This is an old piece from 1989 or 1990. But the memories are as clear as the day I sat in the shade of a canopy and wrote them.
Bismillah, I have finished scrubbing the
black-bottomed pots and the exotic cutlery in the tiny back kitchen at the Inn
of the Mullah Nasrudin’s Donkey. The
Inn, spread beneath the gaily-colored canopies on a wide bed of straw, sleepily
rests (like the donkey it is named after) at the top of Traders’ Market, where
merchants, travelers, gypsies, laborers, dancing girls, peasants and the
occasional seafarer come to find shelter or comradeship or romance or
excitement. Here, with the fragrant aura
of spices and Turkish coffee floating on the breeze, they noisily suck through
their teeth the boiling chai or
strong black Eastern coffee.
Under the
festive banners waving slowly in winds which shake out a fine coat of dust, the
sprawl of shanties and tents which border the marketplace is nestled in a
serene valley, not far from the highway that leads to the great city. The little valley is watched over by
lazily-circling hawks or raucous crows in the daytime and, in the nighttime
chill, by the silently swooping owls.
Now, under
heaped-up tumbles of clouds, the rolling hills languidly bathe in the sun’s
clear light. I can see blue jays slip
between the swaying bright mustard stems, stems which seem just barely strong
enough to hold the fragile weight of the jays.
The low hillocks around are like seas of tall grass, deep greens fading
to the tan of dried straw, undulating currents and waves in the breezes.
And in the
deserted little tent-town, the hard clay roads around Traders’ Market will grow
even more silent in the glowing mantle of twilight. Those of us who stay here between the crowded
and noisy market-days, who labor building or repairing, or who feed those who
labor or make wares to sell – those of us for whom this Valley of the Owl is
now home, even for a little while – we will gather under the wide canopy of the
Inn of the Mullah Nasrudin’s Donkey for our evening meal and we shall talk or
play music and warm ourselves with the Mullah’s hot drinks.
But that will be
much later, and just now, the kitchen having been patiently cleaned and my
morning soup finished, I have put on my mirrored skullcap and my wide chain
bracelets and I have come to sit in the long back camp off the Inn. The back camp
is a wide oval yard surrounded by tented beds under another bright canopy,
littered at one end with the tools and brooms and buckets that are used in the Inn. The rest of
the yard is more domestic, strewn with the makings of extended camp: bags overflowing with clothing, laundry
strung on ropes, the cases of musical instruments stacked haphazardly against a
wall, the belongings of the servers and workers at the Inn.
Out across the
fields of high grass that drape the low curve of the swelling hills – not so
far, though, as the line of dark oaks which seem to stand with unmoving
branches even in the strongly gusting wind – a stout young man is working,
digging a post-hole for another tent pole, his broad back shiny with sweat, his
movements slow and deliberate in the gathering heat. Around me are the sounds of the
coffee-house: the slow whisper of the
broom as the sweeper makes his way through the empty kitchen, the gentle
scrapings of a fiddle being tuned, the ratcheting sound of the cards as the
players gossip among themselves, the counterpoints of several hammers striking
the notes of different nails.
I am at home
here – oddly at home in this travelers’ camp, in the very timelessness of this
stopping-off place, this passing-through place, this temporary home of
ever-returning happinesses. It is among
the changing faces of this host of travelers that I have found a comfort. From wherever it is that they come, on the
way to wherever it is that they are going, in the shade of the Inn their paths meet.
To the
crossroads of Traders’ Market they come, with smiles or with tears, wise or
brash or cautious or cunning, to buy and sell, to trade and argue, to learn and
teach, to touch and share and fight and love, each with the other: the merchants in long coats and colored
jackets and foreign-looking hats, dancing girls caressed by their veils and
bangles and bells, laborers in rough shirts or shirtless with neck-scarves
pulled over faces against the dust, the laughing dark-eyed belly dancer with
the lotus tattoo on her face, the freebooter who has found his sea-wit more
profitable upon the land, jugglers and jokesters who entertain travelers for a few coins,
serving-girls looking chastely proper or adventurous and sultry, the artists
and musicians who paint or play in the background, adding the gentle spices of
their several Muses to our lives.
And late at
night the gambling men drink strong spirits with their devil-black coffee, or
strong spirits from hand-to-handed bottles between laughs and lies and odd bits
of their stories tossed out like stray bets in their games. And in the slow morning, the servers step to
the rhythm of the Mullah’s snores… ah, the Mullah – always the Mullah, grand
and watchful, a great slow presence amid the busy activity of the coffeehouse.
From my spot in
the back-camp, I hear among these sounds the marketplace picking up its pace,
seeming to stretch and yawn in the sun as if in preparation for a busy
afternoon. I realise that the quiet time
will soon end. For in a few days it will
be Market Day, and the crowds will come – like faraway thunder approaching,
like the horizon’s gathering dustcloud moving ever closer, inevitable,
inescapable.
The crowds –
foreigners in their own land, it seems, restless and impatient and rude – are
foreign to themselves and are foreign to us, who were born side by their sides,
who live and love at the shore of their busy world, who speak the same language
differently and seek other goals and see other dreams under the same velvet sky
of night. And when they come, those
crowds – trying to touch another life though their arms are too short and their
hearts too hollow, to touch a bit of the life that flows through our eyes and
through the tongues of our hearts, through our bonds and friendships – when
they come, then shall we don our festal masks and sing them the smells of the
gypsy fires, the eerie color of the rose-lipped dawn in the high mountain
passes, the lover’s caress of gentle
waves in far-off silksanded bays.
And one or two
will come out of the crowd, will be able to hear our hearts’ songs and know
something of our thoughts – and some of us will talk with them and smile openly
and friendships will be born. And around
that little scene of happiness in the crowded and noisy Traders’ Market, others
of us will sell our wares and sing our songs and pocket the coins of our
labors.
After the revel
is ended, when the drinking and dancing and buying and trading is done, then
back to the near-empty marketplace shall we meet again – here, it will be here
in this quiet Traders’ Market that we shall gather. And in the long hot afternoons, under the
breeze-kissed canopies, those of us who live here will share our coffee or chai and gossip and tell of what has
passed on Market Day. And once again,
beneath the gliding hawks, the sounds of quiet labor will echo in the Valley of
the Owl.
Yes, today is
quiet, the thunder and dust of the crowd is far away and my prayers are all
said, and the long-handled coffee urns and the bright slick knives have all
been cleaned with care, ma’ashallah.
© 2012 Hakim - ALL
RIGHTS RESERVED: use without profit allowed, but only with author’s express
written permission. Please don't wake up my attorney. Please.
