The Geometry of God, page 12
The street ends at Boulevard Hassan II. I cross it and enter the medina. The souk closes for three hours during siesta. Wow! This is the only spare time I have before leaving for Lahore tomorrow and my sisters will kill me if I arrive empty-handed. My mother doesn't, but she has a way of hiding her disappointment that ends up killing me too.
I retrace my steps towards the boulevard, looking like a fool at the walls that protect the old neighborhood, now mired in its siesta, and feeling an idiot for not knowing anything about that place, for not even having a map. I was embarrassed to ask for it at reception. When I am in Lahore I prefer to ask people on the street or risk losing myself completely before staring at a map like a fool. Who wears such a thing on them? I don't even know if they exist in my country. I put my hands in my pockets and look up.
I do remember reading it in a hotel brochure: the oldest wall was built by the Almohads, the dynasty that conquered Spain. The Andalusian Wall, which is later, was built five hundred years later by Muslim refugees who fled Spain during the Holy War of the Catholic Monarchs Isabel and Fernando. The city of Rabat grew within these two walls until the French invaded it in 1912 and built the new neighborhood, the Ville Nouvelle, where our hotel is located.
Yousuf Saiid's voice seems to come from those walls. It is a tragedy that you have not learned anything from history. By rejecting rationality, the 'wise majority' became easy targets for the Mughals and the Crusaders… In the hotel it sounded convincing. But now I agree with Mohamed Ibrahim. One can be as wise as Aristotle or the Mutazilites, but what good is it when you have to face bloodthirsty men?
The only thing that lifts my spirits are the women waddling down the street in miniskirts and high heels. No young girl from Lahore teaches that much meat, not even one from Gulberg. So much voluptuousness! Such soft skin! I follow one (the ankles could be slimmer, but who cares, with such a tight skirt?) To a very classy cafe where they serve a variety of pâtisseries (other than the women). She meets a man, so I'm leaving. I was almost hit by a motorcyclist. The woman with him is not sitting sideways with her legs together as in Pakistan, but straddling with her legs spread.
I go back into the medina. I zigzag through its streets, cross another boulevard, enter the kasbah of the Udaya. Inside is a beautiful garden. And a coffee on the terrace. The young people wear jeans and djellabas, they nibble on m'henchas and cakes while they greet each other, Hello! And ¡La bes! I'm looking for an empty table. The tile floor is spectacular, a blue so brilliant it purifies my blood. To my right is the river; to my left, the sea. The first time I see the Atlantic. I watch the river pour its brown mud into the grayish waves of the sea while I wait for a mint tea to be brought to me. It finally arrives, light amber in color, in a glass with a golden rim. I tilt it holding it with my thumb and index finger, I sip the sugar making noise as I drink, I inhale the aroma. I contemplate two women in underwear and a T-shirt who are on the beach at my feet. They are drying off with a towel. I feel blissful.
Before I left the cafe, I approached a man whom I had heard speak English. He indicates that there is a bookstore near the train station. I walk there and find the book I'm looking for: The Transcendence of the Mutazilites. They are all there: Ibn Ata, Avicenna, Al-Razi, Averroes, the whole gang of sinners. I buy.
When I return to the medina for the third time the souk is finally open.
"I kissed her," I say, smiling at a man who sells leather goods.
"Msa l'khir," he replies, returning my smile.
Red slippers for Sehr, yellow for Shaista, and in another store, I buy an inlaid cedar hand mirror for my mother. Smells of life, just like her.
Normally there are no Yousuf Saiid or Mohamed Ibrahim who awaken conflicts in my soul, nor are there bare legs or terraces facing the sea that calm them. Towards the end of the decade, the Creation Party and its constant speeches about division and wayward youth have managed to color every tile on earth, from Moroccans to Mughals.
One day I am in my room in Lahore trying to finish the monthly issue of Akhlaq within the due dates, but I feel defeated. Why am I doing this? Why don't I stop being Aba's pawn once and for all and find myself a job teaching al jabra before I forget about the magic of a sifr?
I cross out a series of empty notes with a line.
I'd like to be sitting in a beachfront bar, talking to a Bangladeshi waiter who was once Pakistani and formerly Indian, but who will never be Arab, even if his children's children are born on Arab soil.
Is that why I keep working for Aba? Because of the trips?
Or for keeping the promise I made to Ama? He is your father. Do what I tell you. I doubt that he ever looked at himself once in the cedar mirror I bought from him in Rabat. I wanted her to see herself as I see her: always alert and always calm, never decked out and always beautiful, never reproaching anything and worthy of everything. He put my gift aside with the mirror face down.
Or the same impulse that led me to lie in my report on Zahoor? Call it peer pressure, cowardice, or a desire to please. Spiced with a hint of fear.
