Galilee

PART TWO. The Holy Family

Two souls as old as heaven came down to the shore that ancient noon. They wandered, accompanied by a harmonious baying of wolves, out of the forest which in those days still spread to the very fringes of the Caspian Sea, its thicket so dense and its reputation so dire that no sane individual ventured into it more than a stone's throw. It was not the wolves that people feared meeting between the trees, nor was it bears, nor snakes. It was another order of being entirely; one not made by God; some unforgivable thing that stood to the Creator as a shadow stands to the light.

The locals had legends aplenty about this unholy tribe, though they told them only in whispers, and behind closed doors. Tales of creatures that perched in the branches devouring children they'd tempted out of the sun; or squatted in foetid pools between the trees, adorning themselves with the entrails of murdered lovers. No story-teller along that shore worth his place at the fire failed to invent some new abomination to enrich the stew. Tales begot tales, bred upon one another in ever more perverted form, so that the men, women and children who passed their brief lives in the space between the sea and trees did so in a constant state of tearfulness.

Even at noon, on a day such as this, with the air so clear it rang, and the sky as polished as the flanks of a great fish; even today, in a light so bright no demon would dare show its snout, there was fear.

As proof, let me take you into the company of the four men who were working down at the water's edge that day, mending their nets in preparation for the evening's fishing. All were in a state of unrest; this even before the wolves began their chorus.

The oldest of the fishermen was one Kekmet, a man of nearly forty, though he looked half that again. If he had ever known joy there was no sign of it on his furrowed, leathery face. His warmest expression was a scowl, which he presently wore.

"You're talking through your shithole," he remarked to the youngest of this quartet, a youth called Zelim, who at the tender age of sixteen had already lost his cousin to a miscarriage. Zelim had earned Kekmet's scorn by suggesting that as their lives were so hard here on the shore, perhaps everyone in the village should pack up their belongings, and find a better place to live.

"There's nowhere for us to go," Kekmet told the young man.

"My father saw the city of Samarkand," Zelim replied. "He told me it was like a dream."

"That's exactly what it was," the man working alongside Kekmet said. "If your father saw Samarkand it was in his sleep. Or when he'd had too much wine…"

The speaker, whose name was Hassan, raised his own jug of what passed for liquor in this place, a foul-smelling fermented milk he drank from dawn to dusk. He put the jug to his mouth, and tipped it. The filthy stuff overran his lips and dribbled into his greasy beard. He passed the jug to the fourth member of the group, one Baru, a man uncommonly fat by the standards of his peers, and uncommonly ill-tempered. He drank from the jug noisily, then set it down at his side. Hassan made no attempt to reclaim it. He knew better.

"My father…" Zelim began again.

"Never went to Samarkand," old Kekmet said, with the weary tone of one who doesn't want to hear the subject at hand spoken of again.

Zelim, however, was not about to allow his dead father's reputation to be impugned this way. He had doted on Old Zelim, who had drowned four springs before, when his boat had capsized in a sudden squall. There was no question, as far as the son was concerned, that if his father claimed he'd seen the numberless glories of Samarkand, then he had.

"One day I'll just get up and go," Zelim said. "And leave you all to rot here."

"In the name of God go!" fat Baru replied. "You make my ears ache the way you chatter. You're like a woman."

He'd no sooner spat this insult out than Zelim was on him, pounding Baru's round red face with his fists. There were some insults he was prepared to take from his elders, but this was too much. "I'm no woman!" he yelped, beating his target until blood gushed from Baru's nose.

The other two fishermen simply watched. It happened very seldom that anyone in the village intervened in a dispute. People were allowed to visit upon one another whatever insults and blows they wished; the rest either looked the other way or were glad of the diversion. So what if blood was spilled; so what if a woman was violated? Life went on.

Besides, fat Baru could defend himself. He had a vicious way with him, for all his unruly bulk, and he bucked beneath Zelim so violently the younger man was thrown off him, landing heavily beside one of the boats. Gasping, Baru rolled over on to his knees and came at him afresh.

"I'm going to tear off your balls, you little prick!" he said. "I'm sick of hearing about you and your dog of a father. He was born stupid and he died stupid." As he spoke he reached between Zelim's legs as though to make good on the threat of unmanning, but Zelim kicked out at him, and his bare sole hit the man in his already well-mashed nose. Baru howled, but he wasn't about to be checked. He grabbed hold of Zelim's foot, and twisted it, hard, first to the right, then to the left. He might have broken the young man's ankle-which would have left Zelim crippled for the rest of his life-had his victim not reached into the shallow hull of the boat, and grasped the oar lying there. Baru was too engaged in the task of cracking Zelim's ankle to notice. Grimacing with the effort of his torment, he looked up to enjoy the agony on Zelim's face only to see the oar coming at him. He had no time to duck. The paddle slammed against his face, breaking the half dozen good teeth left in his head. He fell back, letting go of Zelim's leg as he did so, and lay sprawled on the sand with his hands clamped to his wounded face, blood and curses springing from between his fat fingers.

But Zelim hadn't finished with him. The young man got up, yelping when he put weight on his tortured leg. Then, limping over to Baru's prone body, he straddled the man, and sat down on his blubbery belly. This time Bam made no attempt to move; he was too dazed. Zelim tore at his shirt, exposing great rolls of flesh.

"You… call me a woman?" Zelim said. Baru moaned incoherently. Zelim caught hold of the man's blubbery chest. "You've got bigger tits than any woman I know." He slapped the flesh. "Haven't you?" Again, Baru moaned, but Zelim wasn't satisfied. "Haven't you got tits?" he said, reaching up to pull Baru's hands away from his face. He was a mess beneath. "Did you hear me?" Zelim demanded.

"Yes…" Baru moaned.

"So say it."

"I've… got tits…"

Zelim spat on the man's bloody face, and got to his feet. He felt suddenly sick, but he was determined he wasn't going to puke in front of any of these men. He despised them all.

He caught Hassan's lazy-lidded gaze as he turned.

"You did that well," the man remarked appreciatively. "Want something to drink?"

Zelim pushed the proffered jug aside and set his sights beyond this little ring of boats, along the shore. His leg hurt as though it were in a fire and burning up, but he was determined to put some distance between himself and the other fishermen before he showed any sign of weakness.

"We haven't finished with the nets," Kekmet growled at him, as he limped away.

Zelim ignored him. He didn't care about the boats or the nets or whether the fish would rise tonight. He didn't care about Baru or old Kekmet or drunken Hassan. He didn't care about himself at that moment. He wasn't proud of what he'd done to Baru, nor was he ashamed. It was done, and now he wanted to forget about it. Dig himself a hole in the sand, till he found a cool, damp place to lie, and forget about it all. A hundred yards behind him now, Hassan was shouting something, and though he couldn't make sense of the words there was sufficient alarm in the drunkard's tone that Zelim glanced back to see what the matter was. Hassan had got to his feet, and was gazing off toward the distant trees. Zelim followed the direction of his gaze, and saw that a great number of birds had risen from the branches and were circling over the treetops. It was an unusual sight to be sure, but Zelim would have paid it little mind had the next moment not brought the baying of wolves, and with the wolves, the emergence of two figures from the trees. He was about the same distance from this pah- as he was from the men and the boats behind him, and there he stayed, unwilling to take refuge in the company of old Kekmet and the others, but afraid to advance towards these strangers, who strode out of the forest as though there was nothing in its depths to fear, and walked, smiling, down towards the glittering water.

