path was to find a pupil. But Nouri could not imagine anyone arriving at the lodge to receive instruction. Especially from him.

  Twenty

  The signs were there even before Ryka was born. Only weeks after he’d appeared in his mother’s womb, still more amphibian than childlike, the roses on the north side of the house began to wither, while those on the south side began to bloom. At three months, the throbbing in his father’s left leg suddenly switched to his right. And just before his mother gave birth, the rust-colored hen stopped laying her eggs in the backyard and began depositing them beside the front gate.

  Still, no one connected these things to the frail child who arrived one late-summer morning. Neither did they connect them to the strange bluish cast to his skin, which caused the midwife to cross the village to alert her cousin, who carved headstones, to the prospect of new business. As the day was quite warm, it was clear that the child wasn’t cold. And though his mother feared she’d eaten too many of the deep purple figs her husband had filched from their neighbor’s tree, she knew the moment she held her new child in her arms that something was wrong with the inner workings of his body.

  It was therefore almost a relief—after an hour of thumping and poking and pressing his ear against the child’s springy chest—when the doctor who’d come to inspect him explained that the architecture of his infant heart was reversed, that the slick tubes and soft, spongy chambers were transposed, that his blood was shuttled along a different pathway to the lungs, depleting it of its rich, reddening color. All Ryka’s mother knew was that her impulses toward the child were not what she had expected. When he cried, rather than scoop him up, she would move farther away. When she held him to her breast, rather than swoon, she would cringe. And since his father had no use for a boy who was fragile and vaguely blue, Ryka’s childhood was lonely, his heart marked less by its strange design than by having a mother and father who disliked having him around.

  As time passed, the child grew into a delicate youth with a faraway look in his eyes. The other children in the village kept their distance—partly because he couldn’t join in their games and partly because they were confused by his strange, distant manner. There was nothing sinister about him, like Sharoud, yet not a single person in the village had ever seen him smile. On top of this was the issue of his spells: at various intervals he would become light-headed and dizzy and have to squat down low to the ground. The bluish tint to his skin increased, and by the time he rose back to his feet, he’d scarred the surface of the day.

  One morning, around the time of his eighth birthday, he scarred more than that. He was heading to the pump to fetch water for the baking. It was a gray day and h
is mother had decided to make some khabisa, whose nutty fragrance always cheered her up. As Ryka walked along, there wasn’t a sign of trouble. But a few paces from the well he felt the constriction in his chest and the spinning in his head and, before he could squat down, he toppled to the ground. Had the rake been just a few fingers to the left, it would have gouged out his eye. Instead, one of its tines tore a small patch of flesh from his right cheekbone. When he stumbled back to the house, his face streaming with blood, his mother was so shaken she poured vinegar, instead of rosewater, into the khabisa. But she salved and bandaged the wound and when the cloth was removed, a week later, Ryka was graced with a tiny square just beneath his left eye.

  Although the spells continued, there was no pattern to their coming. Sometimes he had two or three in the same week. Other times, months would pass without an occurrence. Since he was not made for running or jumping or climbing, he devoted himself to books. And the more he read, the more he felt sure that another life waited for him, away from the heat and the crushing disinterest of his parents.

  One afternoon, when he was fourteen, he was sent to market, and as he was standing at the cheese sellers’ stall he overheard a pair of men talking about the small band of Sufis who made their home in the clouds. Their description of the simple lodge and the ascetic brothers was enthralling to Ryka. So he decided that when he turned eighteen he would go to join them. He spent the intervening years reading book after book about the spiritual path. Yet he sensed no words could ever convey what real practice was like.

  On the morning of his eighteenth birthday, he awoke early and told his parents of his plans. And though time and the sun had tempered the bluish cast of his skin to a muted gray, they were happy to let him go. So he gathered a few things into a satchel and headed off to climb the long, dusty path to the mountain lodge.

  It was almost dusk when he finally reached the Sufi dwelling. The door was open, so he stepped inside and wandered down the long corridor until he reached the kitchen, where Sheikh al-Khammas was seated at the table shelling beans. When their eyes met, a look of recognition passed between them. And even before he could say why he was there, Sheikh al-Khammas made a gesture for him to sit.

  “It’s a long walk,” he said. “Even the most devoted of Allah’s servants can flag from the exertion.”

  Ryka stepped into the room and sat down on the bench opposite Sheikh al-Khammas. The Sufi master reached for an empty bowl and filled it with half of the remaining beans. Then they worked together in silence as the light slowly faded from the sky.

  There were words, of course, that would need to be exchanged.

  “Where have you come from?”

  “What do you seek?”

  “What will I have to give up?”

  But Ryka knew that at last he’d found a place where the rules of life, like his fragile heart, were reversed. And Sheikh al-Khammas knew that Nouri’s pupil had finally arrived.

  * * *

  WHILE RYKA WAS GETTING READY to climb the mountain, Nouri was deeply immersed in his writing. Day after day he gave birth to new poems—refining each image, sculpting each phrase, stilling the random chatter in his head, and drawing nearer to God. He waited for nothing and nothing waited for him. The silence engulfed him. Consumed him. Protected him. He ate and he wrote and he prayed and he wrote and he watered the roses and he sat in the garden and he went to the hospice to bandage the wounded and cool the feverish brows of the infirm. And he wrote.

