A Reunion | Tabish Nawaz

My God, my God, who am I watching? How many am I? Who is I? What is this gap between me and myself?

                                                                                                 – Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

I left my home at a very tender age. It was not some philosophical wandering, the one associated with search for meaning. It was merely the pre-determined path of my time. The path was set prior to my birth. And, a dream was erected at its center. A dream that was less personal than societal. Every individual of my time was expected to do whatever it takes to make it come true. This was the biggest upheaval of my time. It took me to different places and uprooted me from there on numerous pretexts.

First I left my home for education. The kind of education that pushed me farther away from my true nature and instilled in me a raw, primal instinct for survival and succeeding. After education it took me to different places for jobs and then for endless other jobs. At these places it not only uprooted me but also scattered me. Every place I left took a part away from me. The fragments continued living at these places even when I was long gone from them. My existence extended not only in time but also in space. Broken shards strewn all over. My countless finitudes escaped even my own recognition. All my broken lives I kept wandering for completion. I visited and re-visited places looking for them. And, sometimes my little fragmented lives too came looking for their real selves. We mutually haunted one another. Sometimes we spent time together, sharing with one another our little isolated tales. Even then we only had a vague feeling of belongingness which we could never explicitly express. Such was the fragmentation life and dreams caused to us.

Then one day I committed suicide.

It was a confession that life is too much for me. Or as Camus puts it in everyday words – “is not worth the trouble.” It is not that I did it without contemplation. I reflected a lot. If I leave a place, I carry with me a part of that place but I also leave a fragment of mine there. What happens to that fragment if I die? – This question always occupied me.

During my time it was fashionable to take spiritual diversions. It was a prevailing fad. People believed that it would take pressure out of daily routine and increase efficiency at work. I too dabbled in it. And, thus the notion of afterlife flowered. It was then I decided to confess that life is not worth the trouble.

It was an erroneous decision.

The spiritual promise of afterlife was not without its terms and conditions. This Mother Nature told me. She was an implacable and dispassionate being. She told me that life flows as a stream and not as isolated drops. In its flow it touches the shores of birth and death. She accepted that sometime streams – out of affection or repulsion – do not merely touch the shores but strike them with violence and fragment themselves into tiny drops. But she insisted that these drops must coalesce and stream together to flow into the ocean of life. I tried to win her through reason – a tool mastered in my time with imbecile perfection. But sadly, Mother Nature detests reason.

Death, therefore, did not put closure to my agonies. It rather spawned the whole set of afterlives that almost resembled the earlier life. In life I doubted life and in death I doubted death. And, after experiencing both, difference between the two is muddled.

Death did not change anything. After a brief pain, it restored to me the earlier life I had. But didn’t I suffer pain when I took birth?

With everyone and everything similarly intact as in life, I live my usual life in death. I carry out all my earlier tasks. And everyone else too exists as before. Sometimes, I forget that I am actually dead, as I used to forget of being alive during my lifetime. But, in solitude a feverish nostalgia for unity overwhelms me. I move restlessly in my cities looking for my other fragments. Sometime we find each other. A primordial sense of belongingness draws us close. Then we share tales. The forgetfulness takes over, not like the prevalent phenomena of shrinking memory caused by too much information consumption, but more like a sleep, the kind necessary to live, that lulls the unresolvable inconsistencies and renders life bearable. And, then we part believing the meeting to be a delusion – a result of some fervent hope. But, one day something happened…..

*****

It was a lazy Friday afternoon. I was at home. I had had breakfast and was lying in the balcony. The gentle caresses of sunlight were making me warm. An occasional spurt of cool wind every now and then made the excessive warmth tolerable. ‘The Short Stories by Maupassant’ was rested on my chest. My eyes were grazing the lyrical prose. The words streamed through my consciousness like a mother’s lullaby. It dulled my senses, almost like sleep. After a while, it spread over my face and stayed there. I began to loosen up. Long held weariness was dissipating from my pores. Sleep was round the corner. The eyelids had begun to acquire weight.

“It’s time. Get ready.”

I heard the mother saying. The voice seemed distant. Broken and distorted.

She came nearer. I could sense her. Yet the voice remained all too far. Sleep by that time had usurped my sense of hearing.