To Zelim's eyes the couple didn't look dangerous. In fact it was a pleasure to look at them, after staring at the brutish faces of his fellow fishermen. They walked with an ease that bespoke strength, bespoke limbs that had never been cracked and mismended, never felt the ravages of age. They looked, Zelim thought, as he imagined a king and a queen might look, stepping from their cool palace, having been bathed in rare oils. Their skins, which were very different in color (the woman was blacker than any human being Zelim had ever set eyes upon, the man paler), gleamed in the sunlight, and their hair, which both wore long, seemed to be plaited here and there, so that serpentine forms ran in their manes. All this was extraordinary enough; but there was more. The robes they wore were another astonishment, for their colors were more vivid than anything Zelim had seen in his life. He'd never witnessed a sunset as red as the red in these robes, or set eyes on a bird with plumage as green, or seen with his mind's eye, in dream or daydream, a treasure that shone like the golden threads that were woven with this red, this green. The robes were long, and hung on their wearers voluptuously, but still it seemed to Zelim he could see the forms of their bodies beneath the folds, and it made him long to see them naked. He felt no shame at this desire; just as he felt no fear that they would chasten him for his scrutiny. Surely beauty like this, when it went out into the world, expected to be doted on. He hadn't moved from that place on the bank where he'd first spotted the couple, but their path to the water's edge was steadily bringing them closer to him, and as the distance between them narrowed his eyes found more to beguile them. The woman, for instance, was wearing copious ornaments of jewelry-anklets, wristlets, necklaces-all as dark as her skin, yet carrying half-concealed in their darkness an iridescence that made them shimmer. The man had decoration of his own: elaborate patterns painted or tattooed upon his thighs, which were visible when his robe, which was cut to facilitate the immensity of his legs, parted.

But the most surprising detail of their appearance did not become clear until they were within a few yards of the water. The woman, smiling at her mate, reached into the folds of her robe, and with the greatest tenderness, lifted out into view a tiny baby. The mite bawled instantly at being parted from the comfort of its mother's tits-nor did Zelim blame the thing; he would have done the same-but it ceased its complaints when both mother and father spoke to it. Was there ever a more blessed infant than this, Zelim thought. To be in such arms, to gaze up at such faces, to know in your soul that you came from such roots as these? If a greater bliss were possible, Zelim could not imagine it.

The family was at the water now, and the couple had begun to speak to one another. It was no light conversation. Indeed from the way the pair stood facing one another, and the way they shook their heads and frowned, there was some trouble between them.

The child, who had moments before been the center of its parents' doting attentions, now went unnoticed. The argument was starting to escalate, Zelim saw, and for the first time since setting eyes on the couple he considered the wisdom of retreat. If one of this pair-or God Almighty help him, both-were to lose their temper, he did not care to contemplate the power they could unleash. But however fearful he was, he couldn't take his eyes off the scene before him. Whatever the risk of staying here and watching, it was nothing beside the sorrow he would feel, denying himself this sight. The world would not show him such glories again, he suspected. He was privileged beyond words to be in the presence of these people. If he went and hid his head, out of some idiot fear, then he deserved the very death he would be seeking to avoid. Only the brave were granted gifts such as this; and if it had come to him by accident (which it surely had) he would surprise fate by rising to the occasion. Keep his eyes wide and his feet planted in the same spot; have himself a story to tell his children, and the children of his children, when this event was a lifetime from now.

He had no sooner shaped these thoughts, however, than the argument between the couple ceased, and he had cause to wish he had fled. The woman had returned her gaze to the baby, but her consort, who'd had his back to Zelim throughout most of the exchange, now cast a look over his shoulder, and fixing his eyes upon Zelim, beckoned to him.

Zelim didn't move. His legs had turned to stone, his bowels to water; it was all he could do not to befoul his pants. He suddenly didn't care whether or not he had a tale to tell his children. He only wanted the sand to soften beneath him, so he could slide into the dark, where this man's gaze could not find him. To make matters worse the woman had bared her breasts and was offering her nipple to the babe's mouth. Her breasts were sumptuous, gleaming and full. Though he knew it wasn't wise to be staring past the beckoning husband and ogling the wife, Zelim couldn't help himself.

And again, the man summoned him with the hook of his fingers, but this time spoke.

"Come here, fisherman," he said. He didn't speak loudly, but Zelim heard the command as though it had been spoken at his ear. "Don't be afraid," the man went on.

"I can't…" Zelim began, meaning to tell the man his legs would not obey him.

But before the words were out of his mouth, the summons moved him. Muscles that had been rigid a few heartbeats before were carrying him toward his summons, though he had not consciously instructed them to do so. The man smiled, seeing his will done, and despite his trepidation Zelim could not help but return the smile, thinking as he walked toward his master that if the rest of the men were still watching him they would probably think him courageous, for the casual measure of his stride.

The woman, meanwhile, having settled the infant to sucking, was also looking Zelim's way, though her expression-unlike that of her husband-was far from friendly. What radiance would have broken from her face had she been feeling better tempered Zelim could only guess. Even in her present unhappy state she was glorious.

Zelim was within perhaps six feet of the couple now, and there stopped, though the man had not ordered him to do so.

"What is your name, fisherman?" the man said.

Before Zelim could reply, the woman broke in. "I'll not call htm by the name of a fisherman."

"Anything's better than nothing," the husband replied.

"No it's not," the wife snapped. "He needs a warrior's name. Or nothing."

"He may not be a warrior."

"Well he certainly won't be a fisherman," the woman countered.

The man shrugged. The exchange had taken the smile off his face; he was plainly running out of patience with his lady.

"So let's hear your name," the woman said.

"Zelim."

"There then," the woman said, looking back at her husband. "Zelim! Do you want to call our child Zelim?"

The man looked down at the baby. "He doesn't seem to care one way or another," he remarked. Then back at Zelim. "Has the name treated you kindly?" he asked.

"Kindly?" Zelim said.

"He means are you pursued by women?" the wife replied.

"That's a consideration," the husband protested mildly. "If a name brings good fortune and beautiful women, the boy will thank us for it." He looked at Zelim again. "And have you been fortunate?"

"Not particularly," Zelim replied.

"And the women?"

"I married my cousin."

"No shame in that. My brother married my half-sister and they were the happiest couple I ever met." He glanced back at his wife, who was tenderly working the cushion of her breast so as to keep the flow of milk strong. "But my wife's not going to be content with this, I can see. No offense to you, my friend. Zelim is a fine name, truly. There's no shame in Zelim."

"So I can go?"

The man shrugged. "I'm sure you have… fish to catch… yes?"

