The Geometry of God, page 9
Amen murmurs followed by protests. The fool pauses and then continues.
“I would like to suggest that this 'innate knowledge' is, in exact terms, the natural sciences that help us understand those mountains of many colors that are, in fact, the Salt mountain range of our beloved Punjab! (He smiles delightedly, no one smiles back; my head is clear.) In fact, the study of the Earth could become a… (bites his lip, scratches his beard with his teeth) divine art. »
Two men protest, "Haram!" Aba asks Shorty to try not to commit more offenses. But he continues, although less sure of himself.
"I just want to suggest, as I was trying to say, that those with the necessary knowledge study the earth's crust, exactly, because it is not as young as some think (furious protests, Aba stands up), nor is it as old as others say. . But going back to the text ... »
Aba: «Young man, you are not the best person to come and give us lessons on the Sacred Word! (Consensus loudly.) I forbid you to continue. Khamosh!
Shorter, shouting: «It is in the Koran that other geological eras appear, and there it says that at the end of each one of them changes were made on the Earth. I mean, according to His will!
The president gets up; Aba gets up; I wake up. Two men pick up the Squirt by grabbing him by the collar of his shirt. Aba escorts him out of the room. Aba returns.
Aba: “It's a shame that this happens no more and no less than at our meeting. We must not allow our struggle to be interrupted by untimely riots. But let this serve as an example: pay attention to how quickly this germ spreads. (Many nod their heads grimly.)
Mujahid ul Sharif, JP member: “That was a mole sent by the secularists. It seemed to me as soon as he started to speak and I regret not having said it earlier.
Aba: "Never hesitate to come to me."
Mujahid ul Sharif: "From now on I promise to do so."
Aba: “I apologize to our foreign guests and please do not judge us for that pervert. It will never happen again. (Applause.) I think it's a good time to take a tea break. (General approval.) But just twenty minutes, please. (Silence.) After tea we will continue with the urgent business of Zahoor ul Din and his deranged inventions called "transitional forms." We will also welcome the Honorable Sheikh Abu bin Yaqub, who will introduce us to his post on the light of genius, in which he teaches us how the correct use of negative and positive ions of extraterrestrial geniuses provides electricity, followed by Mohamed Lawrence from ... ».
Mohamed Lawrence: «Lawghaw. Doctor".
Aba: «Mr. Mohamed, that is, doctor. He has shown that the forces of evil make the Earth rotate, but just as the stakes serve to secure a tent to the ground, in the same way Allah has made the mountains to settle us in space. (The men look towards the door through which the smell of tea enters.) And… ».
Mohamed Lawrence: «What today the" geologists "call" facts "were already demonstrated in the Koran (recited in English):" Have we not made the Earth a resting place for you and the mountains its stakes? " We do not recognize that invention called Newton's Law.
Aba: «To name His laws as scientists is to deny that He alone is the creator. (Voices of approval, clatter of dishes in the next room.) As I was saying… ».
Mohamed Lawrence: "It is clearly written that the mountain-stakes only ...".
Aba (in a hurry): “Thank you Mr. Doctor, we are looking forward to hearing the rest of your presentation. And we will also welcome other guests, including Dr. Khaled Mateen, who has shown us God's perspective through carefully drawn graphics, and Dr. Ali Abadi, whose work on the fish that make the journey of the river. river to sea, back and forth, shows that even at lower levels of life there is no instinct. Just the revelation. Even in this humble creature we find a sign of the Way of Truth. (All the men go to the door. In the room adjoining conference room number 1, tea is served.)
I remain seated. Something vital oozes from my pores. Petrov once said that there are many ways to break a man's back. A speech can hit harder than a stick.
The best way to take care of my back is to take it for a walk. A twenty minute break always ends up being forty minutes. I check that Aba is not looking at me. I run away.
I like to play with the words in my head. Mountains-stakes. A metaphor. Meta flora. It flourishes. The fury. The force. Meta emerges a force in metaphors. I keep thinking.
