A Poet of the Invisible World (23 page)

“It's been years since anyone came to receive succor. It's not good for us. We're cut off from the pulse of life.”

“We need a good sickness to strike the village!” said Nouri.

“Don't say such a thing!” said Sheikh al-Khammas, laughing. “Allah hears!”

He reached for one of the pods that lay near his feet and gave it to Nouri, who cracked it open and added it to the fleet.

“Besides, there is a sickness in the village. A kind of blood fever. I've been told that the hospice is nearly full.”

“We should go and help them.”

“I agree. But I'm too old to travel down the mountain. And Abbas al-Kumar and Omar al-Hamid are useless with the infirm.” He paused. “I think you and Brother Shadow should go.”

Nouri was silent a moment. Then he nodded. “We'll head out this morning.”

An hour later, Nouri and Sharoud met at the front gate and began the long walk down the mountain to the village below. They'd circled each other for years now, each one insisting that time and the grace of Allah had melted the hardness between them, yet each fully aware that it wasn't so. So they walked in silence—Nouri trying to keep Sharoud's piety at the forefront of his mind, Sharoud trying to suppress the ever-disturbing thought of Nouri's ears.

When they reached the hospice—a flat-roofed building with a dormitory, a kitchen, and a small room for the gravely ill—they were welcomed in. Nouri was given a cloth, a bowl of water, and a bottle of vinegar to cool the patients' brows. Sharoud was given a pail of soapy water and a mop to keep the place clean. They worked all day at their separate tasks. Then they made their way back through the village and up the mountain to the lodge.

Over the following weeks, they met each morning and accompanied each other to the hospice. But whether they walked together in the wide morning light or the gathering shadows of dusk, they did not utter a single word. One day, however, about three weeks after they'd begun their labors, as they were heading down the mountain, Sharoud spoke.

“I need to stop for a drink of water,” he said. “There's a dwelling at the foot of the mountain. I've been there before.”

Nouri was so accustomed to the silence that always shrouded them on their walks that he was unable to respond. So he followed Sharoud to the foot of the mountain and then on to a small building that stood a few hundred paces from the path. When they reached it, Sharoud knocked loudly upon the door. There was a moment's pause. Then it opened, and a spindly man whose arms and hands and face were covered with dark smudges peered out.

“I've come for water,” Sharoud shouted at the man.

The man—whom Nouri assumed must be deaf—said nothing. Instead, he turned and began to make his way across the room. As he did, Nouri looked inside and saw that it was a workshop, the floors strewn with pieces of charred wood, the table scattered with hammers and ratchets and bowls filled with an assortment of colored powders. There was a strong smell of sulfur in the air, and the walls and ceiling were covered with dark smudges, just like the man. When the man reached the far wall, he fetched a pair of cups from a shelf. Then he hobbled back to where Nouri and Sharoud waited, gave them the cups, and closed the door.

Sharoud—who seemed to think nothing of the fellow's strange behavior—turned. “Follow me,” he said.

He led Nouri around the building to a well, where he drew fresh water to fill the cups. They drank. He refilled the cups and they drank again. Then he turned back to Nouri.

“We should return these to the fellow before we go.”

Nouri nodded, and reached out his hand. “I'll take them.”

Sharoud handed his cup to Nouri. Then they started back to the door.

As Nouri made his way over the dusty ground, he thought of the rheumy-eyed patients who awaited him at the hospice. There was one in particular who brought a smile to his lips: an old fellow with a kind, lumpy face who reminded him of Habbib. When Nouri sat pressing the moist towel against the fellow's forehead, he could see his old friend walking along the river, kneeling in the garden, telling him stories before bed. He was so lost, in fact, in this double layer of imagination—imagining himself at the hospice, where he would imagine himself at the lodge in Tan-Arzhan—he almost believed that he'd imagined it as well when a sound louder than anything he'd ever heard suddenly ripped through his ears and hurled him to the ground.

When Nouri came to, he felt the ground hard beneath him and the crumbling dirt stinging his eyes. But as he lay there, watching smoke pour through the open window, he felt a strange sense of calm. The feeling was undisturbed when the door flew open and the man stumbled out, gasping for air. But it was only when Nouri saw Sharoud running toward him—mouth open—seeming to cry out—that he realized he could not hear a thing.

*   *   *

FOR SOMEONE ACCUSTOMED
to a lifetime of intensified shouts, screams, sobs, wails, growls, yowls, yammers, whimpers, grunts, snarls, barks, bleats, bangs, clangs, squawks, tweets, thumps, thuds, yawps, yips, honks, snorts, hoots, whispers, buzzes, howls, hollers, hisses, cackles, screeches, moans, groans, clicks, clacks, whines, cheers, moos, coos, clinks, squeaks, jingles, jangles, booms, shrieks, yelps, yaps, whoops, bellows, woofs, quacks, trills, caws, clucks, whinnies, yells, and roars, the sudden absence of sound made it seem as if Nouri had been transported to another world. He watched as the spindly man staggered toward him. He watched as Sharoud knelt down and rolled him over onto his back. But without the crunch of the dirt beneath their feet or the sound of their voices, it all seemed like a dream.

As the smoke cleared, Sharoud helped Nouri to his feet. It was clear that no bones had been broken, but when the elder dervish asked him if he felt any pain, Nouri did not say a word. Sharoud realized that Nouri's hearing had been damaged, so he started to lead him off to the hospice to be examined. But Nouri knew that in order to be examined he'd have to remove his head cloth. So he raised his hands to his ears and shook his head.

“Please,” he said. “Just take me back to the lodge.”

Sharoud understood. So he took Nouri's arm and escorted him back up the mountain.

When Sharoud told Sheikh al-Khammas what had happened, the Sufi master wanted to inspect Nouri's ears. Nouri, however, would not allow his head cloth to be touched, and Sheikh al-Khammas—believing the Sufi's body to be a sacred vessel—respected his wishes. Instead, he fetched a sheet of paper and a pen and wrote a message to Nouri:

“God has placed his hands over your ears for a reason. He can remove them whenever he likes.”

As the days passed, however, Nouri's hearing didn't return. And while the loss only strengthened his other senses—the roses in the garden smelled sweeter—the sun felt warmer on his back—it was strange to no longer hear the wind rattle his window or the rain pelt the roof or Omar al-Hamid intone the call to prayer. After a lifetime of being pierced by the tiniest vibration, Nouri's world had gone utterly still.

Despite the perfect silence without, it became quickly apparent to Nouri that there was no silence within. For without the roaring and crashing of the day, he was unable to escape the relentless rumble of his thoughts. The concerns and regrets and complaints and ruminations were all there, whether he wished them to be or not. And it was only after weeks of trying to quell them, as he sat on the bench in the garden one morning, that he remembered the refuge of words.

It startled him when he realized how long it had been since he'd put pen to paper. He'd not written a word since he'd fled the brutal embrace of The Right Hand. But now, with the absolute silence without and the constant clamor within, he was again drawn to the tender act of giving shape to his perceptions. As he moved through the lodge, simple phrases would appear. As he toiled in the garden, they would extend themselves into verse. And as the weeks passed, it became more and more clear that he wished to preserve them. So he asked Sheikh al-Khammas for a quill and some paper and began writing them down.

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.