In Arabian Nights (33 page)

'At that point the old man laughed and laughed and laughed
and laughed. He laughed so much that all the animals in the
forest called out in fear. "My boy, if you had taken the time to
look at me," said the sage, weeping tears of laughter, "you would
have seen that I am not wearing any shirt at all."

'The young man's eyes widened as he realized it was true. He
was about to say something, but the sage was unwinding his
turban. He unwound coil after coil, laying the red cloth on the
carpet. It was only as he got to the end that the man realized
the truth: that the sage was none other than the wise man who
had sent him on his journey in the first place.

'"Tell me, O Master," said the young man, "why didn't you inform
me you were the happiest man in the world at the start? It would have saved
me a lot of time and bother." "Because," said the sage, "for you to be calmed,
you needed to experience certain things, see other things and meet various
people. I knew it would be a long process, but if I had told you at the beginning
what it would involve, you would have run away and would never have been cured."'

When he had finished the story, I thanked the police officer.
Then I sat in silence. He didn't try to speak, as if he understood
that the tale was working away at me. I heard the door of the
apartment open and close, and knew I was alone. I felt calm,
very calm, and, in a way I could not quite fathom, I felt more
complete. I just sat there, my mind racing. Then something
happened that I find awkward to explain. My chest began
to warm up. It got warmer and warmer until it was no longer
warm, but quite hot. My mouth had been closed. It was forced
open and a blast of air was sucked in. There was nothing I could
do about it. My eyes were wide open, my hands bright red.

And all the while 'The Happiest Man in the World' worked
away. Like a bank robber cracking a safe, it twisted an invisible
dial in my chest, until it had gained entry to my heart. I still do
not understand how it worked or quite what happened. But I
felt the story penetrate deep through the layers of tissue and
muscle with ingenious ease.

I could feel it in there, safe in its own sanctuary. At the same
time I knew the story had always been there, been with me. It
was lunacy, of course, for there are so many stories in the world
and such slim probability of finding the one in your heart.

As I was going over the odds stacked against fortune, the door
to the apartment opened again. It was the policeman. I had quite
forgotten I was taking refuge in his home. He had bought
kebabs. The room filled with the aroma of grilled lamb.

'The story is inside me,' I said as he opened the package.

He nodded very gently and smiled.

'It's inside us all,' he said.

Once back in Casablanca I rooted through my books for any
mention of the streams. There were none, not even in
Westermarck's thousand-page magnum opus,
Ritual and Belief
in Morocco
. I strolled out into the garden at dusk and petted my
dogs, who were lazing on the lawn. The air was perfumed with
datura flowers, the sky still and steel-blue. Marwan had
just arrived for his shift. He clambered through a hole in the
hibiscus hedge and shook my hand. I wished his family well.

'Thanks be to God,' he said. 'We can afford my wife's cataract
operation now. She will see clearly again.' He paused for half a
breath. '
Inshallah
, if God wills it,' he said.

I asked him if he had ever heard of the streams of words,
stories, running underground.

'Yes, I have,' said Marwan. 'They keep the world level and
when they hit a stone they burst up into a spring.'

'But there's no water in them,' I said. 'So how could you have
a spring?'

Marwan patted down his grey hair with a hand.

'They are not springs like that,' he said. 'Change your thinking.
Then you will understand.'

'I will try,' I said.

'The springs are places of wisdom, sometimes where a saint
has lived, taught, or died. They are places where stories are told
and where healing is done. The "water" in them, the words, the
stories, are energy, and they are knowledge.'

'But why can't I find any mention of these streams in any
books?'

The carpenter glanced down at the grass and then up at my
face.

'This is an ancient tradition,' he said. 'It is part of the
fabric of our country. As you live here longer you will see that, in Morocco,
there are many things you will never find in books.'

In June I travelled to Afghanistan to film the documentary about
my search for the lost treasure of the country's first modern king,
Ahmed Shah Durrani. The journey was wrapped in worry, not
so much about the danger we faced, but about what I knew
Rachana would be feeling at home. Most of the time I felt sick in
my stomach, sick at the thought of her feeling sick wih anxiety
about me. The flight from Casablanca to Kabul took me across
north Africa, the Middle East and to the crossroads of Central
Asia. I found it incredible to think that the aeroplane didn't pass
over a single non-Muslim land, that the early followers of Islam
had covered the same ground in the century after the Prophet's
death, converting as they went. I tried to imagine the battle-worn
champions of Islam finally arriving at the azure waters of
the Atlantic, their Sea of Darkness.

