Thursday in Hierokand
by A A Isham
[ fiction - january 08 ]
Like the camels of the Sahara, the dromedaries of Hierokand have no names. They have no friends; they don't recognize their owners.
The caravans come twice a week. Once on Thursday mornings, market day, and again Sunday night, en route to Samarkand. Every Sunday night, sitting on the sofa, which is also my bed, I hear them approach. Clods like wet cement.
I want to join them - to ride with them to Samarkand, and from there back to my world, where I belong. But I know by the time that I wake-up from my dreamless slumber, they will already be gone.
Sunday's caravan is uninterested in Heirokand.
To them, our town is conveniently positioned to shelter them from the dusty steppe for one night. That's all we are to them - a fortress, a shelter, some chapatti, a mattress. They have nothing to sell us that won't fetch a better price in Samarkand, and we have nothing to offer that couldn't be gotten for less from the villages farther north. We're not worth the effort of unpacking. Sunday's caravan sees Heirokand as a two-level mud-brick building, stables below and sleeping quarters above.
But Thursday, market day, is different. On Thursday, the dromedaries come in from the villages, alone or in pairs. Their approach is haphazard and silent, but when the first light comes, the wares are set out in the market square, used only for this purpose.
Every Thursday, they display the same set of goods as they did the previous Thursday. As they have been doing, I assume, for generations. In the local tongue, the word for 'Thursday,' Javiid, means 'market day.' Farther East, the traders tell me, Javiid, falls on Wednesday; west of us, tomorrow will be Javiid. So it is that the traders take their dromedaries from Javiid to Javiid, trading during the day and traveling at night.
Our calendars adjust to this fact - the daylight savings of another age.
Every Thursday, after leaving the small room that I rent by the week (for less than I would pay for a cup of coffee in Cleveland), I stroll around the marketplace. A month after my arrival, in a fit of self-loathing boredom, I walked through the main square thinking to myself, "I can buy anything that I desire. I can buy it all." But even so, I leave the marketplace with the same items in my satchel that I buy every Thursday: A sprig of fresh mint, a bundle of chapatti, seven liters of Kaashk. Kaashk, the great forgetter, is why I am here.
This is what the traders trade: textiles - white, black, blue, red and made of goat or dromedary wool; soap - powder or bar; kaashk - a milky liquor; assorted herbal pills, home remedies, etc. The housewives of Heirokand also set up stalls in the market place where they sell herbs and oil from their gardens, bread, and palm flour.
The soap I understand. Making soap is an intensive chore and buying it is much easier. The powder soap comes from Russia, while the bar soap is unmarked and varies from week to week. Since my rent includes consumables, I don't really have to worry about soap. I like the Russian tins, though - sturdy, bright yellow and orange, and with big block letters in Cyrillic script. If I still lived at home, I imagine I'd enjoy keeping coffee or flour in tins like these. I'd have company over; I'd go to the kitchen to get a tea-bag from my soviet soap tin and think: "Clever me." I'd hope to have company to enjoy my challenging taste in décor.
I don't really understand the textiles at all. Textiles seem to be the only thing in Heirokand that everyone has enough of. My landlady, for example, has an enormous pile of woven rugs and tapestries in the corner of her room - and I'm tempted to sit on it when I visit her, but since their sizes are unequal, they slip around quite a bit and make an awkward perch. I've done it a few times, and she doesn't seem to mind, but it's not really very comfortable. I appreciate the versatility of fabric, but I can't understand the reason behind such a thriving marketplace for it - especially in such a desolate place. Perhaps these flashes of pattern and color provide some sort of aesthetic or cultural outlet for the people of Heirokand? And they are nice, I suppose, but without much variety. Collecting them would seem like a chore to me. But maybe that's the nature of collecting, anyways.
So Kaashk. Kaashk is pretty much the reason why I'm here in the first place. And it's also why I have to stay.
Oh: the remedies and such. They are the typical black magic stuff: dried lizards, bits of fur, fragrances, oils, incenses, pumice. They're probably just superstitious knick-knacks and snake-oils. I guess I'll find out if I ever get very sick here.
And I buy a sprig of mint because I like the potent smell of fresh mint and sometimes I chew on a few petals after I drink my kaasht. Do you know how powerful mint is? Come to Hierokand if you want to see how powerful mint is.
When I was fourteen, I invented a radio-tracking system for humpback whales. When I was twelve, I began to study calculus. But even before that, I began to talk to God.
This is how I spoke to God: I would ask him a question for which I knew there was an answer. I would say, for example, "How many people in New York are sleeping right now?" or "Who was married to Yakub Beg?"
For years, he wouldn't answer. I never asked God the questions that I couldn't understand the answers to - I never asked him "What happens when I die?" or "How does a computer circuit work?" I stuck to what I could know. And over the years, gradually at first and then all of a sudden, God began to answer me.
As with all my addictions, my addiction to God was a creeping and evolving one. Our conversations were difficult at first, strained by the mastery of a new language. I had to pose a question just right in order to get the answer that I sought.
I learned his syntax.
Eventually, our conversation became more fluent, more effortless. A thought would occur to me, or an idea. I would ask more complicated questions, questions about the circumstances surrounding the death of Yukio Mishima or quantum physics and, almost instantaneously, my curiosity would be fulfilled.
Eventually, I began spending more time in conversation with God than with anyone else. By far. Perhaps my work began to suffer and my relationships to strain, but I was never lacking in these fields and could afford a bit of leeway. The transformation was subtle and underhanded.