"As it happens, I hate fish," Zelim said, surprised to be confessing this fact-which he had never spoken to anyone-in front of two strangers. "All the men in Atva talk about is fish, fish, fish-"

The woman looked up from the face of the nameless child.

"Atva?" she said.

"It's the name of-"

"-the village," she said. "Yes, I understand." She tried the word again, several times, turning the two syllables over. "At. Va. At. Vah." Then she said: "It's plain and simple. I like that. You can't corrupt it. You can't make some little game of it."

Now it was her husband's turn to be surprised. "You want to name my boy after some little village?" he said.

"Nobody will ever know where it came from," the woman replied. "I like the sound, and that's what's impor tant. Look, the child likes the sound too. He's smiling."

"He's smiling because he's sucking on your tit, wife," the man replied. "I do the same thing."

Zelim could not keep himself from laughing. It amused him that these two, who were in every regard extraordinary beings, still chatted like a commonplace husband and wife.

"But if you want Atva, wife," the man went on, "then I will not stand between you and your desires."

"You'd better not try," the woman replied.

"You see how she is with me?" the man said, turning back to Zelim. "I grant her what she wants and she refuses to thank me." He spoke with the hint of a smile upon his face; he was clearly happy to have this debate ended. "Well, Zelim, I at least will thank you for your help in this."

"We all of us thank you," the woman replied. "Especially Atva. We wish you a happy, fertile life."

"You're very welcome," Zelim murmured.

"Now," said the husband, "if you'll excuse us? We must baptize the child."

Life in Atva was never the same after the day the family went down to the water. Zelim was of course questioned closely as to the nature of his exchange with the man and woman, firstly by old Kekmet, then by just about anybody in the village who wanted to catch his arm. He told the truth, in his own plain way. But even as he told it, he knew in his heart that recounting the words he had exchanged with the child's mother and father was not the whole truth, or anything like it. In the presence of this pair he had felt something wonderful; feelings his limited vocabulary could not properly express. Nor, in truth, did he entirely wish to express them. There was a kind of possessiveness in him about the experience, which kept him from trying too hard to tell those who interrogated him the true nature of the encounter. The only person he would have wished to tell was his father. Old Zelim would have understood, he suspected; he would have helped with the words, and when the words failed both of them, then he'd have simply nodded and said: "It was the same for me in Samarkand," which had always been his response when somebody remarked upon the miraculous. It was the same for me in Samarkand…

Perhaps people knew Zelim was not telling them all he knew, because once they'd asked all their questions, he began to notice a distinct change in their attitude to him. People who'd been friendly to him all his life now looked at him strangely when he smiled at them, or looked the other way, pretending not to see him. Others were even more obvious about their distaste for his company; especially the women. More than once he heard his name used loudly in conversation, accompanied by spitting, as though the very syllables of his name carried a bitter taste.

It was, of all people, old Kekmet who told him what was being said.

"People are saying you're poisoning the village," he said. This seemed so absurd Zelim laughed out loud. But Kekmet was deadly serious. "Baru's at the heart of it," he went on. "He hates you, after the way you spoiled that fat face of his. So he's spreading stories about you."

"What kind of stories?"

"That you and the demons were exchanging secret signs-"

"Demons?"

"That's what he says they were, those people. How else could they have come out of the forest, he says. They couldn't be like us and live in the forest. That's what he says."

"And everyone believes him?" Here Kekmet fell silent. "Do you believe him?"

Kekmet looked away toward the water. "I've seen a lot of strange things in my life," he said, the coarseness going from his voice. "Out there particularly. Things moving in the water that I'd never want to find in my net. And in the sky sometimes… shapes in the clouds…" He shrugged. "I don't know what to believe. It doesn't really matter what's true and what isn't. Baru's said what he's said, and people believe him."

"What should I do?"

"You can stay and wait it out. Hope that people forget. Or you can leave."

"And go where?"

"Anywhere but here." Kekmet looked back at Zelim. "If you ask me, there's no life for you here as long as Barn's alive."

That was effectively the end of the conversation. Kekmet made his usual curt farewell, and left Zelim to examine the two available options. Neither was attractive. If he stayed, and Baru continued to stir up enmity against him, his life would become intolerable. But to leave the only home he'd ever known, to stray beyond this strip of rock and sand, this huddled collection of houses, and venture out into the wide world without any clue as to where he was going-that would take more courage than he thought he possessed. He remembered his father's tales of the hardships he claimed to have suffered on his way to Samarkand: the terrors of the desert; the bandits and the djinns. He didn't feel ready to face such threats; he was too afraid.

Almost a month passed; and he persuaded himself that there was a softening in people's attitudes to him. One day, one of the women actually smiled at him, he thought. Things weren't as bad as Kekmet had suggested. Given time the villagers would come to realize how absurd their superstitions were. In the meantime he simply had to be careful not to give them any cause for doubt.

He had not taken account of how fate might intervene.

It happened like this. Since his encounter with the couple on the shore he had been obliged to take his boat out single-handed; nobody wanted to share it with him. This had inevitably meant a smaller catch. He couldn't throw the net as far from the boat when he was on his own. But this particular day, despite the fact that he was fishing on his own, he was lucky. His net was fairly bursting when he hauled it up into the boat, and he paddled back to the shore feeling quite pleased with himself. Several of the other fishermen were already unloading their catches, so a goodly number of villagers were down at the water's edge, and inevitably more than a few pairs of eyes were cast his way as he hauled his net out of the boat to study its contents.

There were crayfish, there were catfish, there was even a small sturgeon. But caught at the very bottom of his net, and still thrashing there as though it possessed more life than it was natural for a creature to possess, was a fish Zelim had never set eyes on before. It was larger than any of the rest of his catch, its heaving flanks not green or silvery, but a dull red. The creature instantly drew attention. One of the women declared loudly it was a demon-fish. Look at it looking at us, she said, her voice shrill. Oh God in Heaven preserve us, look how it looks!

Zelim said nothing: he was almost as discomfited by the sight of the fish as the women; it did seem to be watching them all with its swiveling eye, as if to say: you're all going to die like me, sooner or later, gasping for breath.

The woman's panic spread. Children began to cry and were ushered away, instructed not to look back at the demon, or at Zelim, who'd brought this thing to shore.

"It's not my fault," Zelim protested. "I just found it in my net."

"But why did it swim into your net?" Baru piped up, pushing through the remaining onlookers to point his fat finger at Zelim. "I'll tell you why. Because it wanted to be with you!"

"Be with me?" Zelim said. The notion was so ridiculous, he laughed. But he was the only one doing so. Everybody else was either looking at his accuser or at the evidence, which was still alive, long after the rest of the net's contents had perished. "It's just a fish!" Zelim said.

"I certainly never saw its like," said Baru. He scanned the crowd, which was assembling again, in anticipation of a confrontation. "Where's Kekmet?"

"I'm here," the old man said. He was standing at the back of the crowd, but Baru called him forth. He came, though somewhat reluctantly. It was plain what Baru intended.

"How long have you fished here?" Baru asked Kekmet.