Many of the tales I found in Morocco had been brought from
the Bedouin heartland of Arabia. A great number of them must
have originated even further east, from Persia, India or
Afghanistan. North Africa's pilgrimage route stretches through
Morocco and down into Mali, as far as Timbuktu, and across
Algeria and Libya, to Egypt. For well over a thousand years,
pilgrims have travelled the path in caravans across the desert,
in fear for their lives. It's easy to imagine them huddled in
caravanserais and under the stars, their camels hobbled around
them for warmth, telling and retelling tales.

Just as pilgrims made the Hajj from the Maghrib, they
travelled from the east as well, from as far as India and beyond,
from China's province of Xinjiang. To go on the pilgrimage at
least once in a lifetime is one of the five Pillars of Islam, a solemn
duty of every Muslim. The reason is, of course, to pledge devotion
to God at the Kaaba, Mecca, the birthplace of the Islamic
faith. But the impact of people travelling over centuries in wave
after wave, heading to the holy city and back to their far-flung
lands, has been even more profound.

Almost like bees pollinating flowers in gardens far from their
hives, the pilgrims have had an extraordinary effect in spreading
knowledge and Islamic culture over a vast region. Works
of mathematics, astronomy, chemistry and the arts were
disseminated and studied from China to Morocco. In the same
way, the matrix formed by the pilgrims and their routes dispersed
stories, too, scattering them across much of the known world.
The effect has led to a cultural harmony and a likeness in design,
whether it be in Morocco, Arabia, Iraq or northern India.

The Americas have been affected by Arab culture, too, in ways
that are sometimes overlooked. In my travels through Mexico and Latin America,
I have found the belief in
Mal de Ojo
, the Evil Eye, and have seen
terracotta tiles and 'Moroccan' architecture, cuisine and other traditions
brought west by the Spanish conquistadors five centuries ago. Spanish culture
is, of course, steeped in medieval Arab culture, an underbelly awaiting visitors
with observant eyes.

My one recurring dream now is of the prisoner who was chained
in the cell beside mine. I used to hear him groaning at dawn,
after a night in the torture cells. Once, towards the end, I was led
back to my own cell without a blindfold and caught a glimpse of
him. He was crouched, huddled in the corner, his face hidden by
a black beard, his hands wrapped in blood-soaked bandages.
Unlike mine, the cell was painted with large black-and-white
spirals. They covered the walls, the ceiling, the floor and even
the bars. For a fleeting moment we made eye contact. My fear
was echoed in his gaze. I don't know who the prisoner was, or
what he was guilty of doing, but there was a sense of understanding
between us.

The journeys through Afghanistan, and the film we made
there, helped me to have closure on the nightmares I suffered
after being released from neighbouring Pakistan.

We never found the lost treasure of Mughal India in
Afghanistan, a treasure reputed to be valued at current rates at
more than five hundred billion dollars. But in many ways we
found far more.

The legend goes that, falling ill with cancer, Ahmed Shah
concealed the vast hoard of gold and precious gems in a cave
system. He supposedly ordered the men who had been charged
to conceal the loot to be executed, along with the horses that
transported the treasure into the caves. We may not have found
the fortune itself but, in a cave system near Bamiyan in central
Afghanistan we came upon dozens of human skeletons deep in
a mountain. In one of the tunnels, even further into the mountain,
we found the bones of horses.

On my travels through Afghanistan, there were two small
episodes that pricked my consciousness like smelling salts. The
first was while visiting the magnificent Friday Mosque in Herat,
located on the western edge of Afghanistan. The building is
celebrated throughout the Islamic world for the fine mosaics
that adorn its façade. I had heard that beside the mosque was a
small workshop in which master craftsmen continued to cut
mosaics as had been done for almost a thousand years. I asked if
I could visit the craftsmen and immediately found myself
ushered into their atelier.

Half a dozen old men were chipping away at glazed tiles,
making the mosaics. They didn't look up, just kept on chipping
with their hammers, their heads wound with turbans, their legs
crossed.

Drawing closer to get a good view of their work, I noticed something,
something that I found quite astonishing. I was at the far
end of the Islamic world, almost as far as I could have been from
Morocco. But the hammers used by the craftsmen were identical to
the ones used in Fès, where they are called
manqash
.