According to Dante, the greatest punishment wreaked on the sinners of Hell was not the exquisite and grisly forms of torture that they were exposed to - it was their everyday existence outside of God's grace. Never mind that this argument seems to undermine the ever-increasing corporeal punishments as he descends deeper…
But how could I be lonely with the voice of God to console me? How could I be bored with access to such a conversationalist? As I mastered my new language, an entire universe opened up before me. But a language is just that. Another way to limit your thinking. Another set of constraints. I didn't yet realize what was happening to me.
No - that's not entirely true: I did begin to realize it. I still had aspirations. I still yearned to create - even though everything seemed already created and even new music sounded like b-tracks from The Rolling Stones, Joy Division or the Beach Boys.
So I decided that I needed to get out of it. I was becoming a follower and a fanatic, if a successful one.
With God at my fingertips, there weren't any more mysteries to confront. If I was twenty-five, in 1625, I would have gone to sea.
I asked God how to get away. I looked at real estate in Maine. I thought about riding freight trains. I went to a party, in an abandoned building by the train tracks, and it was sort of boring.
But I knew how to ask the right questions. It was difficult to find the answer, but deep in the back regions I discovered kaasht. Three weeks later, I was in Hierokand.
I am stuck. I will drink some kaasht and continue my story.
The kaasht has usually separated somewhat by the time I get home. The top half is a translucent white, the bottom more opaque. The locals like to shake it before they open the bottle, but since I drink the whole liter in one sitting, I like to gently sip the thinner translucent layer over the course of an hour, then I take a break and drink glass of water. The effects creep over my conscious as I begin the fermented third. I remember my landlady.
I'm halfway through Glass of Water and my vision is becoming unsteady.
Soon, I'll more Kaasht. sneak sneak into Landlady's bed and rub rub her breasts. Lying down behind her. Squeeze the sides of Breasts. Drink again. Sex. Sleep. Sex sex. Sleep. Wake-up in My Bed. Not hers.
My nose will be dripping in the morning. And I have remembered to brush my teeth before going to Landlady's bed. And then again before I sleep.
I have to lock Door with Heavy Trunk right away.
I Remember...
At sixteen, I ate alone at a restaurant. I was hitchhiking around the Hawaiian Islands, living off of peanut butter and mosquito bites when I arrived at Kona, on the Big Island. Hungry and tired, I treated myself to the lunch special at an empty Chinese restaurant inside a mall and found my way to a family run hostel some miles outside of town. I think I spent only one night there, reading on the balcony and learning how to smoke cigarettes, but it seemed longer. And sometimes, when I retell the story, it stretches out to a whole week - with afternoons spent in the little organic café across the road, eating fresh avocados, and mixed salad with vinegar. As the cars and trucks passed by, they honked hellos to Mr. and Mrs. Takanawa (or maybe Mr and Mrs Matsumoto), the elderly hostel owners.
At first, kaasht has a chalky taste like weak yogurt with a hint of salt and motor oil (I think this is from the recycled containers they use). Eventually, it tastes like halvah, rose-water, fairytales and, finally, nostalgia. I used to drink vodka by the glass, and I remember that after a few glasses of ice-cold vodka it would begin to taste like water. I would tell myself that the vodka was cleaning me, cleaning 'my system.' Kaasht is like that.
When I drink the weaker top-half of kaasht, I like to see how long I can go before returning to the plastic jug that holds the thicker third. I've learned to relish this liminal stage - where I haven't given myself up entirely.
I always plan to document the entire experience, but I know that my will is never stronger than the call of my Landlady's bosom. And she likes me. Because I am different and I hold promises of another place, and another life. And because she is fat and I am fit.
I have a little Turkish coffee here to help me finish what I started out to do. This could be my last dispatch. I am reminded mornings in Harlem with L in 2002.
Rules are important to follow, and the more arbitrary they are, the better. These rules form the basis of major religions and most cults. For those of us not fortunate to be born into conviction, they serve as a reminder of the power of belief and of structure. Of course, arbitrary rules can also lead to the compulsions of neurological disorders and fanaticism and general nuttiness. My grandfather would always take the Eastern stairwell in the Columbia University library so as not to walk under the portrait of Eisenhower, whom he judged as being too conservative and militaristic to belong in a library; I'm always punctual; I don't walk while smoking a cigarette; I eat slowly; I clip my nails on Fridays.
But I can't find my clippers and it will bother me tomorrow.
I eat some chapatti with a bit of fresh cheese spread over it and a petal of mint.
In Chile and Argentina, I spent some time traveling with a tall and very beautiful Danish girl named Henne. She had two(!) tongue rings and the annoying, but fruitless, habit of trying to convince me not to use a condom when we had sex. Henne introduced me to the ultimate traveler's fare: baguette, packaged liverwurst, and a cucumber. For liverwurst, you can substitute a soft white cheese or pate, canned tuna, or prosciutto if you've got it, and for the baguette any bread'll do. Combined, these items, available almost globally, have potent sustaining properties, and most importantly, they are very cheap, and very hard to get tired of. Eating like this reminds me of a badly danced salsa, as Henne and I made out on the dance floor.
I am trying to tell you about kaasht, but the kaasht is telling you about me.
I drink another quarter now. I will brush my teeth and sneak into my Landlady's bed again and rub the sides of her breasts from behind. Tomorrow, I will turn twenty-eight years old. I will never leave Hierokand - I refuse to waste my life.