"Most of my life," Kekmet replied. "And before you ask, no I haven't seen a fish that looks like this." He glanced up at Zelim. "But that doesn't mean it's a demon-fish, Baru. It only means… we haven't seen one before."

Baru's expression grew sly. "Would you eat it?" he said.

"What's that got to do with anything?" Zelim put in.

"Baru's not talking to you," one of the women said. She was a bitter creature, this particular woman, her face as narrow and sickly pale as Baru's was round and red. "You answer, Kekmet! Go on. You tell us if you'd put that in your stomach." She looked down at the fish, which by some unhappy accident seemed to swivel its bronze eye so as to look back at her. She shuddered, and without warning snatched Kekmet's stick from him and began to beat the thing, not once or twice, but twenty, thirty times, striking it so hard its flesh was pulped. When she had finished, she threw the stick down on the sand, and looked up at Kekmet with her lips curled back from her rotted teeth. "How's that?" she said. "Will you have it now?"

Kekmet shook his head. "Believe what you want," he said. "I don't have the words to change your minds. Maybe you're right, Baru. Maybe we are all cursed. I'm too old to care."

With that he reached out and caught hold of the shoulder of one of the children, so as to have some support now that he'd lost his stick. And guiding the child ahead of him, he limped away from the crowd.

"You've done all the harm you're going to do," Baru said to Zelim. "You have to leave."

Zelim put up no argument. What was the use? He went to his boat, picked up his gutting knife, and went back to his house. It took him less than half an hour to pack his belongings. When he went back into the street, it was empty; his neighbors-whether out of shame or fear he didn't know or care-had gone into hiding. But he felt their eyes on him as he departed; and almost wished as he went that what Baru had accused him of was true, and that if he were to now curse those he was leaving behind with blindness they'd wake tomorrow with their eyes withered in their sockets.

Let me tell you what happened to Zelim after he left Atva. Determined to prove-if only to himself-that the forest from which the family had emerged was not a place to be afraid of, he made his departure through the trees. It was damp and cold, and more than once he contemplated retreating to the brightness of the shore, but after a time such thoughts, along with his fear, dissipated. There was nothing here that was going to do harm to his soul. When shit fell on or about him, as now and then it did, the shitter wasn't some child-devouring beast as he'd been brought up to believe it'd be, just a bird. When something moved in the thicket, and he caught the gleam of an eye, it was not the gaze of a nomadic djinn that fell on him, but that of a boar or a wild dog.

His caution evaporated along with his fear, and much to his surprise his spirits grew lighter. He began to sing to himself as he went. Not the songs the fishermen sang when they were out together, which were invariably mournful or obscene, but the two or three little songs he remembered from his childhood. Simple dirties which brought back happy memories.

For food, he ate berries, washed down with water from the streams that wound between the trees. Twice he came upon nests in the undergrowth and was able to dine on raw eggs. Only at night, when he was obliged to rest (once the sun went down he had no way of knowing the direction in which he was traveling), did he become at all anxi ous. He had no means of lighting a fire, so he was obliged to sit in the darkened thicket until dawn, praying a bear or a pack of wolves didn't come sniffing for a meal.

It took him four days and nights to get to the other side of the forest. By the time he emerged from the trees he'd become so used to the gloom that the bright sun made his head ache. He lay down in the grass at the fringe of the trees, and dozed there in the warmth, thinking he'd set off again when the sun was a little less bright. In fact, he slept until twilight, when he was woken by the sound of voices rising and falling in prayer. He sat up. A little distance from where he'd laid his head there was a ridge of rocks, like the spine of some dead giant, and on the narrow trail that wound between these boulders was a small group of holy men, singing their prayers as they walked. Some were carrying lamps, by which light he saw their faces: ragged beards, deeply furrowed brows, sunbaked pates; these were men who'd suffered for their faith, he thought.

He got up and limped in their direction, calling to them as he approached so that they wouldn't be startled by his sudden appearance. Seeing him, the men came to a halt; a few suspicious glances were exchanged.

"I'm lost and hungry," Zelim said to them. "I wonder if you have some bread, or if you can at least tell me where I can find a bed for the night."

The leader, who was a burly man, passed his lamp to his companion, and beckoned Zelim.

"What are you doing out here?" the monk asked.

"I came through the forest," Zelim explained.

"Don't you know this is a bad road?" the monk said. His breath was the foulest thing Zelim had ever smelt. "There are robbers on this road," the monk went on. "Many people have been beaten and murdered here." Suddenly, the monk reached out and caught hold of Zelim's arm, pulling him close. At the same time he pulled out a large knife, and put it to Zelim's throat. "Call them!" the monk said.

Zelim didn't understand what he was talking about. "Call who?"

"The rest of your gang! You tell them I'll slit your throat if they make a move on us."

"No, you've got me wrong. I'm not a bandit."

"Shut up!" the monk said, pressing his blade into Zelim's flesh so deeply that blood began to run. "Call to them!"

"I'm on my own," Zelim protested. "I swear! I swear on my mother's eyes, I'm not a bandit."

"Slit his throat, Nazar," said one of the monks.

"Please, don't do that," Zelim begged. "I'm an innocent man."

"There are no innocent men left," Nazar, the man who held him, said. "These are the last days of the world, and everyone left alive is corrupt."

Zelim assumed this was high-flown philosophy, such as only a monk might understand. "If you say so," he replied. "What do I know? But I tell you I'm not a bandit. I'm a fisherman."

"You're a very long way from the sea," said the ratty little monk to whom Nazar had passed his lamp. He leaned in to peer at Zelim, raising the light a little as he did so. "Why'd you leave the fish behind?"

"Nobody liked me," Zelim replied. It seemed best to be honest.

"And why was that?"

Zelim shrugged. Not too honest, he thought. "They just didn't," he said.

The man studied Zelim a little longer, then he said to the leader: "You know, Nazar, I think he's telling the truth." Zelim felt the blade at his neck dig a little less deeply into his flesh. "We thought you were one of the bandits' boys," the monk explained to him, "left in our path to distract us."

Once again, Zelim felt he was not entirely understanding what he was being told. "So… while you're talking to me, the bandits come?"

"Not talking," Nazar said. His knife slid down from Zelim's neck to the middle of his chest; there it cut at Zelim's already ragged shirt. The monk's other hand slid through the shirt, while the knife continued on its southward journey, until it was pressed against the front of Zelim's breeches.

"He's a little old for me, Nazar," the monk's companion commented, and turning his back on Zelim sat down among the rocks.

"Am I on my own then?" Nazar wanted to know.

By way of answering him, three of the men closed on Zelim like hungry dogs. He was wrested to the ground, where his clothes were pulled seam from seam, and the monks proceeded to molest him, ignoring his shouts of protest, or his pleas to be left alone. They made him lick their feet and their fundaments, and suck their beards and nipples and purple-headed cocks. They held him down while one by one they took him, not caring that he bled and bled.

While this was going on the other monks, who'd retired to the rocks, read, or drank wine or lay on their backs watching the stars. One was even praying. All this Zelim could see because he deliberately looked away from his violators, determined not to let them see the terror in his eyes; and equally determined not to weep. So instead he watched the others, and waited for the men who were violating him to be finished.