I take a quick walk around the block with Aba's voice ringing in my ears:People talk about the brain drain to refer to the youth leaving the country, but what about the brain drain of those who stay? I keep walking in a hurry like an articulated doll.
The shop windows of travel agencies display huge posters depicting white sand beaches. If Aba paid me, he would buy me a ticket abroad right now. If it weren't for the visa shit. I pass carpet stores, newsstands, an abandoned movie theater. The passing motorcycles force me to breathe a black death. The rickshaws attack my eardrums. However, the movement does me good. It calms me down.
I pass a hairdresser. I could use a shave and a face rub, even here at this congested intersection. But the hairdresser is already busy with a client and I don't have time. Continuous. Every inch of the sidewalk is busy: teahouses, paan shops, greengrocers, street vendors selling towels, hairpins, shoelaces. There is no corner without treading or a trace of uncontaminated air. If ever the city was a virgin, only God knows.
At the tea stand they are talking about diseases that are too expensive to treat and the war in Afghanistan. When will it end and when will the general who is filling his pockets with it leave? The money pious America sends us to fight its impious rival Roos was supposed to revert to us, to our thriving cultural heritage, to a once rich and pure Islam. But it has not. So where is the payoff for hitching the Jihad wagon to the Overpower? Where is the golden past? Some eyes turn to me and I think this is the point where the rich, the middle class and the poor coincide: the present is dangerous, the past was glorious. That's our congested junction.
The story sometimes brightens and sometimes darkens.
If I think I understood when I returned to the hotel, why not take it as a warning and act accordingly?
After the break, when the participants are finally seated, the JP president taps the microphone before beginning to speak again. Aba gestures with his finger for me to come closer.
I lean over his shoulder.
"It's too late." That Zahoor bhainchod will have made it to conference room number 2 by now. Guys like him are very punctual. I want you to leave the cassette on, go silently into the other room, and then come back silently and tell me what that demon is saying.
I do what he tells me, only I trip off the stage and drop the cassette. The man sitting next to me asks me out loud where I am going. By the time I mumble something close to an answer, all eyes are on me.
I go out in silence gliding like a fish.
I enter conference room number 2 and immediately detect the demon. He is tall and circumspect and at least ten years older than Aba. He paces back and forth in front of a screen on which a white man projects slides of a dog with a huge head and very short legs. It seems to me that it is the same one I saw in the newspaper clipping when I was driving in the car, a kind of cross between a German shepherd and a dachshund. (I would have done the crossing backwards, keeping my legs long and my head small and delicate.) Zahoor paces from one end of the stage to the other, eager to reach for the microphone, just like the men gathered in the other room. I don't know if he was the one who invented that ugly dog, but what I am sure of is that the speeches were invented in Pakistan.
Men and women are sitting together or standing at the back of the room. Nobody notices me. I sneak up to an empty chair in the front rows. There are far fewer people than Aba feared. Maybe forty people, tops. In your meeting there are at least five times more.
The lecturer finishes his presentation (Aba was right, they are on time) and a younger Gora stands up.
"My colleague," he begins, pointing to the one who has just spoken, "has exposed the work he did together with Mr. Aziz," he smiles at a round-faced man sitting in the front row, "and Mr. Zoo Whore," he looks at him. nervous to the one who goes from one side of the stage to the other. You've heard how the investigations of this wolf-like Mesonychid began - he points to the first image - to end up discovering this freshwater Pakicetus - the projector clicks. On the screen appears the image of a fish with sharp teeth standing upright on the short legs of a dachshund. A woman who looks like a movie actress sitting in the front row enthusiastically nods as if the speaker had just come straight from Hollywood.
Next picture: amorphous stuff stuffed into a light yellow pee. The American clears his throat.
"Unclassifiable beings lived in the shallow bed of the Sea of Thetis." Mollusks or jellyfish, head or tail?
