A Poet of the Invisible World (19 page)

One night, as Nouri staggered out of Abdallah's den, he passed an alley from which an alluring scent beckoned. He rarely wandered off the familiar path that led from Sayid's to the laundry to Abdallah's and back to Sayid's. The streets that jutted off from his accustomed route were merely deviations from his daily pattern of work, intoxication, and sleep. The fragrance was beguiling, however—a heady mixture of rosewater and lime—so he decided to head down the alley and find out where it came from.

It was a moonless night, so the only thing he had to light his way were the twitching candles in the darkened windows over his head. As he moved along, he could feel eyes peering from those windows, but he was unable to trace them to their sources. The smell that had lured him upon his course was soon smothered by other smells: frying onions and sandalwood and the stench of rotten fruit. His ears, ever alert—even beneath his head cloth and the haze of Abdallah's pipe—could hear snatches of conversation, tree branches scraping against clay-tiled roofs, cats scurrying by. Whirled by the sharp euphoria of Abdallah's magic, the night rattled and roared.

At the end of the alley, he saw a figure in a doorway: head lowered, arms folded across his chest, one leg drawn up against the door. As Nouri moved closer, the man raised his head and peered at him through the darkness. Nouri could feel his heart begin to pound and a flash of heat pass through him. He wanted to stop. To turn. To say something to him. But all he could do was continue on.

As he started down an alley that ran perpendicular to the one he'd just traversed, he could feel the man walking behind him. It was as if the fellow was leading the way from behind: under the low stone arches, over the cobbled courtyards, until they reached the narrow street that spat out onto the wharves. As they entered it, the man quickened his pace, and Nouri could feel the fear course through him. Before he could think what to do, however, he felt a hand on his shoulder. So he stopped. And he turned. Then the man took a step closer, lowered his hand, and grasped the serpent.

Nouri stiffened. But so did the serpent. And though the fear now gripped him, he could only gasp as the man raised his tunic, and opened his trousers, and fell to his knees.

For the first time in as long as he could remember, he thought of God. Then a wave of such pleasure passed through him, even God was gone.

 

Sixteen

On the morning after his encounter at the wharves, Nouri awoke in a state of arousal, the covers tented around the insistent hardness of the serpent. As he slipped from the bed and splashed water on his face, he could not stop thinking of what had happened the night before. He kept hearing the man's footsteps—seeing his coal-black eyes—feeling the heat of his desire. As he followed the path from Sayid's to the laundry, he felt sure each person he passed knew what he'd done. He felt sure Shohreh knew too: she kept pressing her body against him and could not stop speaking about the soiled bedsheets. Yet even Nouri's discomfort at her closeness did not cause the serpent to relax. It jutted against the steam press and thudded against the vats and remained a general nuisance throughout the day.

When he was done with the day's labor, he continued on to Abdallah's. But the moment the luscious vapors took their effect, he hurried off in search of the man. When he reached the place where he'd found him the night before, there was no one there. But a bit farther on he found another man—this time leaning against a rusted gate—he could relinquish himself to.

A new daily pattern emerged: rising in the morning, trudging to Shohreh's, hurrying to Abdallah's, and then heading out to find the next man. Sometimes he wandered for hours without success. Other times he'd barely stepped into the dark alley before he found the next warm body. Each night was an adventure, each man different from the one before. Some were strong and thickly muscled. Some were wraithlike. Some were small. Some were covered with bristling hair. Some were smooth like stones washed by the sea. Some were charcoal. Some were fair. Some cried out when they came. Some whimpered. Some moaned.

All were on fire.

Few spoke a word.

And despite their vast number, he never encountered the same man twice.

As Nouri moved deeper into the world of the flesh, his body continued its passage from boy to man. His shoulders broadened. His face grew lean. His voice—which had been a piping
shawm
when he'd left the lodge—settled into the warmth of a resonant
oud.
More significant than these physical changes, however, were the changes in how he related to the world. He no longer felt the need to be looked after. To be approved of. To be told what to do. And after months of sating the needs of the serpent, he no longer felt ashamed at watching it rise and fall.