He fully expected to be murdered when they were done with him, but this, at least, he was spared. Instead the monks had the night with him, on and off, using him every way their desires could devise, and then, just before dawn left him there among the rocks, and went on their way.

The sun came up, but Zelim closed his eyes against it. He didn't want to look at the light ever again. He was too ashamed. But by midday the heat made him get to his knees and drag himself into the comparative cool of the rocks. There, to his surprise, he found that one of the holy men-perhaps the one who had been praying-had left a skin of wine, some bread, and a piece of dried fruit. It was no accident, he knew. The man had left it for Zelim.

Now, and only now, did the fisherman allow the tears to come, moved not so much by his own agonies, but by the fact that there had been one who'd cared enough for him to do him this kindness.

He drank and ate. Maybe it was the potency of the wine, but he felt remarkably renewed, and covering his nakedness as best he could he got up from his niche among the rocks and set off down the trail. His body still ached, but the bleeding had stopped, and rather than lie down when night fell he walked under the stars. Somewhere along the way a bony-flanked she-dog came creeping after him, looking perhaps for the comfort of human company. He didn't shoo her away; he too wanted company. After a time the animal became brave enough to walk at Zelim's heel, and finding that her new master didn't kick her, was soon trotting along as though they'd been together since birth.

The hungry bitch's arrival in his life marked a distinct upturn in Zelim's fortunes. A few hours later he came into a village many times larger than Atva, where he found a large crowd in the midst of what he took to be some kind of celebration. The streets were thronged with people shouting and stamping, and generally having a fine time.

"Is it a holy day?" Zelim asked a youth who was sitting on a doorstep, drinking.

The fellow laughed. "No," he said, "it's not a holy day."

"Well then why's everybody so happy?"

"We're going to have some hangings," the youth replied,, with a lazy grin.

"Oh… I… see."

"You want to come and watch?"

"Not particularly."

"We might get ourselves something to eat," the youth said. "And you look as though you need it." He glanced Zelim up and down. "In fact you look like you need a lot of things. Some breeches, for one thing. What happened to you?"

"I don't want to talk about it."

"That bad, huh? Well then you should come to the hangings. My father already went, because he said it's good to see people who are more unfortunate than you. It's good for the soul, he said. Makes you thankful."

Zelim saw the wisdom in this, so he and his dog accompanied the boy through the village to the market square. It took them longer to dig through the crowd than his guide had anticipated, however, and by the time they got there all but one of the men who were being hanged was already dangling from the makeshift gallows. He knew all the prisoners instantly: the ragged beards, the sunburned pates. These were his violators. All of them had plainly suffered horribly before the noose had taken their lives. Three of them were missing their hands; one of them had been blinded; others, to judge by the blood that glued their clothes to their groins, had lost their manhoods to the knife.

One of this unmanned number was Nazar, the leader of the gang, who was the last of the gang left alive. He could not stand, so two of the villagers were holding him up while a third slipped the noose over his head. His rotted teeth had been smashed out, and his whole body covered with cuts and bruises. The crowd was wildly happy at the sight of the man's agonies. With every twitch and gasp they applauded and yelled his crimes at him. "Murderer!" they yelled. "Thief!" they yelled. "Sodomite!" they yelled.

"He's all that and more, my father says," the youth told Zelim. "He's so evil, my father says, that when he dies we might see the Devil come up onto the gallows and catch his soul as it comes out of his mouth!"

Zelim shuddered, sickened at the thought. If the boy's father was right, and the sodomite robber-monk had been the spawn of Satan, then perhaps that unholiness had been passed into his own body, along with the man's spittle and seed. Oh, the horror of that thought; that he was somehow the wife of this terrible man and would be dragged down into the same infernal place when his time came.

The noose was now about Nazar's neck, and the rope pulled tight enough that he was pulled up like a puppet. The men who'd been supporting him stood away, so that they could help haul on the rope. But in the moments before the rope tightened about his windpipe, Nazar started to speak. No; not speak; shout, using every last particle of strength in his battered body.

"God shits on you all!" he yelled. The crowd hurled abuse at him. Some threw stones. If he felt them breaking his bones, he didn't respond. He just kept shouting. "He put a thousand innocent souls into our hands! He didn't care what we did to them! So you can do whatever you want to me-"

The rope was tightening around his throat as the men hauled on the other end. Nazar was pulled up on to tip-toe. And still he shouted, blood and spittle coming with the words.

"-there is no hell! There is no paradise! There is no-"

He got no further; the noose closed off his windpipe and he was hauled into the air. But Zelim knew what word had been left unsaid. God. The monk had been about to cry: there is no God.

The crowd was in ecstasies all around him; cheering and jeering and spitting at the hanged man as he jerked around on the end of the rope. His agonies didn't last long. His tortured body gave out after a very short time, much to the crowd's disapproval, and he hung from the rope as though the grace of life had never touched him. The boy at Zelim's side was plainly disappointed.

"I didn't see Satan, did you?"

Zelim shook his head, but in his heart he thought: maybe

I did. Maybe the Devil's just a man like me. Maybe he's many men; all men, maybe.

His gaze went along the row of hanged men, looking for the one who had prayed while he'd been raped; the one Zelim suspected had left him the wine, bread, and fruit. Perhaps he'd also persuaded his companions to spare their victim; Zelim would never know. But here was the strange thing. In death, the men all looked the same to him. What had made each man particular seemed to have drained away, leaving their faces deserted, like houses whose owners had departed, taking every sign of particularity with them. He couldn't tell which of them had prayed on the rock, or which had been particularly vicious in their dealings with him. Which had bitten him like an animal; which had pissed in his face to wake him when he'd almost fainted away; which had called him by the name of a woman as they'd ploughed him. In the end, they were virtually indistinguishable as they swung there.

"Now they'll be cut up and their heads put on spikes," the youth was explaining, "as a warning to bandits."

"And holy men," Zelim said.

"They weren't holy men," the youth replied.

His remark was overheard by a woman close by. "Oh yes they were," she said. "The leader, Nazar, had been a monk in Samarkand. He studied some books he should never have studied, and that was why he became what he became."

"What kind of books?" Zelim asked her.

She gave him a fearful look. "It's better we don't know," she said.

"Well I'm going to find my father," the youth said to Zelim. "I hope things go well with you. God be merciful."

"And to you," Zelim said.

Zelim had seen enough; more than enough, in truth. The crowd was working itself up into a fresh fever as the bodies were being taken down in preparation for their beheading; children were being lifted up onto their parents' shoulders so they could see the deed done. Zelim found the whole spectacle disgusting. Turning away from the scene, he bent down, picked up his flea-bitten dog, and started to make his way to the edge of the assembly.

As he went he heard somebody say: "Are you sickened at the sight of blood?"

He glanced over his shoulder. It was the woman who'd spoken of the unholy books in Samarkand.

"No, I'm not sickened," Zelim said sourly, thinking the woman was impugning his manhood. "I'm just bored. They're dead. They can't suffer any more."