Nearness between people can sometime be measured by how close to themselves they sense each other’s voices. This I reflected in my stupor. It helped me to overhear the mother and slip back to the embracing world of sleep.

“There’s hardly any time left.”

“The water is ready, bathe and go for the prayer.”

“Nobody cares for prayers these days.”

Emotional measure of the voice was getting distinct. It had begun to pierce through the barrier that I constructed to disregard the surroundings. Indifference necessary for sleep began to fade away. And each passing moment successively pushed me towards awareness.

I removed ‘The Short Stories by Maupassant’ from my face. The sunlight fiercely invaded my eyes. The assault lasted for a few seconds. I laid there motionless and waited for another nudge from the mother. The mother gently slapped me at the back. I got up. The mother with a towel in her hand was standing in front of me.    

“I have been standing here for the past one hour. Don’t I have other works to do?”

I smiled and said – “The father was right when he used to say that you always exaggerate your work and amount of hours you put into them.” What I said was unimportant and was done more to supplant a smile on her face. It worked. It has always worked. The mother’s mood lightened. Her face beamed with smile. It multiplied the falling sunlight. It brightened up the surrounding and made it feather light. Smile and sunlight fused into each other. Their distinction became indiscernible. Sleepiness vanished. I rubbed my eyes few times. It did away with whatever remained of the sleep that few moments ago seemed almost deathly.

I got up and began to prepare for the weekly Friday prayer. I did this to appease my mother rather than out of any religious consideration. May be others are doing the same.

I took the warm water which the mother prepared and went to have my bath. The warm water was comforting. It restored the sleepiness to an extent. I dozed off in between. The mother knocked the door. I opened and found her standing just outside the door with all my dresses. I came out and began to dress up.

I occasionally kept looking at the placidly moving wall clock. It did not appear threatening unlike the ones I am used to. The wall clock at home has always been benign. It tells time and only when sought. It rarely seeks attention. Its ticking sound almost conveys the rhythmic breathing of home. And when I have accidentally awakened in the middle of the night, the continuous ticking has lulled me back to a reassuring homely sleep. After I have started working, I have come to treat it as one of the family members. And I always pay my gratitude with a smile every time I look at it.

After dressing up, I went to the mother and told her that I would be leaving now. The mother then turned over the various coversheets that laid over the refrigerator, dining table, T.V. top and the book shelf. She moved her hand over them and brought forth numerous coins of almost every existent denomination. She always saves these coins and keeps them safely for distributing as alms. Every day little by little she remembers the poor folks in her thoughts and actions. The mother gave me few coins and asked me to distribute them to the poor who gather at every Friday prayer. I pocketed everything and headed to the nearest mosque.

*****

A sea of footwear greeted me at the mosque entrance. I added my own drops to the growing sea and entered. Inside the mosque, everyone else seemed to stare at everyone else. The gaze carried either an interrogating curiosity or a gloating statement about one’s piety. To me a Friday prayer has always appeared more like a guilt-lessening session than an actual worship, where people come to repent there week-long forgetfulness of prayer and return somewhat guilt free. I never found this notion repulsive but certainly ridiculous. But what isn’t?

After a brief struggle, I failed to find a space to pray. I absolved myself of further struggle and stood at the far end. It did not bother me. But it certainly bothered someone in front of me. He pushed some of the kids from his row behind and asked me to join. I felt bad for the kids. Considering it to be a norm, I chose not to resist and accepted the space he provided.

The new space was by the window. I sat there for a while and waited for the prayer’s final call. On the sounding of the final call I rose with the congregation. While standing up, something at the window sill caught my attention.

It was a copy of “The Myth of Sisyphus”.

It was kept inverted and opened signifying the reader’s intent to carry on from he left. The whetted curiosity made the prayer unbearable. The whole time I remain fixated with the idea of meeting the reader. It was not only a joyous anticipation of meeting a fellow reader but also a feverish feeling of meeting someone of own kind. A kind that grapples with meaning of existence. And in its pursuit straddles divine and blasphemous territories. A thrill associated with an unexpected meeting of members of some secret sect in public took over me.

