A Poet of the Invisible World (3 page)

Ten years old, brown as a chestnut, and missing most of his teeth, Ali Majid had appeared at the gates of the lodge with a note pinned to his sleeve that read:
“Did he not find thee an orphan and shelter thee?”
The brothers, of course, knew that the words were from the Qur'an. But they also knew that Ali Majid's mother was alive and selling her body nightly in the bazaar quarter, just south of the great mosque. They reasoned, however, that the boy would live a far better life with them than the one that he was living in the streets. So they ushered him in, pronounced him the kitchen boy, and returned to their prayers.

It did not take long to discover that the boy was a bit slow of mind. Hajid al-Hallal was convinced that his ability to stare off into the distance for long periods was a sign of spiritual grace, but the theory was quickly dismissed. He was quiet, though, and he scoured the pots with zeal, so like Habbib he became a part of their lives. Habbib, in particular, had a warm feeling for the boy. He reminded him of the monkey that crouched in the tree that stood beside the
tanoor
where he and his father had baked bread, so he gave him nuts and dried figs, which the boy gratefully gobbled down. It was therefore to Ali Majid that he turned when he realized that he would need help to care for the infant.

It was easy to find him. After years of having to shuffle out of bed during the night when his mother brought a client back to their room, Ali Majid had fallen into the habit of sleeping during the day. Each morning, therefore, after the cups and bowls and plates from the morning meal had been washed and dried and put away, he'd wander into the small garden along the eastern edge of the inner courtyard and slip into a delicious slumber. The brothers rarely disturbed him until it was time to prepare for the evening meal. So when he felt a pair of hands shake him awake, he was rather surprised.

“Habbib asked me to fetch you,” said Jamal al-Jani. “He says that he needs your help.”

Ali Majid could not imagine why the odd caretaker would need his help. But since there was a good chance he might offer him a handful of pistachios or some chopped dates, he rose to his feet, wiped the sleep from his eyes, and padded off to Habbib's cell.

When he reached it, he rapped loudly on the door. “It's Ali Majid!”

There was a momentary silence. Then Habbib opened the door and ushered him in. “You must swear you won't say a word to anyone about what I'm about to show you.”

Ali Majid swore. So Habbib led him over to the bed, drew back the covers, and revealed the child. Ali Majid was silent a moment. Then he stuck his finger in his ear.

“I like his hat,” he said.

Habbib sat him down and explained that the infant had fallen from the sky and that at least for the moment it was best that he remain a secret. Ali Majid did not question the matter. He merely asked Habbib what he wished him to do.

“The first thing is to feed him,” said Habbib. “But the brothers will know if we take anything from the larder.”

Ali Majid assured Habbib that he could steal almost anything, from the large green melons at the market to the succulent lamb shanks on Karim Rathwalla's grill.

“I don't think he's ready for lamb shanks,” said Habbib.

The boy tried to picture what a baby might eat. Rose petals? Dragonflies? Dew?

“What about milk?” said Habbib.

“Goat, sheep, or cow?”

Habbib chose goat and in less than an hour Ali Majid returned with a well-filled bucket. They poured some into a tiny bowl, raised the bowl to the baby's lips, and he drank it down.

Once the issue of nourishment had been solved, they turned to making a cradle for the child. Habbib explained that it had to be large enough to allow room to grow, deep enough to prevent falling out, and soft enough to provide soothing dreams. Ali Majid scampered off to the kitchen and found a small wooden crate, a large sack of rice, and a freshly washed dishcloth. And though Habbib worried that the crate was too rough, the rice too hard, and the cloth too riddled with holes, when they put them together and placed the baby inside he seemed to like it just fine.

The last thing Habbib asked for was a container in which he could bathe the little fellow. Ali Majid brought him an old soup pot, which he filled with warm water. Then he returned to the kitchen to perform his evening chores.