"You're right," the woman said with a shrug. She was dressed, Zelim saw, in widow's clothes, even though she was still young; no more than a year or two older than he. "It's only us who suffer," the woman went on. "Only us who are left alive."

He understood absolutely the truth in what she was saying, in a way that he could not have understood before his terrible adventure on the road. That much at least the monks had given him: a comprehension of somebody else's despair.

"I used to think there were reasons…" he said softly.

The crowd was roaring. He glanced back over his shoulder. A head was being held high, blood running from it, glittering in the bright sun.

"What did you say?" the woman asked him, moving closer to hear him better over the noise.

"It doesn't matter," he said.

"Please tell me," she replied, "I'd like to know."

He shrugged. He wanted to weep, but what man wept openly in a place like this?

"Why don't you come with me?" the woman said. "All my neighbors are here, watching this stupidity. If you come back with me, there'll be nobody to see us. Nobody to gossip about us."

Zelim contemplated the offer for a moment or two. "I have to bring my dog," he said.

He stayed for six years. Of course after a week or so the neighbors began to gossip behind their hands, but this wasn't like Atva; people weren't forever meddling in your business. Zelim lived quite happily with the widow Passak, whom he came to love. She was a practical woman, but with the front door and the shutters closed she was also very passionate. This was especially true, for some reason, when the winds came in off the desert; burning hot winds that carried a blistering freight of sand. When those winds blew the widow would be shameless-there was nothing she wouldn't do for their mutual pleasure, and he loved her all the more for it.

But the memories of Atva, and of the glorious family that had come down to the shore that distant day, never left him. Nor did the hours of his violation, or the strange thoughts that had visited him as Nazar and his gang hung from the gallows. All of these experiences remained in his heart, like a stew that had been left to simmer, and simmer, and as the years passed was more steadily becoming tastier and more nourishing.

Then, after six years, and many happy days and nights with Passak, he realized the time had come for him to sit down and eat that stew.

It happened during one of these storms that came off the desert. He and Passak had made love not once but three times. Instead of falling asleep afterward, however, as Passak had done, Zelim now felt a strange irritation behind his eyes, as though the wind had somehow whistled its way into his skull and was stirring the meal one last time before serving it.

In the corner of the room the dog-who was by now old and blind-whined uneasily.

"Hush, girl," he told her. He didn't want Passak woken; not until he had made sense of the feelings that were haunting him.

He put his head in his hands. What was to become of him? He had lived a fuller life than he'd ever have lived if he'd stayed in Atva, but none of it made any sense. At least in Atva there had been a simple rhythm to things. A boy was born, he grew strong enough to become a fisherman, he became a fisherman, and then weakened again, until he was as frail as a baby, and then he perished, comforted by the fact that even as he passed from the world new fishermen were being born. But Zelim's life had no such certainties in it. He'd stumbled from one confusion to another, finding agony where he had expected to find consolation, and pleasure where he'd expected to find sorrow. He'd seen the Devil in human form, and the faces of divine spirits made in similar shape. Life was not remotely as he'd expected it to be.

And then he thought: I have to tell what I know. That's why I'm here; I have to tell people all that I've seen and felt, so that my pain is never repeated. So that those who come after me are like my children, because I helped shape them, and made them strong.

He got up, went to his sweet Passak where she lay, and knelt down beside the narrow bed. He kissed her cheek. She was already awake, however, and had been awake for a while.

"If you leave, I'll be so sad," she said. Then, after a pause: "But I knew you'd go one day. I'm surprised you've stayed so long."

"How did you know-?"

"You were talking aloud, didn't you realize? You do it all the time." A single tear ran from the corner of her eye, but there was no sorrow in her voice. "You are a wonderful man, Zelim. I don't think you know how truly wonderful you are. And you've seen things… maybe they were in your head, maybe they were real, I don't know… that you have to tell people about." Now it was he who wept, hearing her speak this way, without a trace of reprimand. "I have had such years with you, my love. Such joy as I never thought I'd have. And it'd be greedy of me to ask you for more, when I've had so much already." She raised her head a little way, and kissed him. "I will love you better if you go quickly," she said.

He started to sob. All the fine thoughts he'd had a few minutes before seemed hollow now. How could he think of leaving her?

"I can't go," he said. "I don't know what put the thought in my head."

"Yes you will," she replied. "If you don't go now, you'll go sooner or later. So go."

He wiped his tears away. "No," he said. "I'm not going anywhere."

So he stayed. The storms still came, month on month, and he and the widow still coupled fiercely in the little house, while the fire muttered in the hearth and the wind chattered on the roof. But now his happiness was spoiled; and so was hers. He resented her for keeping him under her roof, even though she'd been willing to let him go. And she in her turn grew less loving of him, because he'd not had the courage to go, and by staying he was killing the sweetest thing she'd ever known, which was the love between them.

At last, the sadness of all this killed her. Strange to say, but this brave woman, who had survived the grief of being widowed, could not survive the death of her love for a man who stayed at her side. He buried her, and a week later, went on his way.

He never again settled down. He'd known all he needed to know of domestic life; from now on he would be a nomad. But the stew that had bubbled in him for so long was still good. Perhaps all the more pungent for those last sad months with Passak. Now, when he finally began his life's work, and started to teach by telling of his experiences, there was the poignancy of their soured love to add to the account: this woman, to whom he had once promised his undying devotion-saying what he felt for her was imperishable-soon came to seem as remote a memory as his youth in Atva. Love-at least the kind of love that men and women share-was not made of eternal stuff. Nor was its opposite. Just as the scars that Nazar and his men had left faded with the years, so had the hatred Zelim had felt for them.

Which is not to say he was a man without feeling; far from it. In the thirty-one years left to him he would become known as a prophet, as a storyteller and as a man of rare passion. But that passion did not resemble the kind that most of us feel. He became, despite his humble origins, a creature of subtle and elevated emotion. The parables he told would not have shamed Christ in their simplicity, but unlike the plain and good lessons taught by Jesus, Zelim imparted through his words a far more ambiguous vision; one in which God and the Devil were constantly engaged in a game of masks.

There may be occasion to tell you some of his parables as this story goes on, but for now, I will tell you only how he died. It happened, of course, in Samarkand.

Let me first say a little about the city, given that its glamour had fueled so many of the stories that Zelim had heard as a child. The teller of those tales, Old Zelim, was not the only man to dote on Samarkand, a city he had never seen. It was a nearly mythical place in those times. A city, it was said, of heartbreaking beauty, where thoughts and forms and deeds that were unimaginable in any other spot on earth were commonplace. Never such women as there; nor boys; nor either so free with their flesh as in Samarkand's perfumed streets. Never such men of power as there; nor such treasures as men of power accrue, nor such palaces as they build for ambition's sake, nor mosques they build to save their souls.