The months slipped by. The Sharqi blew in from the east and the sultry days grew shorter. And night after night, Nouri gave himself over to the pleasures of the body. Not even the delirium of the pipe could make the world so completely disappear. Each night, however, before he could carry his spent body back to Sayid's, the persistent itching would return. And all he could do was tumble into a restless sleep, and begin a new cycle the next day.

*   *   *

IF SHEIKH BAILIRI HAD BEEN
a part of Nouri's new world, the Sufi master would have explained quite clearly that nothing remains the same for very long, that the senses dull, that pleasure fades, that left to their own devices all things, no matter how sweet, will inevitably decline. He was not there, however, and his voice—which had once echoed in Nouri's ears—was now buried beneath layers of thick gauze. So Nouri could barely register the fact that it took longer to accomplish less at the laundry, that it took more draws from Abdallah's pipe to produce the desired effect, and that the men he caressed in the hidden pockets of the night were becoming not only interchangeable but unappealing. He only knew that when he awoke in the morning he felt drained, that the smell of Shohreh's soap made him queasy, and that he often had to search all night before he found someone to whom he was willing to offer himself.

Sayid—who rarely saw him anymore—found him a perfect model of dissipation. “I've watched many people pass through here. It's a stewpot. A magnet for every vice. But I've never seen anyone fall so hard for the city's lures. You're impressive, my friend!”

Shohreh, on the other hand—who saw him every day—found him a perfect wreck. “I wouldn't fuck him now,” she exclaimed to Sayid, “if he was the last prick in town!”

More important, she was no longer sure that she wished him to work at the laundry. His stirring was listless, his hanging erratic, and he seemed in need of a good pressing himself. So one morning, after a particularly impassioned night, she announced that he needed to either shape up or find a strong camel to ride out of town.

“If I'd wanted to look after a child, I'd have had one! Get the clouds out of your head! Or get out!”

To be honest, Nouri was grateful for the ultimatum. For he knew that his life was a mess and could not go on much longer as it was. But if he lost his job at the laundry, he could not pay Abdallah for the pipe; if he could not use the pipe, his itching would increase; if his itching was not tempered, he could not bear the touch of even the gentlest stranger; and if he did not lose himself in his nightly trysts, he could not bear the sorrow in his heart. So he swallowed his pride and begged Shohreh to give him another chance.

As a test of his pledge to work harder, the gruff laundress gave him a particularly difficult task. Rashid al-Halil, one of her most steadfast customers, had just lost his wife. Consumed by grief, he'd ventured off to receive succor from a band of religious fanatics who lived in the mountains a few hours south. He'd remained there a month, and was so touched by the kindness they'd shown him, he wished to offer them a kindness in return. So he sent a pair of his servants to gather each towel, bedsheet, window curtain, tablecloth, and stitch of clothing the brothers possessed and take it to Shohreh's to be cleaned.

“White!” Shohreh shouted, as she led Nouri to the absurdly large basket that the great heap of goods was piled up in. “Everything is fucking white! And I've been told to make certain it's all even whiter when it goes back!”

Each item, she explained, had to be soaked in a solution of hot water mixed with vinegar and soap, then wrung out by hand, then rinsed with cool water, then wrung out again, then hung in the courtyard, then rinsed again, then wrung out again, then hung out again, then pressed in the steam press, then folded, and then carefully stacked in the enormous basket. Rashid al-Halil's servants would return for the basket a few hours before sundown. So it all had to be done as swiftly as it could.

“They say the stupid fools barely eat!” Shohreh exclaimed. “So at least you won't have to deal with shit stains in their drawers!”

Nouri found this scant consolation for the long day of labor that lay before him. But he rolled up his sleeves and set out to do the best that he could do. First he made a fire to heat the water for the vats. Then he added the vinegar and the soap. Then he gathered the sheets and towels and tunics from the basket and lowered them in. Once they were submerged beneath the scalding water, he reached for the long birch stick and began to stir. By now his arms were quite used to the exertion—indeed, after working at the laundry for almost half a year, they'd grown nearly as strong as Vishpar's—but the steam that rose from the boiling vats stung his eyes, and the sound of the churning water deafened his ears, and his thoughts, spurred by Shohreh's ultimatum, began to turn in his head.