The other incident that touched me was while sitting in a
chaikhana
at Balkh in northern Afghanistan, where Alexander
the Great had made his headquarters in the third century BC.
The room was thick with conversation and with wood-smoke
from the samovar. I got chatting to a Pushtun who was in the
carpet business, transporting Turkoman rugs down to his native
Qandahar. There was a lull in the conversation. We sat sipping
our tea, pondering our circumstances. Then, as happens in
Afghan teahouses, the trader touched my knee.

'I will tell you a story of Mullah Nasrudin,' he said. Nasrudin
is, of course, the Afghan incarnation of Joha, the Arab folk hero.
The Nasrudin story that the carpet-dealer recounted in Balkh
was one that had been imparted to me a few weeks before, by a
student in Marrakech.

This is how it went.

One day Mullah Nasrudin knocked at his neighbour's door
and asked him if he could borrow his biggest cooking pot, as his
in-laws were coming for dinner. The neighbour, who was a very
greedy man, resisted, but eventually agreed. The next day,
Nasrudin returned the pot and thanked the neighbour. After
handing it over, he gave the greedy neighbour a smaller
pot. 'What's this for?' said the neighbour. 'Oh,' said the mullah,
'you see, while your big pot was with me it gave birth to this
little pot. As it is the offspring of what is yours, I am giving it to
you.'

The greedy neighbour was very pleased at getting a second
pot for nothing. So, the next time that Nasrudin came over and
asked to borrow his big pot he was only too happy to oblige. The
day after, the neighbour hammered on his door and demanded
his pot back. Nasrudin opened the door. 'We have established,
have we not, that a pot can give birth to another pot?' he asked.
The neighbour nodded his head, hoping for another free vessel.
'Well, just as one pot can give birth to another pot, a pot can also
pass away. I have the unfortunate task to inform you that at ten
o'clock last night your big pot dropped dead!'

Much travel is needed before a raw man is ripened.

Arab proverb

THREE DAYS AFTER MY RETURN FROM AFGHANISTAN, I RECEIVED
a call from Waleed in Fès. The line was very bad. I could hardly
make out what he was saying.

'I will call you back,' I said.

'No, do not hang up!' spat Waleed.

'Why not?'

'Because the air is filled with words,' he said. 'Millions of
conversations. How do I know that you will find me again?'

'Then, shout what you want to tell me.'

'Monsieur Tahir, there is something very important!'

I swallowed hard. When a Moroccan tells you something
is important, it generally involves asking the favour of a
loan.

'Please explain.'

'Can you keep a secret?'

'Yes. What is it?'

'There's a house,' Waleed replied. 'A house in the medina. It's
for sale. But you must not tell a soul.'

'Look, I don't have any money,' I said. 'I've already got a
house in Casablanca and it's taken up all my money. I'm broke.'

'You don't understand, Monsieur,' said the voice amid the
crackles and distortion.'

'Yes, I do.'

'No, no.'

'What don't I understand?'

'This house is very different.'

'How?'

'It's very old.'

'But all the houses in the medina are old!'

'It's different from all the others,' he said, repeating himself.

'Tell me how is it different, Waleed?'

'Because it's the House of the Storytellers,' he said.

At first, finding the story in my heart filled me with a new kind
of energy. It was as if I had tapped into a reserve of power deep
inside me. Rachana noticed right away. She said I seemed
happier about myself, that I was calmer. She was right. I was
more content than I had been in a very long while. But at the
same time, finding my story had been something of an anticlimax
and I found myself confused. It's often like that in life.
The search for something tends to create its own energy, so
much so that when you eventually find what you think you have
been searching for you feel short-changed. I began to ponder the
matter a great deal, wondering why reaching a conclusion could
be such a dissatisfying experience. The more I thought of it, the
more depressed I began to feel. It was then I remembered something
my father had once told me. He was observing how people
would come to him for answers, and how, when they were
presented with an answer, they often felt miffed, as if they
deserved more. He said to me: 'It is not that the answer is wrong,
but that the seeker does not yet realize its value.' I asked if he
could elaborate. He said he would do so, that he would answer
my question with a story.

'Once upon a time there was a farmer's wife. She was out in
an orchard, picking apples from a tree, when one of the apples
fell down a hole in the ground. She tried to reach it, but could
not. So she looked all around for someone to help her, and she
saw a little bird sitting on the branches of the tree.