But here comes the most interesting… ”I turn in the chair and glance around the room. I'm not the only one falling asleep. Even the so-called movie actress does nothing but yawn behind all her bracelets. Zoo Whore finally takes a seat with two girls. The oldest has a thick curly hair, quite tousled, and a bored and amused expression. The youngest is asleep with her head resting on the older's shoulder. What we do is look for the murder weapon, the fingerprints. The fossils are the fingerprints. We are the detectives. We love cemeteries. ”The speaker jumps on the balls of his feet. The audience fidgets in their seats. One of the most interesting riddles in science, and one of my favorites, it's why some animals that lived on land returned to the sea. ”The screen flashes rapidly. Like these sea snakes, sea turtles, crocodiles, penguins, sea lions - he goes on naming animals, the projector screeches - ... and whales - someone can be heard snoring. They all belong to biological species that have taken different paths. They are the hybrids of history. But this mutt… —he goes back to the fish with sharp teeth— “is an invaluable key, as if we had a diamond in the palm of our hand. It is the oldest known whale - you hear the cries of a baby. We are studying what happened! It is the story of life and we are ... sea lions — he goes on naming animals, the projector screeches— “… and whales,” someone can be heard snoring. They all belong to biological species that have taken different paths. They are the hybrids of history. But this mutt… —he goes back to the fish with sharp teeth— “is an invaluable key, as if we had a diamond in the palm of our hand. It is the oldest known whale - you hear the cries of a baby. We are studying what happened! It is the story of life and we are ... sea lions — he goes on naming animals, the projector screeches— “… and whales,” someone can be heard snoring. They all belong to biological species that have taken different paths. They are the hybrids of history. But this mutt… —he goes back to the fish with sharp teeth— “is an invaluable key, as if we had a diamond in the palm of our hand. It is the oldest known whale - you hear the cries of a baby. We are studying what happened! It is the story of life and we are ... It is the oldest known whale - you hear the cries of a baby. We are studying what happened! It is the story of life and we are ... It is the oldest known whale - you hear the cries of a baby. We are studying what happened! It is the story of life and we are ...
The movie star no longer bothers to hide her yawns and several men leave the room. He embarks on an elaborate analysis of changes in anatomy and locomotion and of whether seals splash with their flippers like dogs or do a platypus-like twist.
—There is no doubt that the Mesonychid had a tail that served to cool off when prowling the equator while the Pakicetus…. —At this point in the speech, he only has an audience of exactly twenty-one people left, counting me.
Zahoor stands up, furious, and grabs the microphone.
"I told you they wouldn't be interested in those details, Henry." Please stay seated, ”Zahoor says, addressing the audience and waving his long arms up and down. Please. I want to tell you something that will interest you. ”A couple scurries out of the room, but the others return to their seats. Thanks, ”Zahoor says, and gives a nod to what looks like a movie star, who sits back down with a beaming smile on her face. Zahoor begins his speech. Let's see, I suppose you've all heard of Pascal, the French philosopher. ”Two more people leave. I want to tell you what happened to him one night. It is a very good story, you will like it.
He goes from one side of the stage to the other looking everyone in the eye, even me.
"Pascal was in the middle of a wheat field." The sky was clear. The stars, bright. It was, without a doubt, a beautiful night. But suddenly something changed. Pascal noticed a flea crawling up a wheat stalk. This man had very good eyesight. All philosophers have it. ”The older girl laughs. Zahoor smiles at him. You laugh, but what did Pascal do? He burst into tears — now there are others laughing in the room. Why? Because when he looked up, he looked at the sky and all that infinite world above his head made him feel good. But when he looked down at the flea in the wheat, he understood that there was an infinite second that filled him with concern.
Zahoor stops his back and forth and looks at the audience to make sure everyone is paying attention to him. Except for the girl who is sleeping with her head on each other's shoulder, the whole room listens to her attentively.
"Pascal saw that the flea had an anatomy like his: a head, joints, veins, blood." He says the next sentence quickly, as if it were a riddle. There was heat in his drops of blood, in his veins, in his joints, in his legs. But what caused it?
