The Zahir

"I've been to lots of Armenian restaurants, but never in Paris."

"Do you know someone called Mikhail?"

"It's a pretty common name in these parts. If I did know a Mikhail, I can't remember, so I'm afraid I can't help you."

"No, I don't need your help. I'm just surprised by certain coincidences. It seems there are a lot of people, all over the world, who are becoming aware of the same thing and acting in a very similar way."

"The first thing you feel, when you set out on a journey like this, is that you'll never arrive. Then you feel insecure, abandoned, and spend all your time thinking about giving up. But if you can last a week, then you'll make it to the end."

"I've been wandering like a pilgrim through the streets of one city, and yesterday I arrived in a different one. May I bless you?"

He gave me a strange look.

"I'm not traveling for religious reasons. Are you a priest?"

"No, I'm not a priest, but I feel that I should bless you. Some things aren't logical, as you know."

The Dutchman called Jan, whom I would never see again, bowed his head and closed his eyes. I placed my hands on his shoulders and, in my native tongue--which he wouldn't understand--I prayed that he would reach his destination safely and leave behind him on the Silk Road both his sadness and his sense that life was meaningless; I prayed, too, that he would return to his family with shining eyes and with his soul washed clean.

He thanked me, took up his backpack, and headed off in the direction of China. I went back to the hotel thinking that I had never, in my whole life, blessed anyone before. But I had responded to an impulse, and the impulse was right; my prayer would be answered.

The following day, Mikhail turned up with his friend, Dos, who would accompany us. Dos had a car, knew my wife, and knew the steppes, and he, too, wanted to be there when I reached the village where Esther was living.

I considered remonstrating with them--first, it was Mikhail, now it was his friend, and by the time we finally reached the village, there would be a huge crowd following me, applauding and weeping, waiting to see what would happen. But I was too tired to say anything. The next day, I would remind Mikhail of the promise he had made, not to allow any witnesses to that moment.

We got into the car and, for some time, followed the Silk Road. They asked me if I knew what it was and I told them that I had met a Silk Road pilgrim the previous night, and they said that such journeys were becoming more and more commonplace and could soon bring benefits to the country's tourist industry.

Two hours later, we left the main road and continued along a minor road as far as the bunker where we are now, eating fish and listening to the soft wind that blows across the steppes.

"Esther was very important for me," Dos explains, showing me a photo of one of his paintings, which includes one of those pieces of bloodstained cloth. "I used to dream of leaving here, like Oleg..."

"You'd better call me Mikhail, otherwise he'll get confused."

"I used to dream of leaving here, like lots of people my age. Then one day, Oleg--or, rather, Mikhail--phoned me. He said that his benefactress had decided to come and live in the steppes for a while and he wanted me to help her. I agreed, thinking that here was my chance and that perhaps I could extract the same favors from her: a visa, a plane ticket, and a job in France. She asked me to go with her to some remote village that she knew from an earlier visit.

"I didn't ask her why, I simply did as she requested. On the way, she insisted on going to the house of a nomad she had visited years before. To my surprise, it was my grandfather she wanted to see! She was received with the hospitality that is typical of the people who live in this infinite space. My grandfather told her that, although she thought she was sad, her soul was, in fact, happy and free, and love's energy had begun to flow again. He assured her that this would have an effect upon the whole world, including her husband. My grandfather taught her many things about the culture of the steppes, and asked me to teach her the rest. In the end, he decided that she could keep her name, even though this was contrary to tradition.

"And while she learned from my grandfather, I learned from her, and realized that I didn't need to go far away, as Mikhail had done: my mission was to be in this empty space--the steppes--and to understand its colors and transform them into paintings."

"I don't quite understand what you mean about teaching my wife. I thought your grandfather said that we should forget everything."

"I'll show you tomorrow," said Dos.

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And the following day, he did show me and there was no need for words. I saw the endless steppes, which, although they appeared to be nothing but desert, were, in fact, full of life, full of creatures hidden in the low scrub. I saw the flat horizon, the vast empty space, heard the sound of horses' hooves, the quiet wind, and then, all around us, nothing, absolutely nothing. It was as if the world had chosen this place to display, at once, its vastness, its simplicity, and its complexity. It was as if we could--and should--become like the steppes--empty, infinite, and, at the same time, full of life.

I looked up at the blue sky, took off my dark glasses, and allowed myself to be filled by that light, by the feeling of being simultaneously nowhere and everywhere. We rode on in silence, stopping now and then to let the horses drink from streams that only someone who knew the place would have been able to find. Occasionally, we would see other horsemen in the distance or shepherds with their flocks, framed by the plain and by the sky.

Where was I going? I hadn't the slightest idea and I didn't care. The woman I was looking for was somewhere in that infinite space. I could touch her soul, hear the song she was singing as she wove her carpets. Now I understood why she had chosen this place: there was nothing, absolutely nothing to distract her attention; it was the emptiness she had so yearned for. The wind would gradually blow her pain away. Could she ever have imagined that one day I would be here, on horseback, riding to meet her?

A sense of paradise descends from the skies. And I am aware that I am living through an unforgettable moment in my life; it is the kind of awareness we often have precisely when the magic moment has passed. I am entirely here, without past, without future, entirely focused on the morning, on the music of the horses' hooves, on the gentleness of the wind caressing my body, on the unexpected grace of contemplating sky, earth, men. I feel a sense of adoration and ecstasy. I am thankful for being alive. I pray quietly, listening to the voice of nature, and understanding that the invisible world always manifests itself in the visible world.

I ask the sky some questions, the same questions I used to ask my mother when I was a child:

Why do we love certain people and hate others?

Where do we go after we die?