The Zahir

"I'll tell you my story another day, but the long and the short of it is that I knew English and started working as her interpreter. We were near the border of a country where the Americans were building a lot of military bases, preparing for the war in Afghanistan, and it was impossible to get a visa. I helped her cross the mountains illegally. During the week we spent together, she made me realize that I was not alone, that she understood me.

"I asked her what she was doing so far from home. After a few evasive answers, she finally told me what she must have told you: that she was looking for the place where love had hidden itself away. I told her about my mission to make the energy of love circulate freely in the world again. Basically, we were both looking for the same thing.

"Esther went to the French embassy and arranged a visa for me, as an interpreter of the Kazakh language, even though no one in my country speaks anything but Russian. I came to live here. We always met up when she returned from her missions abroad; we made two more trips together to Kazakhstan. She was fascinated by the Tengri culture, and by a nomad she had met and whom she believed held the key to everything."

I would have liked to know what Tengri was, but the question could wait. Mikhail continued talking, and in his eyes I saw the same longing to be with Esther that I myself was feeling.

"We started working here in Paris. It was her idea to get people together once a week. She said, 'The most important thing in all human relationships is conversation, but people don't talk anymore, they don't sit down to talk and listen. They go to the theater, the cinema, watch television, listen to the radio, read books, but they almost never talk. If we want to change the world, we have to go

back to a time when warriors would gather around a fire and tell stories.'"

I remember Esther saying that all the really important things in our lives had arisen out of long conversations we'd had sitting at a table in some bar or walking along a street or in a park.

"It was my idea that these meetings should be on a Thursday because that's how it is in the tradition in which I was brought up. But it was her idea to make occasional forays into the Paris streets at night. She said that beggars were the only ones who never pretend to be happy; on the contrary, they pretend to be sad.

"She gave me your books to read. I sensed that you too--possibly unconsciously--imagined the same world as we did. I realized that I wasn't alone, even if I was the only one to hear the voice. Gradually, as more and more people started coming to the meetings, I began to believe that I really could fulfill my mission and help the energy of love to return, even if that meant going back into the past, back to the moment when that Energy left or went into hiding."

"Why did Esther leave me?"

Was that all I was interested in? The question irritated Mikhail slightly.

"Out of love. Today, you used the example of the railway tracks. Well, she isn't just another track running along beside you. She doesn't follow rules, nor, I imagine, do you. I miss her too, you know."

"So..."

"So if you want to find her, I can tell you where she is. I've already felt the same impulse, but the voice tells me that now is not the moment, that no one should interrupt her encounter with the energy of love. I respect the voice, the voice protects us, protects me, you, Esther."

"When will the moment be right?"

"Perhaps tomorrow, in a year's time, or never, and, if that were the case, then we would have to respect that decision. The voice is the Energy, and that is why she only brings people together when they are both truly prepared for that moment. And yet we all try and force the situation even if it means hearing the very words we don't want to hear: 'Go away.' Anyone who fails to obey the voice and arrives earlier or later than he should, will never get the thing he wants."

"I'd rather hear her tell me to go away than be stuck with the Zahir day and night. If she said that, she would at least cease to be an idee fixe and become a woman who now has a different life and different thoughts."

"She would no longer be the Zahir, but it would be a great loss. If a man and a woman can make the Energy manifest, then they are helping all the men and women of the world."

"You're frightening me. I love her, you know I do, and you say that she still loves me. I don't know what you mean by being prepared; I can't live according to other people's expectations, not even Esther's."

"As I understand it from conversations I had with her, at some point you got lost. The world started revolving exclusively around you."

"That's not true. She was free to forge her own path. She decided to become a war correspondent, even though I didn't want her to. She felt driven to find out why people were unhappy, even though I told her this was impossible. Does she want me to go back to being a railway track running alongside another railway track, always keeping the same stupid distance apart, just because the Romans decided that was the way it should be?"

"On the contrary."

Mikhail started walking again, and I followed him.

"Do you believe that I hear a voice?"

"To be perfectly honest, I don't know. But now that we're here, let me show you something."

"Everyone thinks I'm just having an epileptic fit, and I let them believe that because it's easier. But the voice has been speaking to me ever since I was a child, when I first saw the Lady."

"What lady?"

"I'll tell you later."

"Whenever I ask you something, you say: 'I'll tell you later.'"

"The voice is telling me something now. I know that you're anxious and frightened. In the pizzeria, when I felt that warm wind and saw the lights, I knew that these were symptoms of my connection with the Power. I knew it was there to help us both. If you think that all the things I've been telling you are just the ravings of a young epileptic who wants to manipulate the feelings of a famous writer, I'll bring you a map tomorrow showing you where Esther is living, and you can go and find her. But the voice is telling us something."