  Sharoud, on the other hand, writhed. For despite his long years of penance, he could not free himself from the dark thoughts he harbored toward Nouri. He’d tried to keep them hidden away, like a patch of brindled skin beneath his tunic. He’d refrained from telling the brothers about Nouri’s ears, convinced that his efforts to remain silent were proof that he’d mastered his ill feelings. He told himself that the distance he kept from Nouri was a sign of respect. He told himself that he was pleased—even grateful—that the winds of fate had blown him to the lodge. When the explosion at the workshop occurred, however, it brought Sharoud’s antipathy to the surface. Nouri’s beauty—which had only deepened over the years—made Sharoud feel enraged at the thought of his own sunken cheeks and small, beady eyes. Nouri’s grace—which was now counterbalanced by a gentle wisdom—made his own awkward movements seem grotesque. And the beatific state that Nouri seemed to have entered when the clatter of the world had been removed evoked a deep feeling of envy. So what began as disgust, and fanned into outrage, and was covered over by a grudging acceptance, finally burst into full-blown hatred. Which Sharoud knew was utterly intolerable in a servant of Allah.

  He could not say where the needle had come from. Perhaps it had fallen from Abbas al-Kumar’s lap as he sat in the garden mending his tunic. Perhaps it had dropped from the hem of Omar al-Hamid’s robe. He only knew that when he saw it—glinting in the grass like the dagger of a tiny djinn—it offered a pathway to redemption. So he slipped it into the folds of his cloak and carried it to his cell.

  That night, when the brothers had retired to their separate chambers, Sharoud placed the needle in the flame of the squat taper beside his bed and jabbed it into the sole of his foot. The following night, he inserted it into the palm of his hand. The night after that, he pierced the tender flesh between his hip bone and ribs.

  For his spiritual salvation hung in the balance.

  And he knew that his time was running out.

  * * *

  WHEN SHEIKH AL-KHAMMAS gathered the brothers in the meeting hall to introduce Ryka, they each had a different response. Since Abbas al-Kumar now found it hard to crouch down to the ground, he hoped the youth might take over the weeding. Since no one had appeared at their door since Nouri’s arrival in a basket of laundry, Omar al-Hamid was relieved that the order would continue on after his death.

  “He’s not very strong—” said Abbas al-Kumar.

  “But he’s stronger than we are—” said Omar al-Hamid.

  “And he’s young—”

  “Which is refreshing—”

  “And which may attract others—”

  “If it’s the will—”

  “Of Allah.”

  Sharoud felt the youth lacked the vigor and strength that were required of a true Sufi. Yet he could not deny that his arrival brought new life to the mountain lodge. Only Nouri had no thoughts when he gazed upon the new aspirant. For the tender glance and the slender frame and the unusual color of his skin—was it slate?—was it ash?—brought a perfect stillness to his mind. He could only stand there and listen as Sheikh al-Khammas explained that, while Ryka was not ready to be inducted into the order, he was to be treated as a fellow traveler on the path. He would wash the floors. He would weed the garden. He would help Abbas al-Kumar and Sheikh al-Khammas prepare the meals. And he would study with Nouri the basic tenets and principles of Sufism.

  To Ryka, it was like stepping into a strange and wonderful new world. He was given the room next to Nouri’s, which, though smaller, had the same majestic views of the open sky. And while it was true that he lacked the robustness of a typical boy of eighteen, he made up for it with the strength of his devotion to his tasks. He washed the floors until they gleamed. He removed each weed the very moment that it appeared. And though he curdled his first batch of yogurt and charred a week’s worth of naan, he was soon indispensable to Abbas al-Kumar.

  It wasn’t until a fortnight had passed that the youth had his first lesson with Nouri. He was a bit nervous about it. He’d been told that Nouri had lost his hearing and that he conversed with the others by reading lips. But the rest of the brothers were so old, it seemed to Ryka that they might have studied with the Prophet himself. So he knew that if he was going to have a friend in the order, it would be Nouri.

  For Nouri’s part, he’d tried not to think too much about the task Sheikh al-Khammas had set before him. He assumed that the youth needed time to settle into his new life, and that he’d come knocking at his door when he was ready to begin his s
tudies. He felt utterly unprepared, however, when he turned to find him standing in the doorway.

  “I’ve come for my first lesson,” said Ryka.

  Nouri studied the young fellow’s lips as he formed the words. “Let’s go outside,” he said. “We can sit on the terrace.”

  He rose from his desk, crossed the room, and led Ryka down the hallway and out to the small bench that was carved into the side of the mountain. As they sat, he could feel that the boy was no more ready to learn the secrets of the Sufi life than he was ready to teach them. So they’d have to find their way forward together.

  “What brings you to us?”

  Ryka thought carefully before answering. “Absence.”

  “Absence?”

  “From others. From myself.” He brushed a few strands of hair from his forehead. “I’m tired of feeling I don’t belong.”

  “In your village? In your family?”

  He paused. Then he shook his head. “In the world.”

  A hawk flew by and they both turned to follow it as it vanished into the distance. When they turned back to face each other, Nouri noticed the small scar beneath Ryka’s left eye.

  “Where have you studied?”

  “I haven’t,” said Ryka. “I’ve read a lot. But I have no formal training.”

  Nouri nodded. “Then you’ll have to begin now.”

  He told Ryka to return to his chores and then meet him again the same time the following day. Then he went to his room to consider the complex of feelings that stirred inside him. He knew he could explain the rules of the Sufi path. The question was whether he could impart their inner meaning to Ryka. So much of what he’d come to understand had been revealed through pain. What did the words really mean without the struggle that had etched them into his heart? But perhaps it was his role to lay down a foundation for the youth, as Sheikh Bailiri had done for him. And perhaps Ryka had already suffered in ways he was unaware of.

  The following morning, Ryka was seated on the bench when Nouri arrived. Nouri was now nearly forty, but when he looked at the youth he could not help but picture himself at that age: lost in the haze of Abdallah’s pipe and the whirling madness of the seaside town. The boy who sat before him seemed a good deal wiser. So Nouri shook the thoughts from his head and joined him on the bench.