'She said to the bird: "Little bird, please fly down the hole and
bring the apple back to me!"

'The bird said, "Tweet! Tweet!" which, in bird language,
means, "No, I won't!"

'The farmer's wife was angry at the bird, and she said, "You
are a very naughty little bird!"

'And then she saw a cat. She said to the cat: "Cat, cat, jump up
at the bird until he flies down into the hole and brings the apple
for me."

'But the cat just said, "Miaow, miaow!" which, in cat language,
means, "No, I won't!"

'And the farmer's wife said, "You are a very naughty little
cat!"

'Just then she saw a dog, and she said to the dog: "Dog, dog,
please chase the cat so she jumps up at the bird, so that he flies
down the hole and brings back the apple for me."

'But the dog said, "Bow-wow-wow!" which, in dog language,
means, "No, I won't!"

'And the farmer's wife said, "You are a very naughty little
dog!"

'Just then, the farmer's wife spotted a bee. And she said to the
bee: "Bee, bee, sting the dog so that he chases the cat, so that she
jumps at the bird, and he flies down the hole and fetches the
apple for me."

'But the bee just said, "Bzz-bzz!" which, in bee language,
means, "No, I won't!"

'And the farmer's wife said, "You really are a very naughty
bee!"

'Then she looked around and she saw a beekeeper, and she
said to the beekeeper: "Beekeeper, beekeeper, please go and tell
the bee to sting the dog, to chase the cat, to jump at the bird, so
that he flies down the hole and fetches the apple for me."

'And the beekeeper said, "No, I won't!"

'And the farmer's wife said, "Good gracious, what a naughty
beekeeper you are!"

'And at that moment, the farmer's wife saw a length of rope
lying on the ground. And she said to the rope: "Rope, rope, tie up
the beekeeper, until he tells the bee to sting the dog, to chase the
cat, to jump down the hole, to get the apple for me."

'The rope did not say anything at all. It just lay there on the
ground. "Oh!" exclaimed the farmer's wife. "What a naughty,
naughty rope you are!"

'Then the farmer's wife looked around and she saw a fire. She
said to the fire: "Fire, fire, please burn the rope so that it ties up
the beekeeper, so that he tells the bee to sting the dog, to
chase the cat, to jump at the bird, to fetch the apple for me."

'The fire didn't say anything at all.

'"You are a very naughty little fire!" said the farmer's wife.

'She looked around again, wondering what to do, when she
saw a puddle of water. So she said to the puddle: "Puddle,
puddle, please put out the fire, because it won't burn the rope,
because the rope won't tie up the beekeeper, because he won't tell
the bee to sting the dog, to chase the cat, to jump at the bird, to
get the apple for me."

'But the puddle of water took no notice at all. And the
farmer's wife said, "My, oh my, what a naughty puddle you are!"

'And then she saw a cow. And she said to the cow: "Cow, cow,
please drink up the puddle, so that it puts out the fire, and it
burns the rope, and it ties up the beekeeper, and it tells the bee to
sting the dog, to chase the cat, to jump at the bird, to fetch the
apple for me."

'The cow said, "Moo, moo, moo!" which, in cow language,
means, "No, I won't!" And the farmer's wife said, "Oh, good
gracious, what a very naughty cow you are!"

'And then the farmer's wife looked around one last time and
she saw the little bird sitting in the tree, the bird that had started
all the problems in the first place. And she said to the bird:
"Little bird, little bird, please would you peck the cow for me?"
And the bird said, "All right then, I'll peck the cow but don't
expect me to fetch the apple for you!" And the naughty little bird
pecked the cow, and the cow started to drink up the puddle, and
the puddle started to put out the fire, which began to burn the
rope, which started to tie up the beekeeper, who started to tell
the bee, and the bee started to sting the dog, who started to
chase the cat, who started to jump up at the bird, who had
pecked the cow.

'And then,' said my father, clearing his throat, 'the wind
flew down the hole and brought back the apple for the farmer's wife.'

Ottoman telephoned me at the end of the week and asked if I
had time to meet him. He said that he wanted to spend an hour
or two with me, remembering our mutual friend Hicham
Harass. The next evening, we met in a fish restaurant down at
the port. The last trawlers were heading out into the black
Atlantic waters for the night. On the quay the fishermen were
gathering up nets, checking them for tears. Ottoman was already
in the restaurant when I arrived. He shook my hand, placed it
over his heart and thanked God for my safe return from
Afghanistan.

