*
The crystal merchant awoke with the day, and felt the same anxiety that he felt every morning. He had been in the same place for thirty years: a shop at the top of a hilly street where few customers passed. Now it was too late to change anything—the only thing he had ever learned to do was to buy and sell crystal glassware. There had been a time when many people knew of his shop: Arab merchants, French and English geologists, German soldiers who were always well-heeled. In those days it had been wonderful to be selling crystal, and he had thought how he would become rich, and have beautiful women at his side as he grew older.
But, as time passed, Tangier had changed. The nearby city of Ceuta had grown faster than Tangier, and business had fallen off. Neighbors moved away, and there remained only a few small shops on the hill. And no one was going to climb the hill just to browse through a few small shops.
But the crystal merchant had no choice. He had lived thirty years of his life buying and selling crystal pieces, and now it was too late to do anything else.
He spent the entire morning observing the infrequent comings and goings in the street. He had done this for years, and knew the schedule of everyone who passed. But, just before lunchtime, a boy stopped in front of the shop. He was dressed normally, but the practiced eyes of the crystal merchant could see that the boy had no money to spend. Nevertheless, the merchant decided to delay his lunch for a few minutes until the boy moved on.
*
A card hanging in the doorway announced that several languages were spoken in the shop. The boy saw a man appear behind the counter.
'I can clean up those glasses in the window, if you want,' said the boy. 'The way they look now, nobody is going to want to buy them.'
The man looked at him without responding.
'In exchange, you could give me something to eat.'
The man still said nothing, and the boy sensed that he was going to have to make a decision. In his pouch, he had his jacket—he certainly wasn't going to need it in the desert. Taking the jacket out, he began to clean the glasses. In half an hour, he had cleaned all the glasses in the window, and, as he was doing so, two customers had entered the shop and bought some crystal.
When he had completed the cleaning, he asked the man for something to eat. 'Let's go and have some lunch,' said the crystal merchant.
He put a sign on the door, and they went to a small caf?nearby. As they sat down at the only table in the place, the crystal merchant laughed.
'You didn't have to do any cleaning,' he said. 'The Koran requires me to feed a hungry person.'
'Well then, why did you let me do it?' the boy asked.
'Because the crystal was dirty. And both you and I needed to cleanse our minds of negative thoughts.'
When they had eaten, the merchant turned to the boy and said, 'I'd like you to work in my shop. Two customers came in today while you were working, and that's a good omen.'
People talk a lot about omens, thought the shepherd. But they really don't know what they're saying. Just as I hadn't realized that for so many years I had been speaking a language without words to my sheep.
'Do you want to go to work for me?' the merchant asked.
'I can work for the rest of today,' the boy answered. 'I'll work all night, until dawn, and I'll clean every piece of crystal in your shop. In return, I need money to get to Egypt tomorrow.'
The merchant laughed. 'Even if you cleaned my crystal for an entire year… even if you earned a good commission selling every piece, you would still have to borrow money to get to Egypt. There are thousands of kilometers of desert between here and there.'
There was a moment of silence so profound that it seemed the city was asleep. No sound from the bazaars, no arguments among the merchants, no men climbing to the towers to chant. No hope, no adventure, no old kings or destinies, no treasure, and no Pyramids. It was as if the world had fallen silent because the boy's soul had. He sat there, staring blankly through the door of the caf? wishing that he had died, and that everything would end forever at that moment.
The merchant looked anxiously at the boy. All the joy he had seen that morning had suddenly disappeared.
'I can give you the money you need to get back to your country, my son,' said the crystal merchant.
The boy said nothing. He got up, adjusted his clothing, and picked up his pouch.
'I'll work for you,' he said.
And after another long silence, he added, 'I need money to buy some sheep.'
PART TWO
The boy had been working for the crystal merchant for almost a month, and he could see that it wasn't exactly the kind of job that would make him happy. The merchant spent the entire day mumbling behind the counter, telling the boy to be careful with the pieces and not to break anything.
But he stayed with the job because the merchant, although he was an old grouch, treated him fairly; the boy received a good commission for each piece he sold, and had already been able to put some money aside. That morning he had done some calculating: if he continued to work every day as he had been, he would need a whole year to be able to buy some sheep.
'I'd like to build a display case for the crystal,' the boy said to the merchant. 'We could place it outside, and attract those people who pass at the bottom of the hill.'
'I've never had one before,' the merchant answered. 'People will pass by and bump into it, and pieces will be broken.'
