The Very Best of F & SF v1 (70 page)

“I do not wish
to visit the future,” I told him. “I would step through in the other direction,
to revisit my youth.”

“Ah, my deepest
apologies. This Gate will not take you there. You see, I built this Gate only a
week ago. Twenty years ago, there was no doorway here for you to step out of.”

My dismay was so
great that I must have sounded like a forlorn child. I said, “But where does
the other side of the Gate lead?” and walked around the circular doorway to
face its opposite side.

Bashaarat walked
around the doorway to stand beside me. The view through the Gate appeared identical
to the view outside it, but when he extended his hand to reach through, it
stopped as if it met an invisible wall. I looked more closely, and noticed a
brass lamp set on a table. Its flame did not flicker, but was as fixed and
unmoving as if the room were trapped in clearest amber.

“What you see
here is the room as it appeared last week,” said Bashaarat. “In some twenty
years’ time, this left side of the Gate will permit entry, allowing people to
enter from this direction and visit their past. Or,” he said, leading me back
to the side of the doorway he had first shown me, “we can enter from the right
side now, and visit them ourselves. But I’m afraid this Gate will never allow
visits to the days of your youth.”

“What about the
Gate of Years you had in Cairo?” I asked.

He nodded. “That
Gate still stands. My son now runs my shop there.”

“So I could
travel to Cairo, and use the Gate to visit the Cairo of twenty years ago. From
there I could travel back to Baghdad.”

“Yes, you could
make that journey, if you so desire.”

“I do,” I said. “Will
you tell me how to find your shop in Cairo?”

“We must speak
of some things first,” said Bashaarat. “I will not ask your intentions, being
content to wait until you are ready to tell me. But I would remind you that what
is made cannot be unmade.”

“I know,” I
said.

“And that you
cannot avoid the ordeals that are assigned to you. What Allah gives you, you
must accept.”

“I remind myself
of that every day of my life.”

“Then it is my
honor to assist you in whatever way I can,” he said.

He brought out
some paper and a pen and inkpot and began writing. “I shall write for you a
letter to aid you on your journey.” He folded the letter, dribbled some candle
wax over the edge, and pressed his ring against it. “When you reach Cairo, give
this to my son, and he will let you enter the Gate of Years there.”

A merchant such
as myself must be well-versed in expressions of gratitude, but I had never
before been as effusive in giving thanks as I was to Bashaarat, and every word
was heartfelt. He gave me directions to his shop in Cairo, and I assured him I
would tell him all upon my return. As I was about to leave his shop, a thought
occurred to me. “Because the Gate of Years you have here opens to the future,
you are assured that the Gate and this shop will be remain standing for twenty
years or more.”

“Yes, that is
true,” said Bashaarat.

I began to ask
him if he had met his older self, but then I bit back my words. If the answer
was no, it was surely because his older self was dead, and I would be asking
him if he knew the date of his death. Who was I to make such an inquiry, when
this man was granting me a boon without asking my intentions? I saw from his
expression that he knew what I had meant to ask, and I bowed my head in humble
apology. He indicated his acceptance with a nod, and I returned home to make
arrangements.

The caravan took
two months to reach Cairo. As for what occupied my mind during the journey,
Your Majesty, I now tell you what I had not told Bashaarat. I was married once,
twenty years before, to a woman named Najya. Her figure swayed as gracefully as
a willow bough and her face was as lovely as the moon, but it was her kind and
tender nature that captured my heart. I had just begun my career as a merchant
when we married, and we were not wealthy, but did not feel the lack.

We had been
married only a year when I was to travel to Basra to meet with a ship’s
captain. I had an opportunity to profit by trading in slaves, but Najya did not
approve. I reminded her that the Koran does not forbid the owning of slaves as
long as one treats them well, and that even the Prophet owned some. But she
said there was no way I could know how my buyers would treat their slaves, and
that it was better to sell goods than men.