My prayer lost its rhythm. I merely performed the routineness of the act. After the prayer, groveling invocations for divine blessing commenced. It seemed longer than the prayer itself. The Imam voice quivered and reached the point of wailing. After this role play, he was found gloating and beaming with a face that betrayed the howling voice that sought divine blessings moments ago.

The people rushed to move out. An intense earnestness for reaching home was palpable everywhere. Everything in the end contradicted the message of peace, contentment and grace delivered in the sermon. On usual Fridays, this would have been my moment of making a resolution of not coming the next time. But this time my thoughts were fixated on the book and its owner. I drew closer to the book and held it in my hand. I started reading the marked page.

“That nostalgia for unity, that appetite for the absolute illustrates the essential impulse of the human drama.”

An unusual force emanating from the smell of the wrinkled pages of the book hurled me somewhere deep within myself. A whispering voice with old age stamped all over it broke my reverie.

“This book says that suicide is the only really serious philosophical question.”

I turned and found him sitting on the floor. His face exuded light. His smile quivered like a candle flame flickering in an airy night. I drew closer to him. His hand trembled when he made gestures. By the motion of his worn out hand, he asked me to sit on the floor with him. He spoke – “You like this book?”

Before nodding in affirmative I noticed that his words sweetened the air surrounding us. Like a sweet faded fragrance of perfume which always remains in a state of dying. The one that caresses the senses not revolts against it.

“You can take it and return after reading. I have read it several times.”

“Thank you. I have read it once.”

“Then you should read it once more, even twice, may be thrice. You don’t just read a book, you read into yourself too. These fixed words are the least static of things you can expect in this nature. I would suggest you to read it once more.”

He continued. His voice gained strength. His smile now quivered less. He appeared younger now.

“You know Jorge Luis Borges?” He did not wait for my reply and continued.

“Borges in one of his stories said that a book is best read the second time.”

Then he paused, as if he wanted to say something but his memory failed him. In those brief moments, he aged again. All his fervent ways vanished. His shoulders stooped. He began to pick words again in his quivering ways.

“I don’t remember the exact title but I do have some vague memories of its content. The protagonist had only one book.”

He again seemed to struggle with his memories. He began speaking diffidently. His voice began to reflect his old age again. His hand pressed his forehead. Believing it would spill out the details from his head. It helped.

In a broken voice he said – “He had Iliad or may be some Shakespearean work. I don’t remember well. Forgive my old age.” A sense of shame was visible.

He continued – “The protagonist one day meets a young man who has read a lot of books. They have discussion on books and reading. I don’t remember the whole discussion clearly but the upshot is that reading a book a number of times distills numerous meanings to the same tale. It may make you realize about your own multiple existences.”

Speaking thus, he almost reached the limits of his breath. He panted and concluded everything by saying – “You understand what I mean?”

With his words, the sea inside me that was long frozen tumbled. An ancient forgotten desire came alive. But I could not make sense of these rumblings at that time. I dismissed them as a sign of exhaustion and nodded in agreement.

With this, a pause followed. A pause often associated with conversations among strangers who have just lost or exhausted the context. We both sat there for a while groping for an escape. May be from each other or may be from the pervading unbearable silence that roamed between us.

After a while, the silence condensed and fell like drops. The conversation ensued again. We began by exchanging a few social niceties. These niceties made the mutual strangeness bearable and helped explore a common space. The conversation meandered to a point where a sense of mutual trust developed. A feeling of meeting someone long lost grew.

He asked me to accompany him to his room located on the top of the mosque. He tried to get on his feet. I took his arms, put them over my shoulders and helped him stand. We then walked to the top. His gait reminded me of a book opened by a furious wind. A gale of fluttering and then a moment of pause. Interlude of hurried, wavering steps and then moments of rest. Walking, holding and resting briefly after every few steps, we reached his room.

At the door he waited for a while, as if measuring out the pros and cons of bringing a stranger to his room. Still unsure of himself, he gave in to the prevailing inertia and pushed the door gently. The door gave way to the inside with its universal creaking. The room smelled of burnt flesh and papers. Settled ashes moved with hesitation. A mat was spread in the center and a steel trunk was kept at the corner of the room. The room appeared lived and forsaken at the same time.

