The Mountain Shadow

‘Good. What I’m telling you is this: kneel in humility, kneel in the knowledge that we are all connected, every one of us, and every living thing, kneel in the knowledge that we are all together in this struggle to understand and belong, but don’t blindly obey anyone, ever. Do you young people have anything to offer on this point?’

There was a pause, as the students looked at one another.

‘Lin. Our new visitor,’ Idriss asked me quickly. ‘What do you say?’

I was already there, thinking of prison guards who’d beaten men in prison.

‘Enough obedience will let people do just about anything to other people,’ I said.

‘I like that answer,’ Idriss said.

Praise from the wise is the sweetest wine. I felt the warmth of it inside.

‘Obedience is the assassin of conscience,’ Idriss said softly, ‘and that is why every lasting institution demands it.’

‘But surely we must obey something?’ the Parsi student asked.

‘Obey the laws of the land, Zubin,’ Idriss replied, ‘except where they would cause you to act in a manner that is not honourable. Obey the Golden Rules. Do unto others, as you would have them do unto you, and do not do to others, what you would not have them do to you. Obey your instinct to create and love and learn. Obey the universal law of consciousness, that everything you think or say or do has an effect greater than zero, even if it’s only an effect on yourself, which is why you must try to minimise the negative in what you think and say and do, and maximise the positive. Obey the instinct to forgive, and to share with others. Obey your faith. And obey your heart. Your heart will never lie to you.’

He paused, looking around at the students, many of them writing notes on what he’d said. He smiled, then shook his head, and began to cry.

I looked at Abdullah. Is he crying? Abdullah nodded, and then flicked his head at the students. Several of them were crying, too. After a while, Idriss spoke though his tears.

‘It took so long, fourteen billion years, for this part of the universe to bring into being a consciousness, right here, capable of knowing and actually calculating that it took fourteen thousand million years to make the calculation. We don’t have the right to throw those fourteen billion years away. We don’t have the moral right to waste or damage or kill this consciousness. And we don’t have the right to surrender its will, the most precious and beautiful thing in the universe. We have a duty to study, to learn, to question, to be fair and honest and positive citizens. And above all, we have a duty to unite our consciousness, freely, with any free consciousness, in the common cause of love.’

I came to hear that speech many times from Idriss, and in modified forms from some of his students, and I liked it, in all its forms. I liked Idriss the mind: but what he said immediately after that speech made me like Idriss the man.

‘Let’s tell jokes,’ he said. ‘I’ll go first. I’ve been wanting to tell this all day. Why did the Zen Buddhist keep an empty bottle of milk in his refrigerator? Anyone? No? Give up? It was for guests who drink black tea!’

Idriss and the students laughed. Abdullah was laughing out loud, happily and freely, something I’d never seen in all the years that I knew him. I painted that laugh on a wall of my heart. And in a small, simple way I loved Idriss for releasing that happiness in my stern friend.

‘Okay, okay, my turn!’ Arjun said excitedly, standing to tell his joke.

One by one the other students stood to tell their jokes. I left, threading my way through the rows of students to find Karla, at the edge of the mesa.

She was writing notes from the lecture Idriss had given, but she wasn’t using a notepad. She was writing the notes on her left hand.

Long sentences looped their way back and forth across her hand, up along the length of each finger to the nail, and down again to the knuckle, and then in between the fingers, across the webbing and up again, between two more fingers.

The words continued on the palm-side of her hand, until the whole span of skin, hand and fingers, was covered with a tattooed web of words, like henna decorations on the hands of a Bombay bride.

It was the sexiest thing I’d ever seen in my life: I’m a writer. I found the strength at last to move my eyes and stare out at the forest, already smothered by the heavy swell of cloud.

‘So that’s why you asked me to tell you a joke,’ I said.

‘It’s one of his things,’ she replied, raising her eyes to stare ahead. ‘He says that the one sure sign of a fanatic is that he has no sense of humour. So, he gets us to laugh, at least once every day.’

‘Are you buying it?’

‘He’s not selling anything, Lin. That’s why I like him.’

‘Okay, what do you think of him?’

‘Does it matter, what I think?’

‘Everything about you matters, Karla.’

We faced one another. I couldn’t tell what she was thinking. I wanted to kiss her.

‘You’ve been talking to Ranjit,’ she said, a frown searching my eyes.

I stopped thinking about kissing her.