the photo?”
By now, I’ll agree to anything if I can just return to mycompartment and sleep, but I don’t want to annoy my companions, who are, after all, paying for this trip. I ask Hilal to go with me to the other end of the carriage. We open the first door and find ourselves in a small area with two exterior doors and a third leading to the next carriage. The noise there is unbearable because, as well as the racket made by the wheels on the rails, there is the grinding noise made by the metal plates linking the carriages.
Hilal shows me the photo on her cell phone, possibly taken just after dawn. It’s a photo of a long cloud in the sky.
“Do you see?”
Yes, I can see a cloud.
“We’re being accompanied on this journey.”
We’re being accompanied by a cloud that will long since have disappeared forever. I continue to acquiesce in the hope that the conversation will soon be over.
“Yes, you’re right. But let’s talk about it later. Now go back to your own compartment.”
“I can’t. You only gave me permission to come here once a day.”
Tiredness must be affecting my reasoning powers, because I realize now that I have created a monster. If she can come only once a day, she’ll arrive in the morning and not leave until nighttime, an error I’ll try to correct later.
“Listen, I’m a guest on this journey, too. I’d love to have your company all the time, because you’re always so full of energy and never take no for an answer, but you see … ”
Those eyes. Green and without a trace of makeup.
“You see …”
Perhaps I’m just exhausted. After more than twenty-fourhours without sleep, we lose almost all of our defenses. That’s the state I’m in now. The vestibule area, bare of any furniture, made of only glass and steel, is beginning to grow fuzzy. The noise is starting to diminish, my concentration is going, and I’m not entirely sure who or where I am. I know that I’m asking her to cooperate, to go back where she came from, but the words coming out of my mouth bear no relation to what I’m seeing.
I’m looking at the light, at a sacred place, and a wave washes over me, filling me with peace and love, two things that rarely come together. I can see myself, but, at the same time, I can see elephants in Africa waving their trunks, camels in the desert, people chatting in a bar in Buenos Aires, a dog crossing the street, the brush being wielded by a woman finishing a painting of a rose, snow melting on a mountain in Switzerland, monks singing exotic hymns, a pilgrim arriving at the cathedral in Santiago de Compostela, a shepherd with his sheep, soldiers who have just woken up and are preparing for war, the fish in the ocean, the cities and forests of the world—and everything is simultaneously very clear and very large, very small and very quiet.
I am in the Aleph, the point at which everything is in the same place at the same time.
I’m at a window, looking out at the world and its secret places, poetry lost in time and words left hanging in space. Those eyes are telling me about things that we do not even know exist but which are there, ready to be discovered and known only by souls, not by bodies. Sentences that are perfectly understood, even when left unspoken. Feelings that simultaneously exalt and suffocate.
I am standing before doors that open for a fraction of a second and then close again but that give me a glimpse of what is hidden behind them—the treasures and traps, the roads never taken and the journeys never imagined.
“Why are you looking at me like that? Why are your eyes showing me all this?”
I’m not the one saying this, but the girl or woman standing before me. Our eyes have become the mirrors of our souls, mirrors not only of our souls, perhaps, but of all the souls of all the people on this planet who are at this moment walking, loving, being born and dying, suffering or dreaming.
“It’s not me … It’s just …”
I cannot finish
By now, I’ll agree to anything if I can just return to mycompartment and sleep, but I don’t want to annoy my companions, who are, after all, paying for this trip. I ask Hilal to go with me to the other end of the carriage. We open the first door and find ourselves in a small area with two exterior doors and a third leading to the next carriage. The noise there is unbearable because, as well as the racket made by the wheels on the rails, there is the grinding noise made by the metal plates linking the carriages.
Hilal shows me the photo on her cell phone, possibly taken just after dawn. It’s a photo of a long cloud in the sky.
“Do you see?”
Yes, I can see a cloud.
“We’re being accompanied on this journey.”
We’re being accompanied by a cloud that will long since have disappeared forever. I continue to acquiesce in the hope that the conversation will soon be over.
“Yes, you’re right. But let’s talk about it later. Now go back to your own compartment.”
“I can’t. You only gave me permission to come here once a day.”
Tiredness must be affecting my reasoning powers, because I realize now that I have created a monster. If she can come only once a day, she’ll arrive in the morning and not leave until nighttime, an error I’ll try to correct later.
“Listen, I’m a guest on this journey, too. I’d love to have your company all the time, because you’re always so full of energy and never take no for an answer, but you see … ”
Those eyes. Green and without a trace of makeup.
“You see …”
Perhaps I’m just exhausted. After more than twenty-fourhours without sleep, we lose almost all of our defenses. That’s the state I’m in now. The vestibule area, bare of any furniture, made of only glass and steel, is beginning to grow fuzzy. The noise is starting to diminish, my concentration is going, and I’m not entirely sure who or where I am. I know that I’m asking her to cooperate, to go back where she came from, but the words coming out of my mouth bear no relation to what I’m seeing.
I’m looking at the light, at a sacred place, and a wave washes over me, filling me with peace and love, two things that rarely come together. I can see myself, but, at the same time, I can see elephants in Africa waving their trunks, camels in the desert, people chatting in a bar in Buenos Aires, a dog crossing the street, the brush being wielded by a woman finishing a painting of a rose, snow melting on a mountain in Switzerland, monks singing exotic hymns, a pilgrim arriving at the cathedral in Santiago de Compostela, a shepherd with his sheep, soldiers who have just woken up and are preparing for war, the fish in the ocean, the cities and forests of the world—and everything is simultaneously very clear and very large, very small and very quiet.
I am in the Aleph, the point at which everything is in the same place at the same time.
I’m at a window, looking out at the world and its secret places, poetry lost in time and words left hanging in space. Those eyes are telling me about things that we do not even know exist but which are there, ready to be discovered and known only by souls, not by bodies. Sentences that are perfectly understood, even when left unspoken. Feelings that simultaneously exalt and suffocate.
I am standing before doors that open for a fraction of a second and then close again but that give me a glimpse of what is hidden behind them—the treasures and traps, the roads never taken and the journeys never imagined.
“Why are you looking at me like that? Why are your eyes showing me all this?”
I’m not the one saying this, but the girl or woman standing before me. Our eyes have become the mirrors of our souls, mirrors not only of our souls, perhaps, but of all the souls of all the people on this planet who are at this moment walking, loving, being born and dying, suffering or dreaming.
“It’s not me … It’s just …”
I cannot finish
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