"The Almighty," says a man sitting in the front row. The others mutter something and nod their heads.
Zahoor smiles.
Pascal's mind was racing. He watched the heat swirl, the blood boil, the fingers tremble, the wheat buckle, and the wind flapping the flea's tiny wings as the creature struggled to balance itself. He sensed a series of reactions without beginning or end. He saw the universe within himself. ”He pauses. Repeat the same phrase. He saw the universe within himself. But not in the same way that he viewed the outer universe. I could never see the universe that was within. But he could recognize it. So from then on, the only way to see would be through research. And that's why she cried, because her mind would never rest anymore.
It stops. He has the skin of an old man, but his bearing is that of a young man. He wears red leather slippers.
"Pascal shouldn't have cried." He was given a gift, the most precious there is, the gift of boundless curiosity. Many have. Very few have escaped being punished for it. Let us remember the fate of Avicenna and Al-Kindi. Who cares these people today?
"The gift of boundless curiosity," he repeats. His voice is like a thud, a soft thunder capable of extreme cruelty. I sense the threat in him as much as in Aba, though his words have the opposite effect on me. His stimulate me, Aba's depress me. My granddaughter Amal has it too, ”he points to the curly-haired girl. She is surprised and blushes. A lot happens under his feet. ”He grins for the first time all afternoon.
His skin unfolds in a thousand layers. She is beaming. He was barely eight years old when he found this - he holds up a bone - which is a copy of that key as valuable as a diamond - he looks at Henry, who does not acknowledge receipt of the quotation. His sister Mehwish also has that gift, despite falling asleep — laughs.
Seeing that the audience is more relaxed, but still attentive, Zahoor's expression changes. It shows around the eyes. These turn cold.
"For some, that gift represents a great threat, inside and outside our country." The atmosphere is immediately tense. I see Mr. Aziz motioning for Zahoor to stop. Zahoor ignores it. It's a threat because they can't control it, ”he continues. But I ask you: why is the desire to cultivate that gift disappear? These stones - he lifts one of the ones on the table - our floor - he kicks the carpet - is no way to protect either one thing or the other by building barracks as much free ground as there is under the stars! They say it is not safe to continue our work. Only when they leave will we be safe! Several people start booing him. We are suffocating between the military and the long beards, between the tanks and the creed! Two chairs tumble back as a couple jolts up and stampedes. And today they are here, in this very building, spreading their campaign of fear and trying to make a curse fall on us!
I freeze. Are you looking at me?
"I've been hearing nonsense after nonsense for an hour," a man yells. Why don't you start talking about Kashmir now? I came to that.
"If it weren't for the army, the Roos would have finished Islam by now," yells another, brandishing his fist. So I thank Allah and America for all those tanks!
"I am very proud of my beard!" Declares a third. Che Guevara had a beard! And also Da Vinci!
"Why would a man like you waste his talents studying dogs or whales or whatever?" Asks a fourth. Can you live on it?
I'm starting to lose track of who says what ...
"It wasn't a dog."
"So what was it?"
"Didn't you see the Ankahi rerun last night?"
"I think it was a mammal."
"It brought back so many memories!"
"Shenaz Sheikh is so pretty."
"A frog is a reptile."
"I've heard you've had a very tragic life."
"Why is it called" A Key to Life "?
"What about the singular creation of man?"
"You know what men are like."
"Where can I see the real Pakicetus?" Are you at the London Zoo?
"Every day every day."
"And what is the problem with our zoo?"
"My arzoo is to know the scientific discoveries," yells one above all the others, "not to give me a political rally!"
Suddenly, as if waiting for that moment, Henry jumps up and grabs the microphone.
"That's what I say." Why in this country do they have to mix everything up with politics? This is science! This is science!
"You have to always be prepared to hear sermons," says the older Gora, crossing his arms wearily. In fact… ”he shrugs,“ hey, you have to be prepared and that's it.
-Everything is related! Zahoor exclaims, slapping the microphone back. This is how we live in this country ... or at least we try!
