The Street Philosopher and the Holy Fool by Marius Kociejowski

Author:Marius Kociejowski [Marius Kociejowski]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781780600833
Publisher: Eland Publishing
Published: 2015-09-15T05:00:00+00:00

Abed spoke at length of the man he had come to revere.

‘After my break with Sulaymān I came to look upon Abū al-Ṭālib as my teacher, even though he can be volatile at times. The other night he threw some people out of his shop. They were in despair, he said, and despair in others is something he will not tolerate. “Get out of here,” he shouted, “and don’t ever come back.” Of course, they do. They always do.’

I rather suspected Abed had been one of those asked to leave.

Whatever constitutes a happy childhood Abū al-Ṭālib may be said to have had one. The environment he was born into was comfortable enough, there was sufficient food and clothing – but these are the woolly parameters beloved to makers of thumbnail sketches, which in the end may help produce some kind of portrait but say nothing of the subject’s inner life. We know nothing of the details, the overlooked, sometimes unreasonable, pleasures and fears that go into the making of any life. The only irregularity in the fuzzy pattern we have, one that many people in this part of the world believe augurs a life of some importance, is that up to the age of five al-Ṭālib barely spoke. When he was eleven suddenly his world crashed – his mother whom he revered died.

‘When Abū al-Ṭālib speaks of this, people listening to him weep,’ Abed told me. ‘I know, I wept too. “Your mother has died,” they told him, but still the meaning of those words was not clear. It seemed as though she would return soon. The young boy pressed his hands to the door to block the passage of the coffin from the house. “Where are you taking my mother?” he cried. Only then did he begin to understand that the luxury of his childhood had come to an end.’

This was only the beginning of what al-Ṭālib would regularly refer to as his seven years of torture. Soon after, his father remarried. Al-Ṭālib’s stepmother imposed every punishment on him, especially hunger. An unreasonable woman, she punished if not the imagined then the want of a crime. She kept the food locked away in cupboards, so that the boy would have to go to the market looking for scraps. After some years he met a girl, married her, and for a while they lived in his father’s house, but because his stepmother made things impossible for the young couple they were forced to move. This resulted in divorce, for his mother-in-law would not allow her daughter to live in a rented house. Al-Ṭālib returned home. Although he was allowed a small room in his family house his father cut him off in every other respect. They did not speak for three years. Later, he met another woman, married her and together they produced five children. During this period, al-Ṭālib suffered another catastrophe. Abed, like so many Arabs (if one may so generalise), has an obsessive interest in the workings of fate, for there is nothing in this world that God does not determine.

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