On the morning
of my departure, Najya and I argued. I spoke harshly to her, using words that
it shames me to recall, and I beg Your Majesty’s forgiveness if I do not repeat
them here. I left in anger, and never saw her again. She was badly injured when
the wall of a mosque collapsed, some days after I left. She was taken to the
bimaristan, but the physicians could not save her, and she died soon after. I
did not learn of her death until I returned a week later, and I felt as if I
had killed her with my own hand.

Can the torments
of Hell be worse than what I endured in the days that followed? It seemed
likely that I would find out, so near to death did my anguish take me. And
surely the experience must be similar, for like infernal fire, grief burns but
does not consume; instead, it makes the heart vulnerable to further suffering.

Eventually my
period of lamentation ended, and I was left a hollow man, a bag of skin with no
innards. I freed the slaves I had bought and became a fabric merchant. Over the
years I became wealthy, but I never remarried. Some of the men I did business
with tried to match me with a sister or a daughter, telling me that the love of
a woman can make you forget your pains. Perhaps they are right, but it cannot
make you forget the pain you caused another. Whenever I imagined myself
marrying another woman, I remembered the look of hurt in Najya’s eyes when I
last saw her, and my heart was closed to others.

I spoke to a
mullah about what I had done, and it was he who told me that repentance and
atonement erase the past. I repented and atoned as best I knew how; for twenty
years I lived as an upright man, I offered prayers and fasted and gave alms to
those less fortunate and made a pilgrimage to Mecca, and yet I was still
haunted by guilt. Allah is all-merciful, so I knew the failing to be mine.

Had Bashaarat
asked me, I could not have said what I hoped to achieve. It was clear from his
stories that I could not change what I knew to have happened. No one had
stopped my younger self from arguing with Najya in our final conversation. But
the tale of Raniya, which lay hidden within the tale of Hassan’s life without
his knowing it, gave me a slim hope: perhaps I might be able to play some part
in events while my younger self was away on business.

Could it not be
that there had been a mistake, and my Najya had survived? Perhaps it was
another woman whose body had been wrapped in a shroud and buried while I was
gone. Perhaps I could rescue Najya and bring her back with me to the Baghdad of
my own day. I knew it was foolhardy; men of experience say, “Four things do not
come back: the spoken word, the sped arrow, the past life, and the neglected
opportunity,” and I understood the truth of those words better than most. And
yet I dared to hope that Allah had judged my twenty years of repentance
sufficient, and was now granting me a chance to regain what I had lost.

The caravan
journey was uneventful, and after sixty sunrises and three hundred prayers, I
reached Cairo. There I had to navigate the city’s streets, which are a bewildering
maze compared to the harmonious design of the City of Peace. I made my way to
the Bayn al-Qasrayn, the main street that runs through the Fatimid quarter of
Cairo. From there I found the street on which Bashaarat’s shop was located.

I told the
shopkeeper that I had spoken to his father in Baghdad, and gave him the letter
Bashaarat had given me. After reading it, he led me into a back room, in whose
center stood another Gate of Years, and he gestured for me to enter from its
left side.

As I stood before
the massive circle of metal, I felt a chill, and chided myself for my
nervousness. With a deep breath I stepped through, and found myself in the same
room with different furnishings. If not for those, I would not have known the
Gate to be different from an ordinary doorway. Then I recognized that the chill
I had felt was simply the coolness of the air in this room, for the day here
was not as hot as the day I had left. I could feel its warm breeze at my back,
coming through the Gate like a sigh.

The shopkeeper
followed behind me and called out, “Father, you have a visitor.”

A man entered
the room, and who should it be but Bashaarat, twenty years younger than when I’d
seen him in Baghdad. “Welcome, my lord,” he said. “I am Bashaarat.”

“You do not know
me?” I asked.

“No, you must
have met my older self. For me, this is our first meeting, but it is my honor
to assist you.”

Your Majesty, as
befits this chronicle of my shortcomings, I must confess that, so immersed was
I in my own woes during the journey from Baghdad, I had not previously realized
that Bashaarat had likely recognized me the moment I stepped into his shop.
Even as I was admiring his water-clock and brass songbird, he had known that I
would travel to Cairo, and likely knew whether I had achieved my goal or not.

