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Authors: William Dalrymple

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In Xanadu

BOOK: In Xanadu
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In Xanadu
William Dalrymple
Flamingo (2000)
Tags:
Travel, Non Fiction
Travelttt Non Fictionttt

SUMMARY:
Waiting for his exam results to come through, William Dalrymple decides to fill in his summer break by travelling. But the trip he plans is no light-hearted student jaunt - he decides to retrace the epic journey of Marco Polo from Jerusalem to Xanadu, the ruins of the palace of Kubla Khan, north of Peking. Intelligent and funny, In Xanadu is travel writing at its best.

William Dalrymple

was born in Scotland and brought up on the shores of the Firth of Forth. He wrote the highly acclaimed bestseller
In Xanadu
when he was twenty-two. The book won the 1990
Yorkshire Post
Best First Work Award and a Scottish Arts Council Spring Book Award; it was also shortlisted for the John Llewelyn Rhys Memorial Prize. In 1989 Dalrymple moved to Delhi where he lived for six years, researching his second book,
City of Djinns,
which won the 1994 Thomas Cook Travel Book Award and the
Sunday Times
Young British Writer of the Year Award. His third book, the acclaimed
From the Holy Mountain,
was awarded the Scottish Arts Council Autumn Book Award for 1997; it was also shortlisted for the 1998 Thomas Cook Travel Book Award, the John Llewelyn Rhys Memorial Prize and the Duff Cooper Prize. A collection of his pieces on the Indian subcontinent.
The Age of Kali,
was published in 1998. Dalrymple was recently elected the youngest Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and the Royal Asiatic Society. He has written and presented a series about the architecture of the Raj for Channel 4 and is currently working on a major BBC series about the religions of India. William Dalrymple is married to the artist Olivia Fraser, and they have a baby son and daughter.

 

 

 

 

 

By the same author

 

CITY OF DJINNS: A YEAR IN DELHI

FROM THE HOLY MOUNTAIN: A JOURNEY IN THE SHADOW OF BYZANTIUM

THE AGE OF KALI: INDIAN TRAVELS and ENCOUNTERS

WILLIAM DALRYMPLE

 

 

 

Flamingo

An Imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

Flamingo

Special overseas edition 1990

This edition published by Flamingo 1990

18 17 16 15
14

First published in Great Britain by Collins 1989

Copyright © William Hamilton-Dalrymple 1990

The Author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

Author photograph
 
Giovanni Giovannetti Maps by Ken Lewis

ISBN 0 00 6S4415 0

Acknowledgements

 

 

This book is already too long but it would be churlish to let it go to press without acknowledging the help and tolerance of a number of people without whom the expedition could never have taken place nor the book have been written.

Dr Simon Keynes persuaded Trinity to part with £700 to help finance the trip; in the event it proved enough to pay for everything as far as Peking. Sir Anthony Acland and Sir Robert Wade-Gery spared valuable time to help us clear diplomatic hurdles, while Anthony Fitzherbert, the Begum Quizilbash and Charlie and Cherry Parton all entertained us lavishly en route.

Back in England, Maggie Noach helped me sell the book while Mike Fishwick of Collins was kind enough to buy it; both of them provided great encouragement during the fourteen months it took to write. During that time my girlfriend Olivia Fraser and
my
flatmate Andrew Berton put up with me and successive drafts of my book with extraordinary tolerance and forbearance. Fania Stoney, Henrietta Miers, Patrick French, Lucy Warrack, my brothers Hewie, Jock and Rob and my long suffering motherand father were all nagged to read it. Lucian Taylor is responsible for many helpful editorial comments; on five separate occasions he spared whole days to go over the manuscript word by word. It would be a considerably longer, more pompous and boring book without his advice and cuts.

Many others have helped and I apologize if I have not mentioned everyone. Most of all, however, it must be obvious to anyone who reads this book that I owe an enormous debt to two people without whom the whole enterprise could never have got off the ground.

I dedicate this book with love and apologies to Laura and Louisa.

 

 

 

ONE

It was still dark when I left Sheik Jarrah. At the Damascus Gate the first fruit sellers were gathered by a brazier, warming their fingers around glasses of sweet tea. The Irish Franciscan was waiting by the door of the Holy Sepulchre. He nodded from under the hood of his habit and without a word led me past the Armenian chapel and under the great rotunda. Around the dome you could hear the echo of plainchant as twelve separate congregations sang their different matins.

'It's not long now.' said Brother Fabian. 'The Greeks will be finished by eight-thirty.'

'That's in two hours' time.'

'Only half an hour. The Greeks don't allow us to put the clocks back. We work on Byzantine time here.'

He knelt down on a flagstone, folded his hands in his sleeves and began murmuring his devotions. We waited for twenty minutes.

'What's keeping them?'

'The rota's very strict. They're allowed four hours in the tomb, and they won't leave until their time is up,' He hesitated then added:

Things are a bit tense at the moment. Last month one of the Armenian monks went crazy: thought an angel was telling him to kill the Greek patriarch. So he smashed an oil lamp and chased Patriarch Diodorus through the choir with a piece of broken glass.'

"What happened?'

The Greeks overpowered him. There's an ex-weightlifter from Thessaloniki who looks after the Greek chapel on Calvary. He pinned the Armenian down in the crypt until the police came. But since then the Greeks and the Armenians haven't been on speaking terms. Which means we had to be the go-betweens. Until we broke off relations with the Greeks as well.' 'What do you mean?'

Last month Diodorus was crossing the bridge into Jordan when the border guards found a big bag of heroin in the air filter of his car. They released him but arrested his driver. Diodorus claimed he must have put the bag there. The driver was a Catholic'

'So now no one is speaking to anyone?'

'I think the Copts are still speaking to the Maronites. But apart from that, no.'

Brother Fabian pulled one arm out of his habit and pointed to the dome of the rotunda.

'You see the painter's scaffolding? That's been up ten years because the three patriarchs can't agree on a colour. They'd just about settled on black when the Armenian assaulted Diodorus. Now the Greeks are demanding purple. It won't get repainted for another ten years now. By which time,' added Fabian, ' I shall be back in Donegal.'

At that moment a procession of black-clad Greek monks emerged from the Tomb, a bulbous, kettle-like structure which Robert Byron thought resembled a railway engine. As the monks stepped out some were singing anthems while others sprayed the ambulatory with holy water. They had cascading pepper-and-salt beards and wore cylindrical hats topped with black mortarboards. They scowled in the direction of the Latin chapel then marched off towards Calvary.

"Wait here,' said Brother Fabian.

He returned carrying a tin watering can and a tray of what looked like surgical instruments. He handed me the tray then walked up to the tomb, bowed, bent double and squeezed under the low, cusped arch. I followed. We passed through the dim first chamber, then stooped into the inner sanctum. The holiest shrine in Christendom was the size of a small broom cupboard. Raised on a ledge was the Stone of Resurrection and on top of it rested two icons, a tatty Mannerist painting and a vase containing seven wilted roses. Twelve lamps were suspended from the ceiling by steel chains. Fabian knelt down, kissed the Stone and murmured a prayer. Then he rose.

"We've got until twelve-thirty,' he said.

From a recess in the first chamber he produced a small stepladder. He climbed up onto it, unclipped a hook from the wall-ring then let go of the pulley. The four Catholic lamps descended. They were made of beaten bronze and were very tarnished and very old. Finely incised on the outside were the figures of cherubim and a six-winged seraph. Motioning that I should pass the watering can up to him, the friar arched over the lamps and very carefully poured oil from the can into three of them. As he did so each one guttered.

BOOK: In Xanadu
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