‘Nathan pondered this advice from the carpenter and on the following morning sent the lad back to the village. From now on, he would travel to Jerusalem alone. When he reached the sea, Nathan began to search for a ship on which he could set sail. He found that he would have to wait. This delay gave him time to work as a porter and earn more money for the journey. It was not easy to work while dragging around his heavy chains. Often, the snippets of stories he heard among the sailors and other porters distracted him from his struggles.
‘Once, he overheard an elderly sailor say to another, “When I say island, you no doubt imagine solid land, surrounded by water, but this place was not like that. It was soppy like snow, the air as thick as fog, the vegetation brittle and sparse. On that island, a giant ape was trapped and its cries were as eerie as the blowing wind. They pierced the heart of anyone who heard them. But instead of invoking terror, these screams sounded like convoluted laments, the anguish in them was such that anyone who heard them was struck down with a broken heart. Grown men would sob like babes and collapse utterly helpless. Too smitten to feel hunger or thirst, many eventually perished. The island was sloppy and airy, neither water nor solid, the only hard objects were the human skulls and bones strewn about. The few who escaped this island could not talk for three months. They could only weep with a sense of terrible loss. It was the sound of the trapped ape they kept hearing. It echoed in their ears for the rest of their lives.”
‘From a fellow porter, Nathan heard about an island in which the trees bore women as their fruit. The women dangled off the branches, ripe and ready for plucking. But these women were poisonous, the slightest bit of their saliva or sweat could cause instantaneous death. Nathan heard about places where death couldn’t reach, where crops didn’t need to be planted or watered, where the barks of trees were made of cloths. Mountains could be smooth as enamel, sparrows could be larger than oxen and antelopes as small as mice. Places in which there was never day and places in which there was never night. Nathan heard that a captain seeking fur seals landed on the back of a whale, mistaking it for an island. Another captain, chasing an octopus, found the island of smoke and fire. Creation indeed was a wide and wonderful space where Nathan was but only a fleck.’
‘I know I’m a fleck,’ Iman interrupted. ‘It is men who have the largest egos, the biggest heads, the delusions of grandeur. They’re the ones who need these lessons, not me. There’s no pride in me.’
The Hoopoe did not reply. Her words dissolved in the air . . . there is no pride in me, no pride in me, no pride . . .
He then said, ‘A poor, helpless woman can have a higher spiritual standing than the mightiest of kings.’
She knew this, but she had forgotten it, laid it aside like any other ideal. ‘What about Nathan? Did he get on the ship?’
‘Yes,’ the Hoopoe replied. ‘On the ship to Jerusalem, his chains scraped across the wooden planks and the sounds disturbed the crew. They were jittery because of the bad weather they were encountering and their fear of pirates. A superstitious lot, they regarded Nathan as bad luck. It did not help that he introduced himself as a sinner in need of redemption, someone who had locked himself up in chains and thrown away the key. He was weighing down the ship. Dislike towards Nathan grew even more when the captain befriended him. This happened when the captain discovered that Nathan could read, write and, more importantly, play a good game of chess. It pleased the captain to find learned company, someone he could talk to about a diverse range of subjects, from monarchs to agriculture, from map making to astronomy.
‘The first mate became jealous of Nathan’s friendship with the captain. He mistreated Nathan by setting harder tasks for him on the ship and by giving him little or no food. Nathan accepted this as part of his penance. Wasn’t this why he had set out on this journey? He knew it would be a road littered with tricks. No matter how strong he was, or how weak, there would always be something heavy to carry. There would always be a puzzle that was hard to solve. Everything was mixed or running in parallel – the gains and the losses, the lies with the truth. Nathan did not report the first mate to the captain, but he did his best to remain in the captain’s company for as long as possible.
‘To do this, he told him stories from his native home. The story of the selkie very much captivated the captain. It went like this. Once, a fisherman heard singing at night. He waded in the river until he came upon a small island and beheld a magnificent sight. Three maidens naked under the moonlight were singing and dancing. The fisherman had never seen anything more beautiful. When the moon hid behind a cloud, the girls picked up what looked like fur coats from the ground and started to put them on. They were sealskins and, on wearing them, the girls transformed back into seals, lowered themselves into the