I don't feel any pride in admitting it. Aba is big and I am small. When I was even younger, he would hit me on the knuckles with a ruler. There are parents who do worse things. At least I've heard them from the rooftop. I remember the click of that sharp blow on my right hand for having used it badly in school exams or, on another occasion, on my left hand for having used it too well, just at the moment when a video in which three lesbians appeared busty women taking a hot bath was at its hottest point. That was right after I had the vision in the Badshahi mosque, only those three zeros were very different, in fact they were six,
My father used the ruler for many years and it worked better than a shoe or a stick because, like me, it was a small object. Ama's ice cubes provided no relief from my swollen knuckles, just my saliva and childish tears, which kept filling me with shame. I know that the mere hiss of that plastic rod through the air would cause me the same horrible shame again. Perhaps that is why my right hand is now in the service of my father. My notebook is my best glove.
It may be out of fear, loyalty to Mistress, yearning to see the world, or innate weakness, or all at once, but something else is missing. It goes without saying that my father has not always been like this.
He always scared me and he never deserved the woman he has, but there was a time, long ago, when he loved me. We enjoyed fourteen years of walks and conversations about all kinds of things, from Lahore's half-collapsed gateways to the deep moat that surrounds the city walls. It didn't just tell me what to think. I was wondering what he thought. Like, for example, do you think a restoration would fix the Dilli Gate problem? I compared the current one with the original, which we found in the books (books that we have no longer looked for together) and came to the conclusion that it was a bad copy. I remember that my father found it interesting to know my opinion. On another occasion, while we were eating kachauri, he asked me why there were five gates to the city in the south, four in the north, three in the east, but only one to the west, the Taksali Gate, now totally demolished and impossible to restore. To prevent access to the mint that minted coins there in the past? I licked the salt that was left on my lips and said maybe, but two to the west plus three to the east would have added up to five, like the number of prayers for the day, so I would have imagined a fifth. My father laughed. Then we play numbers, trying to guess how many coins the taksal would have produced or reproduced. And he taught me the two meanings of the phrase taksali zubaan. In chaste language and in metaphorical language. To prevent access to the mint that minted coins there in the past? I licked the salt that was left on my lips and said maybe, but two to the west plus three to the east would have added up to five, like the number of prayers for the day, so I would have imagined a fifth. My father laughed. Then we play numbers, trying to guess how many coins the taksal would have produced or reproduced. And he taught me the two meanings of the phrase taksali zubaan. In chaste language and in metaphorical language. To prevent access to the mint that minted coins there in the past? I licked the salt that was left on my lips and said maybe, but two to the west plus three to the east would have added up to five, like the number of prayers for the day, so I would have imagined a fifth. My father laughed. Then we play numbers, trying to guess how many coins the taksal would have produced or reproduced. And he taught me the two meanings of the phrase taksali zubaan. In chaste language and in metaphorical language. And he taught me the two meanings of the phrase taksali zubaan. In chaste language and in metaphorical language. And he taught me the two meanings of the phrase taksali zubaan. In chaste language and in metaphorical language.
And then the war started. Metaphors were forbidden overnight. Languages became chaste mints that coined the name of God in infinite repetition. Our walks are over. Since then he has not asked my opinion again (and he forgets that it is my voice that writes his speeches today). Now he thinks he risks falling apart like an old gateway to a ruined city. Like that old door, the restoration has only served to make it worse.
Perhaps I am working for him with the only hope of rediscovering his original self. Because, like Lahore, I have not been enlightened by history. Just crushed by her.
The Prophet said: Every man is deluded by two different demons. If Yousuf Saiid and Zahoor are guilty of following the first, I am guilty of following the second.
The first is free will, developmental patterns, transitional mammals, and disgusting inventions like hideous dogs and fish.
The second demon is memory.
Amal
Mehwish and I are at Nana's house in Islamabad. If we don't get back to Lahore soon, I'll be late for the New Years Eve party at Zara's. Brian and Henry (if they were British they would be Mister Sales and Mister Walker respectively, but since they are North Americans, they are only Brian and Henry), Aziz Sahib and others from Nana's team are lounging in the living room arguing about what they call "the two bookends. situated at the extremities of known primitive whales. ' The oldest, Pakicetus, and the most recent, Basilosaurus, found very recently.
"What is a bookend?" Mehwish asks me.
—It is something that serves to hold the books and prevent them from falling off the shelf.
"Show me."
I walk away from the group and go along with Mehwish towards the wall where the bookstore is. At that moment Henry is saying:
"Until they can be proven, we have no choice but to imagine the interesting subtleties of adaptation ...
"A closed door is always a challenge," says Nana.
-What are you talking about? Mehwish asks me.
"They say they have changed their minds about the appearance of the Pakicetus." I was not swimming. It was not a fish but a dog. Like the Mesonychid. Do you remember the whale-dog? I ask her, and she nods. They can never know what it was like. That's what they're talking about.
He gives me the can to make relief drawings of the "new Pakicetus" and the "newer one."
"Do you want a picture or a bookend?" I put a smooth stone between his hands. Mehwish caresses her and a smile lights up her face.
I watch the men discuss their discoveries with enthusiasm. I still can't go with them to the excavations. Hey! They were all more interested in me when I was eight than now when I am eighteen. But Nana says it's not like that, not even because I have to stay home to care for Mehwish, as she can walk, eat, dress, and even entertain herself better than most sighted adults. I can't go now for security reasons. I need a permit from this or that ministry and most of all I need a bodyguard. Scientists don't want to shoulder that responsibility. It distracts them from their work.