What with catching the infant and carrying him to the lodge and procuring the milk and the cradle and the pot, it had been a long day for Habbib. So he wished to bathe the child quickly, lay him in his cradle, and go to sleep. He removed the loose gown he wore and laid it on the floor beside the soup pot. Then he slowly began to unwind the slender ribbon of his head cloth. As the first layer came free, a slip of paper floated out and alighted, like a moth, in his lap. Despite the fact that Habbib had shown no spiritual leaning, Sheikh Bailiri had insisted that he learn to read. So he raised the slip of paper to his eyes and mouthed the words that were neatly written upon it:

In the name of Allah, I rain blessings upon you! I am Nouri Ahmad Mohammad ibn Mahsoud al-Morad. If you are reading these words, you have been chosen to protect me!

Habbib lowered the paper and gazed at the child. “Nouri Ahmad Mohammad ibn Mahsoud al-Morad,” he repeated. A great smile flashed across his face, and then he bowed his head. “I am Habbib.”

As he continued to unwind the ribbon of cloth, he wondered who'd written the note. When he removed the last layer, however, all thoughts disappeared. For that was when Habbib saw the four ears.

He felt no horror. He felt no disgust. He felt no impulse to carry the child back to the river and throw him in. The only thing he felt was a deep sense of wonder. And an overpowering feeling of love.

*   *   *

IF HABBIB HAD FELT THAT
Nouri should be kept a secret when he found him, he was certain of it when he discovered his four ears. With the help of Ali Majid, all traces of the child's existence were concealed. And while Sheikh Bailiri noted that Habbib seemed distracted, none of the brothers ever could have guessed that he harbored a magical child in his cell. For one thing, Nouri never cried; whether hungry or sleepy or soiled, he merely gazed out of his curious eyes at the world of Habbib's cell. For another thing, Habbib's simple role in the brothers' lives remained unchanged. He greeted them with the same good cheer in the morning. He swept the smooth tiles outside their cells with the same gentle care. Yet even Habbib should have suspected that Sharoud Ahmirzadah would pose a threat to his scheme.

If one believed the stories that circulated around town, Sharoud had been mean-spirited from the day he was born. According to his mother, when he was first raised to her breast, still sticky and gleaming, he clamped his newborn gums around her nipple so hard he drew blood. She assumed there was no malice in it—he was only three minutes old—but as the days passed, he repeated the action so often she took to squeezing her milk into a jug and spooning it into his mouth rather than letting him anywhere near her naked flesh. When he was old enough to walk, he took to breaking things, yet the damage he did was never random. He went straight for those objects his mother loved most: the earthenware bowl with the four dancing fish, the fluted salt cellar, the vase with the bright blue flowers along the rim. And rather than run off and hide when the deed was done, he would wait beside the wreckage, eyes wide, to observe her reaction when she found it.

His father fared no better. A simple cobbler, whose goods, if a bit rough-hewn, were at least watertight, he received word from his customers, around Sharoud's second birthday, that when they slipped their feet into their newly made shoes they encountered prickly pods, dried beetles, dead lizards, and a sticky mixture of acacia honey and curry powder. When he confronted Sharoud about the pranks, Sharoud just grinned. So the cobbler placed a padlock on the door to his workshop and kept his distance from the child.

Sharoud's parents hoped that when the boy began to speak he would explain what was troubling him. When words finally came, however, he had little to say. In time, they became used to the taut mornings, the hushed mealtimes, the attenuated evenings, and accepted the child as their lot. So they assumed that it was one of his dark jokes, on that late-spring day when Sharoud was ten, when he suddenly announced that he'd had a mystical vision. He stumbled into the house—his face even paler than usual—and claimed that as he was coming home he'd heard a voice say his name, and when he'd looked up, God—who was wearing a blue turban and sitting in a pear tree—had called out to him:

“Be careful, my son! Ill deeds accumulate! There are worlds beyond the one you see!”

Sharoud's mother had a hard time believing that God would appear in a pear tree—or anywhere, for that matter—to a boy like Sharoud. Yet it was quite unlike him to make any sort of reference to his errant behavior. When he further insisted that his future lay with “the sainted ones,” his parents didn't argue. They bundled him off to the dervishes and feasted for a week.

