The Year of Rice and Salt

Khalid sighed. 'But look you, youth – given all that – what am I supposed to do? I'm only fifty years old, I have some time left before Allah takes me, and I have to fill that time. And I have my pride, despite all. And people are watching me, of course. I was a prominent man, and people enjoyed watching my fall, of course they did, and they watch still! So what kind of story am I going to give them next? Because that's what we are to other people, boy, we are their gossip. That's all civilization is, a giant mill grinding out gossip. And so I could be the story of the man who rode high and fell hard, and had his spirit broken and crawled off into a hole like a dog, to die as soon as he could manage it. Or I could be the story of a man who rode high and fell hard, and then got up defiant, and walked away in a new direction. Someone who never looked back, someone who never gave the mob any satisfaction. And that's the story I'm going to make them all eat. They can fuck themselves if they want any other kind of a story out of me. I'm a tiger, boy, I was a tiger in a previous existence, I must have been, I dream about it all the time, stalking through trees and hunting things. Now I have my tiger hitched to my chariot, and off we go!' He skimmed his left hand off towards the city ahead of them. 'This is the key, youth, you must learn to hitch your tiger to your chariot.'

Bahram nodded. 'Demonstrations to make.'

'Yes! Yes!' Khalid stopped and gestured up at the spangle of stars. 'And this is the best part, boy, the most marvellous thing, because it is all so very damned interesting! It isn't just something to while away the time, or to get away from this,' waving his stump again, 'it's the only thing that matters! I mean, why are we here, youth? Why are we here?'

'To make more love.'

'All right, fair enough. But how do we best love this world Allah gave us? We do it by learning it! It's here, all of a piece, beautiful every morning, and we go and rub it in the dust, making our khans and our caliphates and such. It's absurd. But if you try to understand things, if you look at the world and say why does that happen, why do things fall, why does the sun come up every morning and shine on us, and warm the air and fill the leaves with green how does all this happen? What rules has Allah used to make this beautiful world? Then it is all transformed. God sees that you appreciate it. And even if He doesn't, even if you never know anything in the end, even if it's impossible to know, you can still try.'

'And you're learning a lot,' Bahram said.

'Not really. Not at all. But with a mathematician like Iwang on hand, we can maybe work out a few simple things, or make little beginnings to pass on to others. This is God's real work, Bahram. God didn't give us this world for us to stand around in it chewing our food like camels. Mohammed himself said, Pursue learning even if it take you to China! And now with Iwang, we have brought China to us. It makes it all the more interesting.'

'So you are happy, you see? just as I said.'

'Happy and angry. Happily angry. Everything, all at once. That's life, boy. You just keep getting fuller, until you burst and Allah takes you and casts your soul into another life later on. And so everything just keeps getting fuller.'

An early cock crowed on the edge of the town. In the sky to the east the stars were winking out. The servants reached Khalid's compound ahead of them and opened up, but Khalid stopped outside among the great piles of charcoal, looking around with evident satisfaction. 'There's Iwang now,' he said quietly.

The big Tibetan slouched up to them like a bear, body weary but a grin on his face.

'Well?' he said.

'Too fast to measure,' Khalid admitted.

Iwang grunted.

Khalid handed him the wine bag, and he took a long swig.

'Light,' he said. 'What can you say?'

The eastern sky was filling with this mysterious substance or quality. Iwang swayed side to side like a bear dancing to music, as obviously happy as Bahram had ever seen him. The two old men had enjoyed their night's work. Iwang's party had had a night of mishaps, drinking wine, getting lost, falling in ditches, singing songs, mistaking other lights for Khalid's lantern, and then, during the tests, having no idea what kind of times were being registered back on Afrasiab Hill, an ignorance which had struck them as funny. They had become silly.

But these adventures were not the source of Iwang's good humour rather it was some train of thought of his own, which had put him under a description, as the sufis said, murmuring things in his own language, hummed deep in his chest. The servants were singing a song for the coming of dawn.