The same thing happens to me in college. Men don't want me in their labs.
I am envious of Mehwish because she is not aware of all the spaces that we are being denied access to. She continues to smile as she turns the stone bookend in her hands and feels its edges and cavities.
I notice a piece of paper that sticks out between the pages of a book placed horizontally on top of the others. It is the Rubaiyyat of Omar Jayyam. I take the paper out of the book. It has the letterhead of the Academy of Moral Policy and it says:
Dear Sir:
Atheism is a cancer that has its favorite organ in its pen. We must resort to all available means to try to eradicate it, otherwise there is a risk that it will spread. We are watching you. Be advised ...
I look at the date. It's from two years ago. Nana never told me about this.
Mehwish returns the stone to me and asks me to draw a picture for him.
"We're running late, Mehwish." I'll do it for you tomorrow, I promise.
He frowns.
When I say goodbye to Nana, I give her a hug and think, Be careful. I put that idea out of my head.
Noman
New Years Eve. The rooftop. Other choices. Another task: eliminate scientists from science books. Use verses from the Qur'an to show that its laws are false. There has never been, and it is impossible for there to be, any discovery since Everything Is Written.
Right away I run into a problem. I am able to calculate the side of a triangle before someone says the word triangle, but I am not a historian of science. I don't know who to eliminate. That's why I only know who to reject when I attack him, as happened to me with Zahoor and later with the Mutazilites. But that doesn't eliminate the embarrassing gaps in my knowledge, especially when it comes to the laws. For example, is "perpetual motion" a law, an idea, or a fact?
The second obstacle is even worse. I don't always find verses from the Qur'an that serve my purposes and sometimes I even find some that say the opposite. Sitting alone on the roof tonight, I'm worried. Am I misrepresenting God's words? I don't want to be His representative. I don't even want to be Aba's. I don't even want to be my own!
I give myself an hour to be up here. If my neighbor Unsa appears on your roof, I will interpret it as a sign. This is the night of good resolutions, of changes. If it doesn't show up, then I'll start the new year with a new job.
Two fugitive chicks perch on my sister Shaista's water tank. The winter mist envelops them. I look up at the nearest rooftop, Unsa's, and fix it there.
After forty minutes Unsa appears.
She wants to run away, I notice it as soon as I see her, now and whenever I look at her. She lifts her shalwar above her slender ankles and begins running in sneakers, from one end of her roof to the other, staring straight ahead. She is all curves and arches: curved forehead; nose with personality and slightly arched bridge; mouth like a crescent; chin and neck aligned at such a perfect angle that Pythagoras would scream with excitement. I would recognize that profile anywhere, even in the midst of deeper darkness and thicker fog than the one that now swirls around her shapely legs as if she were the one creating it. (I imagine the rest of her body so often that I could recognize it anywhere too.) While running, I fantasize about picking her up and tossing her into the air like a shooting star or dove. Then I would climb up to the sky to meet her.
I stand up so he can see me, I stay close to our water tank so I can hide behind him in case brother shows up. She does not look at me. It never does. But I am happy. One day I'll jump on your roof. Now I have another promise to keep.
I go down to my room and start writing:
PURE SCIENCE
The Quran states:
Do you not know that it has been God who has put everything on earth at your service and it is at His request that ships sail in the sea? (22:65)
If the ships sink, it is because of His command. If they float, it is because of His command. It is something that we cannot question or understand. All reference to Archimedes and his supposed principle must be eliminated.
It is He who supports the heavenly bodies in their orbits so that they do not fall to the earth unless He orders it. (22:65)
If an apple falls from a tree it is by His will. If He remains on the branch, it is by His will. It is something that we cannot question or understand. Eliminate all reference to Newton and his supposed gravity.
And all the beauty of the many colors that He has created for you on earth: here is a message for those willing to accept it willingly. (16:13)
If the colors are perceived it is thanks to His will. If they do not see each other, it is by His will. It is something that we cannot question or understand. Eliminate all reference to Newton and what he called wavelengths.
Think of the day when a violent convulsion will shake the world and will be followed by several others. (79: 6)
If energy is released it is by His will. If it is stored it is by His will. It is something that we cannot question or understand. Eliminate all references to Einstein and his supposed relativity.
And God made water fall from the heavens, thus giving life to the earth where there was none: here is a message, without a doubt, for those willing to hear it. (16:65)
If it rains, it is by His will. If there is a drought, it is by His will. It is something that we cannot question or understand. Eliminate all references to Luke Howard and his alleged meteorology.
He creates what He wants. He makes the gift of a female offspring to whomever He wants and the gift of a male offspring to whomever He wants. (42:49)
Fertility depends on His will. The inheritance depends on His will. It is something that we cannot question or understand. Eliminate all references to Gregor Mendel and his alleged peas.
Have you ever thought about the seed that you emit? Are you the ones who have created it or are we only the source of its creation? (56:58)
Creation depends on His will. Destruction depends on His will. It is something that we cannot question or understand. Eliminate all references to Charles Darwin and his supposed evolution.