When Sharoud arrived at the gates of the lodge, the brothers, as ever, took him in. He was too young to become an initiate, but his conviction that his path lay with God was so fervent it could not be ignored. So they taught him the basic principles of the order, gave him a woolen
khirqa
to wear, and allowed him to participate in
zikr
, the devotional act in which the names of Allah are repeated to infuse the practitioner with the remembrance of God. If he was meant to become a Sufi, the rest would unfold over time.

Sharoud soon found that life in the order—the plain meals, the bare cell, the drab clothes—suited his sober temperament. Yet despite his newfound allegiance to God, his mean-spiritedness did not abate. He poured candle wax on the prayer rug. He carved epithets in the catafalque. He farted, quite loudly, during meals. When these deeds came to the attention of Sheikh Bailiri, the Sufi master responded by giving him a taste of his own tricks. When Sharoud greased the walkway between the cells with
ghee,
Sheikh Bailiri smeared his bed pillow with duck fat. When Sharoud sprinkled the yogurt with black mustard seeds, Sheikh Bailiri laced his soup with bitter cloves. And the farting matches made mealtimes nearly impossible.

Despite the ascetic lifestyle of the brothers, Sheikh Bailiri was quite rounded in his approach to daily life. For one thing, the complex of buildings where the dervishes ate and prayed and slept stood on the grounds of what had once been his family home. Nearly a half century before—after his mother and father had died, one after the other, from a fungal infection and a rancid goat stew—he'd set out upon the Sufi path. A few years later, when his teacher's dwelling had burned to the ground, he'd opened his home to his fellow dervishes to continue their prayers and their studies. In time, the order grew, attracting not only
murids
but wealthy lay members, who paid for their meals and clothes. When it became clear that the brothers were in need of more space, one of the latter offered to raze the simple home and build a mosque, cloister, and cells. Sheikh Bailiri consented, and the lodge was born.

After spending his entire life strolling its gentle grounds and reading beneath its leafy trees, Sheikh Bailiri could only think of the place as home. And since that home had been blessed with an abundance of nature's gifts, he could only encourage his fellow brothers to enjoy those gifts with gusto. The Sufi path was a path of service. Selflessness. Sacrifice. Poverty. But it was also a path of love, so when he assumed the role of
murshid
Sheikh Bailiri could never find fault with his disciples for celebrating life. That was why, when Sharoud arrived, Sheikh Bailiri decided to take the boy's antics in stride. He knew that a strong spirit was needed to follow the path. He knew that even good-hearted play could produce a glimpse of the divine. But Sharoud's pranks were more than just good-hearted play. They showed a lack of respect for Allah. So Sheikh Bailiri knew that he had to do whatever was needed to put a stop to them.

Eventually, Sheikh Bailiri's countertactics succeeded in ridding the lodge of Sharoud's mischief making. Sharoud, however, remained sullen, brooding, an emissary from the dark side of salvation. His voice quavered when he read verses from the Qur'an, but he was more moved by the sound of his voice quavering than by the meaning of the verses. His heart swelled when he knelt prostrate in the chapel, but he was more thrilled by the thought of how he looked than by any experience of the divine.

Sheikh Bailiri wasn't fooled. But he was convinced that the most frail, most infinitesimal seed of righteousness might someday sprout into a sturdy tree. So he did whatever he could to encourage the youth, and when Sharoud reached the age of eighteen, he allowed him to begin the period of penitential retreat that all true aspirants must undergo. Sharoud survived the trial. So they invested him with the mantle of the order and he became a dervish.

As the years passed, however, Sheikh Bailiri kept his eye on him. For if even the most pious of God's servants had to maintain a vigilant watch over themselves, keeping sentinel over Sharoud would require double duty.

*   *   *

FOR MONTHS, HABBIB TOOK
care not to reveal a trace of Nouri's presence at the lodge. Not a word passed between himself and Ali Majid. Not a pattern was interrupted nor a chore left undone. As time passed, however, and the child began to seem a natural part of his life, Habbib began to lower his guard. When Nouri was ready to begin eating solid food, he asked Salim Rasa to make the
aash-e aloo
less spicy. When the weather became too cold to lay the child's clothes on the banks of the river to dry, he began hanging them in the window of his cell. When these things were added to the amount of time he spent in his cell, it became clear to Sharoud that Habbib was hiding something.