The story I have to tell is truly a
strange one, and were the entirety to be tattooed at the corner of one's eye,
the marvel of its presentation would not exceed that of the events recounted,
for it is a warning to those who would be warned and a lesson to those who
would learn.
My name is Fuwaad ibn Abbas, and I was
born here in Baghdad, City of Peace. My father was a grain merchant, but for
much of my life I have worked as a purveyor of fine fabrics, trading in silk
from Damascus and linen from Egypt and scarves from Morocco that are
embroidered with gold. I was prosperous, but my heart was troubled, and neither
the purchase of luxuries nor the giving of alms was able to soothe it. Now I
stand before you without a single Dirham in my purse, but I am at peace.
Allah is the beginning of all things, but
with your permission, I begin my story with the day I took a walk through the
district of metal smiths. I needed to purchase a gift for a man I had to do
business with, and had been told he might appreciate a tray made of silver. After
browsing for half an hour, I noticed that one of the largest shops in the
market had been taken over by a new merchant. It was a prized location that
must have been expensive to acquire, so I entered to peruse its wares. Never
before had I seen such a marvelous assortment of goods. Near the entrance there
was an astrolabe equipped with seven plates inlaid with silver, a water-clock
that chimed on the hour, and a nightingale made of brass that sang when the
wind blew. Farther inside there were even more ingenious mechanisms, and I
stared at them the way a child watches a juggler, when an old man stepped out
from a doorway in the back, almost as if he has been expecting me.
"Welcome to my humble shop, my
lord," he said. "My name is Bashaarat. How may I assist you?"
"These are remarkable items that you
have for sale. I deal with traders from every corner of the world, and yet I
have never seen their like. From where, may I ask, did you acquire your
merchandise?"
"I am grateful to you for your kind
words," he said. "Everything you see here was made in my workshop, by
myself or by my assistants under my direction."
I was impressed that this man could be so
well versed in so many arts. I asked him about the various instruments in his
shop, and listened to him discourse learnedly about astrology, mathematics,
geomancy, and medicine. We spoke for over an hour, and my fascination and
respect bloomed like a flower warmed by the dawn, until he mentioned his
experiments in alchemy.
"Alchemy?" I said. This
surprised me, for he did not seem the type to make such a sharper's claim.
"You mean you can turn base metal into gold?"
"I can, my lord, but that is not in
fact what most seek from alchemy."
"What do most seek, then?"
"They seek a source of gold that is
cheaper than mining ore from the ground. Alchemy does describe a means to
make gold, but the procedure is so arduous that, by comparison, digging beneath
a mountain is as easy as plucking peaches from a tree."
I smiled. "A clever reply. No one
could dispute that you are a learned man, but I know better than to credit
alchemy."
Bashaarat looked at me and considered.
"I have recently built something that may change your opinion. You would
be the first person I have shown it to. Would you care to see it?"
"It would be a great pleasure."
"Please follow me." He led me
through the doorway in the rear of his shop. The next room was a workshop,
arrayed with devices whose functions I could not guess—bars of metal wrapped
with enough copper thread to reach the horizon, mirrors mounted on a circular
slab of granite floating in quicksilver—but Bashaarat walked past these without
a glance.
Instead he led me to a sturdy pedestal,
chest high, on which a stout metal hoop was mounted upright. The hoop's opening
was as wide as two outstretched hands, and its rim so thick that it would tax
the strongest man to carry. The metal was black as night, but polished to such
smoothness that, had it been a different color, it could have served as a
mirror. Bashaarat bade me stand so that I looked upon the hoop edgewise, while
he stood next to its opening.
"Please observe," he said.
Bashaarat thrust his arm through the hoop
from the right side, but it did not extend out from the left. Instead, it was
as if his arm were severed at the elbow, and he waved the stump up and down,
and then pulled his arm out intact. I had not expected to see such a learned man
perform a conjuror's trick, but it was well done, and I applauded politely.
"Now wait a moment," he said as
he took a step back.
I waited, and behold, an arm reached out
of the hoop from its left side, without a body to hold it up. The sleeve it
wore matched Bashaarat's robe. The arm waved up and down, and then retreated
through the hoop until it was gone. The first trick I had thought a clever
mime, but this one seemed far superior, because the pedestal and hoop were
clearly too slender to conceal a person.
"Very clever!" I exclaimed.