Maybe I can stop roaming the streets at night.

Maybe I can stop smoking the infernal pipe.

Maybe I can dive into one of the steaming vats and be cleansed like the laundry.

He worked all day—stirring, wringing, rinsing, hanging, pressing, folding, and stacking. By the end, he was so tired he could barely lift the most gossamer sash from the plate of the press. Yet he knew that once he'd laid the final item in the basket he would head for Abdallah's. So he balanced the last stack of things on the basket's edge, raised his eyes to the steam-wrecked ceiling, and prayed for help.

It had been so long since he'd turned to Allah, he did not really know what to say. But then he saw a white robe hanging from a wooden dowel, and he thought of Soledad. He realized that he'd been waiting for her to appear—leading a herd of goats over the hill—walking barefoot across the blazing sand—to help him sort out the mess he'd gotten into. So he closed his eyes and sent up a tender plea—not to God, who he felt quite sure had given up on him, but to his absent friend.

“Help me,” he whispered. “I'm lost. And I can't seem to find my way back.”

Nouri could not have said what he hoped would occur. A sudden dispersal of the steam? A flash of insight? A flash of light? Or perhaps merely the simple strengthening of his will? He never could have guessed that the dowel that held the robe would suddenly snap, causing the garment to float into the air like an angel. Or that the splintered halves of the rod would come crashing down to knock him hard on the head and hurl him into the cavernous basket at his side. Or that the stack of clothes he'd placed on the basket's edge would topple down and cover him. Or that he'd be so gone to the world he would not feel a thing as the men who'd been sent to deliver the finished laundry hoisted the basket and carried him away.

*   *   *

IT WAS A PERFECT MORNING
: bathed in sunlight, laced with birdsong, soothed by a fragrant breeze. A few pale clouds were reflected in the tiny pool that sat at the center of the garden, and the argan tree that stood near the southern wall cast its shade on the grass. For the man in the thin white shift seated cross-legged on the ground, however, a veil covered the day. So he pressed his bare legs into the grass and tried to push through it.

Despite the loss of his parents to a virulent plague that had swept through his village when he was six, the destruction by a savage dust storm of the farm he'd been taken to live on when he was twelve, and the trampling to death of his best friend by a runaway steed when he was twenty-one, Sheikh Abu al-Husain al-Ibrahim al-Khammas always insisted that his life had been exceedingly good. He'd always had food to eat, a roof over his head, and, most important of all, he'd found the purpose of his life at an early age. There was never any doubt that his path was toward God. The moment he heard the first words of the Qur'an, he knew there was nothing else worth pursuing. When he asked his elders how to take his devotion to a deeper level, they saw the mystic in his soul. So when he reached the age of sixteen, they sent him off to become a Sufi. He studied with a teacher named Sheikh al-Faraj al-Farid for nearly thirty years, until he was chosen to travel into the mountains to head the order in the clouds. He'd led that order now for even longer than he had studied and practiced at the first. And though its heyday had come and gone, and its ranks had dwindled, it still offered him what he needed to progress on his inner path.

After six decades of practice, Sheikh al-Khammas found that nothing was left but his desire to be with God. The laws of a higher world had been revealed and they rendered mute the laws of common existence. He was no longer fooled by ambition or greed. He no longer felt the need to control anyone else. Such freedom, however, was accompanied by an inner wildness, which he tried to hide from his fellow Sufis. For with the loosening of the doctrines of his faith, he was left to govern himself.

He knew, however, that as long as he had skin, blood, and bones he would have to labor to reach God. As he splashed the cold water on his face in the morning. As he roamed the hushed corridors at night. So now, as he sat on the grass, in the garden, by the pool, he attempted to pierce the veil that kept them apart.