The Bashaarat I
spoke to now knew none of those things. “I am doubly grateful for your
kindness, sir,” I said. “My name is Fuwaad ibn Abbas, newly arrived from
Baghdad.”

Bashaarat’s son
took his leave, and Bashaarat and I conferred; I asked him the day and month,
confirming that there was ample time for me to travel back to the City of
Peace, and promised him I would tell him everything when I returned. His
younger self was as gracious as his older. “I look forward to speaking with you
on your return, and to assisting you again twenty years from now,” he said.

His words gave
me pause. “Had you planned to open a shop in Baghdad before today?”

“Why do you ask?”

“I had been
marveling at the coincidence that we met in Baghdad just in time for me to make
my journey here, use the Gate, and travel back. But now I wonder if it is
perhaps not a coincidence at all. Is my arrival here today the reason that you
will move to Baghdad twenty years from now?”

Bashaarat
smiled. “Coincidence and intention are two sides of a tapestry, my lord. You
may find one more agreeable to look at, but you cannot say one is true and the
other is false.”

“Now as ever,
you have given me much to think about,” I said.

I thanked him
and bid farewell. As I was leaving his shop, I passed a woman entering with
some haste. I heard Bashaarat greet her as Raniya, and stopped in surprise.

From just
outside the door, I could hear the woman say, “I have the necklace. I hope my
older self has not lost it.”

“I am sure you
will have kept it safe, in anticipation of your visit,” said Bashaarat.

I realized that
this was Raniya from the story Bashaarat had told me. She was on her way to
collect her older self so that they might return to the days of their youth,
confound some thieves with a doubled necklace, and save their husband. For a
moment I was unsure if I were dreaming or awake, because I felt as if I had
stepped into a tale, and the thought that I might talk to its players and
partake of its events was dizzying. I was tempted to speak, and see if I might
play a hidden role in that tale, but then I remembered that my goal was to play
a hidden role in my own tale. So I left without a word, and went to arrange
passage with a caravan.

It is said, Your
Majesty, that Fate laughs at men’s schemes. At first it appeared as if I were
the most fortunate of men, for a caravan headed for Baghdad was departing
within the month, and I was able to join it. In the weeks that followed I began
to curse my luck, because the caravan’s journey was plagued by delays. The
wells at a town not far from Cairo were dry, and an expedition had to be sent
back for water. At another village, the soldiers protecting the caravan
contracted dysentery, and we had to wait for weeks for their recovery. With
each delay, I revised my estimate of when we’d reach Baghdad, and grew
increasingly anxious.

Then there were
the sandstorms, which seemed like a warning from Allah, and truly caused me to
doubt the wisdom of my actions. We had the good fortune to be resting at a
caravanserai west of Kufa when the sandstorms first struck, but our stay was
prolonged from days to weeks as, time and again, the skies became clear, only
to darken again as soon as the camels were reloaded. The day of Najya’s
accident was fast approaching, and I grew desperate.

I solicited each
of the camel drivers in turn, trying to hire one to take me ahead alone, but
could not persuade any of them. Eventually I found one willing to sell me a
camel at what would have been an exorbitant price under ordinary circumstances,
but which I was all too willing to pay. I then struck out on my own.

It will come as
no surprise that I made little progress in the storm, but when the winds
subsided, I immediately adopted a rapid pace. Without the soldiers that
accompanied the caravan, however, I was an easy target for bandits, and sure
enough, I was stopped after two days’ ride. They took my money and the camel I
had purchased, but spared my life, whether out of pity or because they could
not be bothered to kill me I do not know. I began walking back to rejoin the
caravan, but now the skies tormented me with their cloudlessness, and I
suffered from the heat. By the time the caravan found me, my tongue was swollen
and my lips were as cracked as mud baked by the sun. After that I had no choice
but to accompany the caravan at its usual pace.