"Thank you, but this is not mere
sleight of hand. The right side of the hoop precedes the left by several
seconds. To pass through the hoop is to cross that duration instantly."
"I do not understand," I said.
"Let me repeat the
demonstration." Again he thrust his arm through the hoop, and his arm
disappeared. He smiled, and pulled back and forth as if playing tug-a-rope.
Then he pulled his arm out again, and presented his hand to me with the palm
open. On it lay a ring I recognized.
"That is my ring!" I checked my
hand, and saw that my ring still lay on my finger.
"You have conjured up a
duplicate."
"No, this is truly your ring.
Wait."
Again, an arm reached out from the left
side. Wishing to discover the mechanism of the trick, I rushed over to grab it
by the hand. It was not a false hand, but one fully warm and alive as mine. I
pulled on it, and it pulled back. Then, as deft as a pickpocket, the hand
slipped the ring from my finger and the arm withdrew into the hoop, vanishing
completely.
"My ring is gone!" I exclaimed.
"No, my lord," he said.
"Your ring is here." And he gave me the ring he held. "Forgive
me for my game."
I replaced it on my finger. "You had
the ring before it was taken from me." At that moment an arm reached out,
this time from the right side of the hoop. "What is this?" I
exclaimed. Again I recognized it as his by the sleeve before it withdrew, but I
had not seen him reach in.
"Recall," he said, "the
right side of the hoop precedes the left." And he walked over to the left
side of the hoop, and thrust his arm through from that side, and again it
disappeared.
You have undoubtedly already grasped this,
but it was only then that I understood: whatever happened on the right side of
the hoop was complemented, a few seconds later, by an event on the left
side.
"Is this sorcery?" I asked.
"No, my lord, I have never met a
Djinni, and if I did, I would not trust it to do my bidding. This is a form of
alchemy."
He offered an explanation, speaking of his
search for tiny pores in the skin of reality, like the holes that worms bore
into wood, and how upon finding one he was able to expand and stretch it the
way a glassblower turns a dollop of molten glass into a long-necked pipe, and
how he then allowed time to flow like water at one mouth while causing it to
thicken like syrup at the other. I confess I did not really understand his
words, and cannot testify to their truth.
All I could say in response was, "You
have created something truly astonishing."
"Thank you," he said, "but
this is merely a prelude to what I intended to show you."
He bade me follow him into another room,
farther in the back. There stood a circular doorway whose massive frame was
made of the same polished black metal, mounted in the middle of the room.
"What I showed you before was a Gate
of Seconds," he said. "This is a Gate of Years. The two sides of the
doorway are separated by a span of twenty years."
I confess I did not understand his remark
immediately. I imagined him reaching his arm in from the right side and waiting
twenty years before it emerged from the left side, and it seemed a very obscure
magic trick. I said as much, and he laughed.
"That is one use for
it," he said, "but consider what would happen if you were to step
through." Standing on the right side, he gestured for me to come closer,
and then pointed through the doorway. "Look."
I looked, and saw that there appeared to
be different rugs and pillows on the other side of the room than I had seen
when I had entered. I moved my head from side to side, and realized that when I
peered through the doorway, I was looking at a different room from the one I
stood in.
"You are seeing the room twenty years
from now," said Bashaarat.
I blinked, as one might at an illusion of
water in the desert, but what I saw did not change.
"And you say I could step
through?" I asked.
"You could. And with that step, you
would visit the Baghdad of twenty years hence. You could seek out your older
self and have a conversation with him. Afterwards, you could step back through
the Gate of Years and return to the present day."
Hearing Bashaarat's words, I felt as if I
were reeling. "You have done this?" I asked him. "You have stepped through?"
"I have, and so have numerous
customers of mine."
"Earlier you said I was the first to
whom you showed this."
"This Gate, yes. But for many years I
owned a shop in Cairo, and it was there that I first built a Gate of Years.
There were many to whom I showed that Gate, and who made use of it."
"What did they learn when talking to
their older selves?"
"Each person learns something
different. Even though the past is unchangeable, one may encounter the
unexpected when visiting it. Do you now understand why I say the future
and the past are the same? We cannot change either, but we can know both more
fully."
"I do understand; you have opened my
eyes, and now I wish to use the Gate of Years. What price do you ask?"