'You must write a book to show the West there's more to the
Arab world than Al-Qaeda and suicide bombers,' he said.

'Do you think they will listen to me?'

'They must listen,' said Ottoman.

'I see the East through one eye and the West through the
other,' I said. 'I understand how they both feel, but I don't know
how to tell one about the other.'

'There's a way to teach,' he replied; 'it's so subtle that the
student doesn't realize he's being taught anything at all.'

'How does it work?'

'By silent teaching, a kind of sleight of hand,' he said. 'In the
way that a teaching story seeps in and sows a grain of wisdom.
You don't see it coming and don't know it's there until it's working
for you.'

Ottoman broke a bread roll and smothered it with butter.

'We have used this method for centuries in the Arab world. You
have been brought up with it – taught to use it – like the rest of us.'

'My father was obsessed with teaching stories,' I said.

'Of course he was,' Ottoman said. 'We are all obsessed with
them. They are our culture, the way we learn.'

Right then, sitting there with Ottoman, I had an idea. What if
I could start my own kind of College of Storytellers, like my
father had kept going until just before his death, to promote
teaching through stories as he had done?

An enormous platter of fresh fish was ushered to the table.
Ottoman chose the finest fillet, squeezed lemon juice all over it
and placed it on my plate. He could see his idea was soaking in.
The waiter set a bottle of red Meknès wine on the table. I poured
two glasses. We looked each other in the eye and clinked glasses.

'To our teachers,' said Ottoman.

The next day I took the train down to Fès. As we rumbled across
the even brown fields of farmland, the House of the Storytellers
occupied my thoughts. I am not a person who finds it easy to
stick to a quiet life. I become preoccupied with things, with ideas
and with dreams. The more I try to force them out of my head,
the more they take root. The only remedy is to face the fantasy
head-on, to dive into it.

I found myself thinking about my father and the extraordinary
effect he had on people. He was almost incapable of
having a normal relationship, for he touched people very deeply.
I think part of it lay in the way he observed people. When he
encountered someone, he would say certain things or act in a
certain way and then watch what response his behaviour elicited.

Some people despised him as a result, or went crazy, just as
Slipper Feet had done. Others listened to what he said and went
off to apply his advice. Such people were the ones he held in the
highest regard. Some became obsessed with him, or begged him
to be a guru figure, something that went against everything he
believed in.

A few people were touched by him, in ways that still fascinate
me.

My parents always had someone to drive them around in
England and abroad. A list of long-suffering gardeners ferried
us back and forth from Tunbridge Wells to the furthest reaches
of Morocco. As far as my father was concerned, being driven
was the perfect arrangement. He got taken from A to B and
was free to talk to the gardener all the way there and all the
way back.

Then one day my mother took her driving test and passed. So
as not to be humiliated, my father rushed out and signed up with
a driving school himself. He was in his fifties. There began
with the lessons a strange and sometimes comical relationship with
Mr Slaughter, the driving instructor in Tunbridge Wells.

After many dozens of lessons and several failures at the test,
my father passed. A party was held and celebrations continued
through days and nights. The driving licence was tossed in a
drawer and was never used once. It was a symbol of ability
rather than a document for the roads.

Years passed.

My father continued to be driven about by my mother and,
more increasingly, by me. We spent hundreds of hours crisscrossing
London together in the hours before dawn, searching
the capital's markets for Arabian antiques.

Then one afternoon an urgent message arrived. It was
garbled and confused. Mr Slaughter the driving instructor was
gravely ill. He was on his deathbed and was about to expire. But
before he crossed into the next world, he wanted to see one man
again . . . a former pupil from Afghanistan.

My father rushed down to Tunbridge Wells, where he found
Mr Slaughter attached to hospital tubes, barely clinging to life.
He sat at the bedside and held his instructor's hand. They hardly
exchanged words. The time for conversation had come to an
end.

The next day Mr Slaughter died.

At Fès, I found Waleed sitting on a wall opposite Bab Er-Rsif.
He was picking his teeth with a stick, memorizing a document
about land tax.

'I do not know you well, Monsieur Tahir,' he said, 'but I have
seen how you think.'

'How do I think?'