“What happened here?”

He stretched over the mat, motionless, looked straight at the ceiling, secretly decanted his thoughts, passed them through filter of reflection and burst open in poetry.

“I speak for you, companions on a journey

Dense, not devoid of effort,

And also for you who have lost

The soul, the spirit, the wish to live.

Or nobody or somebody, or perhaps only one, or you

Who are reading me: remember the time

Before the wax hardened,

When each one of us was like a seal.

Each of us carries the imprint

Of the friend met along the way;

In each the trace of each.”

The lyrical cadence of his reply moved me. Though meanings took birth after a while. And it further took some more moments before my response breached the prevailing calm of the poetical utterance.

“Beautiful.”

It came out more than said. I did not wish to spear the hum the poetry created in its wake.

“Primo Levi, from To My Friend. This is one of my favorites.”

Then he went over to the steel trunk. He brought it near the mat, opened it and began taking out all the books. He then began to pile them up in the center of the room. Kafka, Pessoa, Borges, Tolstoy, Camus looked prominent. It added warmth and brilliance to the room. My eyes remained fixated on him, watching him with attention all this while. He touched the books as if touching a new born baby, with delicacy, warmth and love.

The sight of these books brought forth in me the memories of all my lives. In their fragrance I could smell the time and the places gone by. In the folds of their pages I found the lives I had left behind. In their wrinkles I could see the lineaments of all my faces. By merely seeing them, I travelled through time and spaces. For the first time I could feel the magnified nature of my existence.

All this while, he kept spreading the books with deft precision and absorbed silence of a conjurer. He then constructed a mound and spread himself over it.

Fixing his gaze at me, he said

“I lost my soul at a very young age. I was born in a time when the majority of young people were losing their souls, without knowing why. Then I grew up, pursuing what I was reared to pursue – a dream, more of a social act than an individual’s will.”

“Then somewhere, at some point of time, I lost my soul.”

“My existence felt a passage of pain but everyone around me approved of it. Wasn’t the dream more important? And, wasn’t all of us had done or was to do the same?”

He paused and then continued.

“It was a suicide that my soul committed, more out of hope than despair.”

“It is not that the soul kept me unaware of its plan, but I did not care much. May be my apathy made the decision easier.”

“Then I aged and shriveled.”

“The dream still remained distant, though I achieved many of its fragments. But the process fragmented me more.”

“Broken lives.”

“And, then one day while slithering through life, I decided to collect all my beings shattered by dreams. And, by the time life announced its death sentence, I had managed to concentrate all my existences in my aging body.”

“After I died I became unbearably heavy.”

“Mother Nature came but refused to take me in citing her own laws. She said that the soul is the wing with which the body rises and flies. Mother Nature abhors heaviness and makes things fall. I fell into the abyss.”

He stared blankly at the walls, paused and began speaking again.

“I have always loved reading. Despite losing my soul. May be reading tricked me into believing that I have one. May be that is why I gravitated towards it – to compensate for the lost soul.”

“But, in this damned afterlife, even reading did not help much.”

“Then one day Cicero told me – A room without books is like a body without a soul. This dictum appealed to my longings.”

“I assembled all my books in this room, hoping my soul would return. I waited for thousands of years. Every evening I sit on its mound, awaiting the setting sun that passes through my window.”

“Every single day it burns me and my books with its blaze. Every evening it vaporizes me yet every evening I fail to fly. I just cling to this earth, like the miasma that this room reeks of”

“And, today when I saw you at the mosque, your probing eyes searching for some lost self in those pages. In that moment, I felt reunited with an old lost friend. A friend in whose waiting, I have spent numerous evenings burning myself.”

Speaking thus, he broke down.

His tears too shed tears in whose reflection I could see my own teary eyes.

His words unlocked the numerous prison cells inside me. Selves within selves accumulated in layers of time and space run amok. I held him in embrace and everyone started to spill over, deluging the room, sweetening it with the fragrance of reunion. We flowed and flowed unto Myself – the bigger self.

Spilling and tumbling, I met the river – the source, the origin.

Tabish Nawaz is pursuing his PhD at University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth in Environmental Sciences and lives in New Bedford, MA.