Then-if all these glories were not enough-there was the miraculous fact of the city's very existence, when in all directions from where it stood there was wilderness. The traders who passed through it on the Silk Road to Turkistan and China, or carried spices from India or salt from the steppes, crossed vast, baking deserts, and freezing gray wastelands, before they came in sight of the river Zarafshan, and the fertile lands from which Samarkand's towers and minarets rose, like flowers that no garden had ever brought forth. Their gratitude at being delivered out of the wastes they'd crossed inspired them to write songs and poems about the city (extolling it perhaps more than it deserved) and the songs and poems in their turn brought more traders, more beautiful women, more builders of petaled towers, so that as the generations passed Samar kand rose to its own legendary reputation, until the adulation in those songs and poems came to seem ungenerous. It was not, let me point out, simply a place of sensual excesses. It was also a site of learning, where philosophers were extolled, and books written and read, and theories about the beginning of the world and its end endlessly debated over glasses of tea. In short, it was altogether a miraculous city.

Three times in his life Zelim joined a caravan on the Silk Road and made his way to Samarkand. The first time was just a couple of years after the death of Passak, and he traveled on foot, having no money to purchase an animal strong enough to survive the trek. It was a journey that tested to its limits his hunger to see the place: by the time the fabled towers came in sight he was so exhausted-his feet bloody, his body trembling, his eyes red-raw from days of walking in clouds of somebody else's dust-that he simply fell down in the sweet grass beside the river and slept for the rest of the day there outside the walls, oblivious.

He awoke at twilight, washed the sand from his eyes, and looked up. The sky was opulent with color; tiny knitted rows of high cloud, all amber toward the west, blue purple on their eastern flank, and birds in wheeling flocks, circling the glowing minarets as they returned to their roosts. He got to his feet and entered the city as the night fires around the walls were being stoked, their fuel such fragrant woods that the very air smelt holy.

Inside, all the suffering he'd endured to get here was forgotten. Samarkand was all that his father had said it would be, and more. Though Zelim was little more than a beggar here, he soon realized that there was a market for his storytelling. And that he had much to tell. People liked to hear him talk about the baptism at Atva; and the forest; and Nazar and his fate. Whether they believed these were accounts of true events or not didn't matter: they gave him money and food and friendship (and in the case of several well-bred ladies, nights of love) to hear him tell his tales. He began to extend his repertoire: extemporize, enrich, invent. He created new stories about the family on the shore, and because it seemed people liked to have a touch of philosophy woven into their entertainments, introduced his themes of destiny into the stories, ideas that he'd nurtured in his years with Passak.

By the time he left Samarkand after that first visit, which lasted a year and a half, he had a certain reputation, not simply as a fine storyteller, but as a man of some wisdom. And now, as he traveled, he had a new subject: Samarkand.

There, he would say, the highest aspirations of the human soul, and the lowest appetites of the flesh, are so closely laid, that it's hard sometimes to tell one from the other. It was a point of view people were hungry to hear, because it was so often true of their own lives, but so seldom admitted to. Zelim's reputation grew.

The next time he went to Samarkand he traveled on the back of a camel, and had a fifteen-year-old boy to prepare his food and see to his comfort, a lad who'd been apprenticed to him because he too wanted to be a storyteller. When they got to the city, it was inevitably something of a disappointment to Zelim. He felt like a man who'd returned to the bed of a great love only to find his memories sweeter than the reality. But this experience was also the stuff of parable; and he'd only been in the city a week before his disappointment was part of a tale he told.

And there were compensations: reunions with friends he'd made the first time he'd been here; invitations into the palatial homes of men who would have scorned him as an uneducated fisherman a few years before, but now declared themselves honored when he stepped across their thresholds. And the profoundest compensation, his dis covery that here in the city there existed a tiny group of young scholars who studied his life and his parables as though he were a man of some significance. Who could fail to be flattered by that? He spent many days and nights talking with them, and answering their questions as honestly as he was able.

One question in particular loitered in his brain when he left the city. "Do you think you'll ever see again the people you met on the shore?" a young scholar had asked him,

"I don't suppose so," he'd said to the youth. "I was nothing to them."

"But to the child, perhaps…" the scholar had replied.

"To the child?" said Zelim. "I doubt he even knew I existed. He was more interested in his mother's milk than he was in me."

The scholar persisted, however. "You teach in your stories," he said, "how things always come round. You talk in one of them about the Wheel of the Stars. Perhaps it will be the same with these people. They'll be like the stars. Falling out of sight…"

"… and rising again," Zelim said.

The scholar offered a luminous smile to hear his thoughts completed by his master. "Yes. Rising again."

"Perhaps," Zelim had said. "But I won't live in expectation of it."

Nor did he. But, that said, the young scholar's observation had lingered with him, and had in its turn seeded another parable: a morose tale about a man who lives in anticipation of a meeting with someone who turns out to be his assassin.

And so the years went on, and Zelim's fame steadily grew. He traveled immense distances-to Europe, to India, to the borders of China, telling his stories, and discovering that the strange poetry of what he invented gave pleasure to every variety of heart.

It was another eighteen years before he came again to Samarkand; this-though he didn't know it-for the last time.

By now Zelim was getting on in years and though his many journeys had made him wiry and resilient, he was feeling his age that autumn. His joints ached; his morning motions were either water or stone; he slept poorly. And when he did sleep, he dreamed of Atva; or rather of its shore, and of the holy family. His life of wisdom and pain had been caused by that encounter. If he'd not gone down to the water that day then perhaps he'd still be there among the fishermen, living a life of utter spiritual impoverishment; never having known enough to make his soul quake, nor enough to make it soar.

So there he was, that October, in Samarkand, feeling old and sleeping badly. There was little rest for him, however. By now the number of his devotees had swelled, and one of them (the youth who'd asked the question about things coming round) had founded a school. They were all young men who'd found a revolutionary zeal buried in Zelim's parables, which in turn nourished their hunger to see humanity unchained. Daily, he would meet with them. Sometimes he would let them question him, about his life, about his opinions. On other days-when he was weary of being interrogated-he would tell a story.

This particular day, however, the lesson had become a little of both. One of the students had said: "Master, many of us have had terrible arguments with our fathers, who don't wish us to study your works."

"Is that so?" old Zelim replied, raising an eyebrow. "I

can't understand why." There was a little laughter among the students. "What's your question?"

"I only wondered if you'd tell us something of your own father."

"My father…" Zelim said softly.

"Just a little."

The prophet smiled. "Don't look so nervous," he said to the questioner. "Why do you look so nervous?"

The youth blushed. "I was afraid perhaps you'd be angry with me for asking something about your family."

"In the first place," Zelim replied gently, "I'm far too old to get angry. It's a waste of energy and I don't have much of that left. In the second place, my father sits before you, just as all your fathers sit here in front of me." His gaze roved the thirty or so students who sat cross-legged before him. "And a very fine bunch of men they are too." His gaze returned to the youth who'd asked the question. "What does your father do?"

"He's a wool merchant."

"So he's out in the city somewhere right now, selling wool, but his nature's not satisfied with the selling of wool. He needs something else in his life, so he sends you along to talk philosophy."

"Oh no… you don't understand… he didn't send me."