He waved his hand. "I do not sell
passage through the Gate," he said. "Allah guides whom he wishes to
my shop, and I am content to be an instrument of his will."
Had it been another man, I would have
taken his words to be a negotiating ploy, but after all that Bashaarat had told
me, I knew that he was sincere. "Your generosity is as boundless as your
learning," I said, and bowed. "If there is ever a service that a
merchant of fabrics might provide for you, please call upon me."
"Thank you. Let us talk now about
your trip. There are some matters we must speak of before you visit the Baghdad
of twenty years hence."
"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 ink
pot 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, 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. 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 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."
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.
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 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 caravansary 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.
Like a fading rose that drops its petals
one by one, my hopes dwindled with each passing day. By the time the caravan
reached the City of Peace, I knew it was too late, but the moment we rode
through the city gates, I asked the guardsmen if they had heard of a mosque
collapsing. The first guardsman I spoke to had not, and for a heartbeat I dared
to hope that I had misremembered the date of the accident, and that I had in
fact arrived in time.
Then another guardsman told me that a
mosque had indeed collapsed just yesterday in the Karkh quarter. His words
struck me with the force of the executioner's axe. I had traveled so far, only
to receive the worst news of my life a second time.
I walked to the mosque, and saw the piles
of bricks where there had once been a wall. It was a scene that had haunted my
dreams for twenty years, but now the image remained even after I opened my
eyes, and with a clarity sharper than I could endure. I turned away and walked
without aim, blind to what was around me, until I found myself before my old
house, the one where Najya and I had lived. I stood in the street in front of
it, filled with memory and anguish.
I do not know how much time had passed
when I became aware that a young woman had walked up to me. "My
lord," she said, "I'm looking for the house of Fuwaad ibn
Abbas."
"You have found it," I said.
"Are you Fuwaad ibn Abbas, my
lord?"
"I am, and I ask you, please leave me
be."
"My lord, I beg your forgiveness. My
name is Maimuna, and I assist the physicians at the bimaristan. I tended to
your wife before she died."
I turned to look at her. "You tended
to Najya?"
"I did, my lord. I am sworn to
deliver a message to you from her."
"What message?"
"She wished me to tell you that her
last thoughts were of you. She wished me to tell you that while her life was
short, it was made happy by the time she spent with you." She saw the
tears streaming down my cheeks, and said, "Forgive me if my words cause
you pain, my lord."
"There is nothing to forgive, child.
Would that I had the means to pay you as much as this message is worth to me,
because a lifetime of thanks would still leave me in your debt."
"Grief owes no debt," she said.
"Peace be upon you, my lord."
"Peace be upon you," I said.
She left, and I wandered the streets for
hours, crying tears of release. All the while I thought on the truth of
Bashaarat's words: past and future are the same, and we cannot change either,
only know them more fully. My journey to the past had changed nothing, but what
I had learned had changed everything, and I understood that it could not have
been otherwise. If our lives are tales that Allah tells, then we are the
audience as well as the players, and it is by living these tales that we
receive their lessons.
Night fell, and it was then that the
city's guardsmen found me, wandering the streets after curfew in my dusty
clothes, and asked who I was. I told them my name and where I lived, and the
guardsmen brought me to my neighbors to see if they knew me, but they did not
recognize me, and I was taken to jail.
I told the guard captain my story, and he
found it entertaining, but did not credit it, for who would? Then I remembered
some news from my time of grief twenty years before, and told him that the
Caliph’s grandson would be born an albino. Some days later, word of the
infant's condition reached the captain, and he brought me to the governor of
the quarter. When the governor heard my story, he brought me here to the
palace, and when your lord chamberlain heard my story, he in turn brought me
here to the throne room, so that I might have the infinite privilege of
recounting it to you.
Now my tale has caught up to my life,
coiled as they both are, and the direction they take next is for you to decide,
Your Majesty. I know many things that will happen here in Baghdad over the next
twenty years, but nothing about what awaits me now. I have no money for the
journey back to Cairo and the Gate of Years there, yet I count myself fortunate
beyond measure, for I was given the opportunity to revisit my past mistakes,
and I have learned what remedies Allah allows. I would be honored to relate
everything I know of the future, if Your Majesty sees fit to ask, but for
myself, the most precious knowledge I possess is this: Nothing erases the past.
There is repentance, there is atonement, and there is forgiveness.
That is all,
but that is enough.