"He may not think he sent you. You may not think you were sent. But you were born your father's son and whatever you do, you do it for him." The youth frowned, plainly troubled at the thought of doing anything for his father. "You're like the fingers of his hand, digging in the dirt while he counts his bales of wool. He doesn't even notice that the hand's digging. He doesn't see it drop seeds into the hole. He's amazed when he finds a tree's grown up beside him, filled with sweet fruit and singing birds. But it was his hand did it."

The youth looked down at the ground. "What do you mean by this?" he said.

"That we do not belong to ourselves. That though we cannot know the full purpose of our creation, we should look to those who came before us to understand it better. Not just our fathers and our mothers, but all who went before. They are the pathway back to God, who may not know, even as He counts stars, that we're quietly digging a hole, planting a seed…"

Now the youth looked up again, smiling, entertained by the notion of God the Father looking the other way while His human hands grew a garden at His feet.

"Does that answer the question?" Zelim said.

"I was still wondering…" the student said.

"Yes?"

"Your own father-?"

"He was a fisherman from a little village called Atva, which is on the shores of the Caspian Sea." As Zelim spoke, he felt a little breath of wind against his face, delightfully cool. He paused to appreciate it. Closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them again, he knew something had changed in the room; he just didn't know what.

"Where was I?" he said.

"Atva," somebody at the back of the room said.

"Ah, yes, Atva. My father lived there all his life, but he dreamed of being somewhere quite different. He dreamed of Samarkand. He told his children he'd been here, in his youth. And he wove such stories of this city; such stories…"

Again, Zelim halted. The cool breeze had brushed against his brow a second time, and something about the way it touched him seemed like a sign. As though the breeze was saying look, look…

But at what? He gazed out of the window, thinking perhaps there was something out there he needed to see. The sky was darkening toward night. A chestnut tree, still covetous of its leaves despite the season, was in perfect silhouette. High up in its branches the evening star glim mered. But he'd seen all of this before: a sky, a tree, a star.

He returned his gaze to the room, still puzzled.

"What kind of stories?" somebody was asking him.

"Stories…?"

"You said your father told stories of Samarkand."

"Oh yes. So he did. Wonderful stories. He wasn't a very good sailor, my father. In fact he drowned on a perfectly calm day. But he could have told tales of Samarkand for a year and never told the same one twice."

"But you say he never came here?" the master of the school asked Zelim.

"Never," Zelim said, smiling. "Which is why he was able to tell such fine stories about it."

This amused everyone mightily. But Zelim scarcely heard the laughter. Again, that tantalizing breeze had brushed his face; and this time, when he raised his eyes, he saw somebody moving through the shadows at the far end of the room. It was not one of the students. They were all dressed in pale yellow robes. This figure was dressed in ragged black breeches and a dirty shirt. He was also black, his skin possessing a curious radiance, which made Zelim remember a long-ago day.

"Atva…?" he murmured.

Only the students closest to Zelim heard him speak, and even they, when debating the subject later, did not agree on the utterance. Some thought he'd said Allah, others that he'd spoken some magical word, that was intended to keep the stranger at the back of the room at bay. The reason that the word was so hotly debated was simple: it was Zelim's last, at least in the living world.

He had no sooner spoken than his head drooped, and the glass of tea which he had been sipping fell from his hand. The murmurings around the room ceased on the instant; students rose on all sides, some of them already starting to weep, or pray. The great teacher was dead, his wisdom passed into history. There would be no more stories, no more prophecies. Only centuries of turning over the tales he'd already told, and watching to see if the prophecies came true.

Outside the schoolroom, under that covetous chestnut tree, two men talked in whispers. Nobody saw them there; nobody heard their happy exchange. Nor will I invent those words; better I leave that conversation to you: how the spirit of Zelim and Atva, later called Galilee, talked. I will say only this: that when the conversation was over, Zelim accompanied Galilee out of Samarkand; a ghost and a god, wandering off through the smoky twilight, like two inseparable friends.

Need I say that Zelim's part in this story is far from finished? He was called away that day into the arms of the Barbarossa family, whose service he has not since left.

In this book, as in life, nothing really passes away. Things change, yes; of course they change; they must. But everything is preserved in the eternal moment-Zelim the fisherman, Zelim the prophet, Zelim the ghost; he's been recorded in all his forms, these pages a poor but passionate echo of the great record that is holiness itself.

There must still be room for the falling note, of course. Even in an undying world there are times when beauty passes from sight, or love passes from the heart, and we feel the sorrow of partition.

In Samarkand, which was glorious for a time, the lozenge tiles, blue and gold, have fallen from the walls, and the chestnut tree under which Zelim and Galilee talked after the prophet's passing has been felled. The domes are decaying, and streets that were once filled with noise are given over to silence. It's not a good silence; it's not the hush of a hermit's cell, or the quiet of dawn. It's simply an absence of life. Regimes have come and gone, parties and potentates, old guards and new, each stealing a portion of Samarkand's glory when they lose power. Now there's only dirt and despair. The highest hope of those who remain is that one of these days the Americans will come and find reason to believe in the city again. Then there'll be hamburgers and soda and cigarettes. A sad ambition for the people of any great city.

And until that happens, there's just the falling tiles, and a dirty wind.

As for Atva, it no longer exists. I suppose if you dug deep in the sand along the shore you'd find the broken-down walls of a few houses, maybe a threshold or two, a pot or two. But nothing of great interest. The lives that were lived in Atva were unremarkable, and so are the few signs that those lives left behind them. Atva does not appear on any maps (even when it thrived it was never marked down that way), nor is mentioned in any books about the Caspian Sea.

Atva exists now in two places. Here in these pages, of course. And as my brother Galilee's true name.

I have one additional detail to add before we move on to something more urgent. It's about that first day, when my father Nicodemus and his wife Cesaria went down to baptize thek beloved child in the water.

Apparently what happened was this: no sooner had Cesaria lowered the baby into the water than he squirmed in her hands and escaped her, diving beneath the first wave that came his way and disappearing from view. My father of course waded in after him, but the current was particularly strong that day and before he-could catch hold of his son the babe had been caught up and swept away from the shore. I don't know if Cesaria was crying or yelling or simply keeping her silence. I do know she didn't go in after the escapee, because she once remarked to Marietta that she had known all along Galilee would go from her side, and though she was surprised to see him leaving at such a tender age she wasn't about to stop him.

Eventually, maybe a quarter of a mile out from the beach, my father caught sight of a little head bobbing in the water. By all accounts the baby was still swimming, or making his best attempt at it. When Atva felt his father's hands around him he began to bawl and squirm. But my father caught firm hold of him. He set the baby on his shoulders, and swam back to the shore.

Cesaria told Marietta how the baby had laughed once he was back in her arms, laughed until the tears ran, he was so amused by what he'd done.

But when I think of this episode, especially in the context of what I'm about to tell you, it's not the child laughing that I picture. No, it's the image of little Atva, barely a day old, squirming from the hands of those who created him, and then, ignoring their cries and their demands, simply swimming away, swimming away, as though the first thing on his mind was escape.