e’ll sleep here tonight and, tomorrow, we’ll continue on horseback. My car can’t cope with the sand of the steppes.”

We were in a kind of bunker, which looked like a relic from the Second World War. A man, with his wife and his granddaughter, welcomed us and showed us a simple, but spotlessly clean room.

Dos went on:

“And don’t forget to choose a name.”

“I don’t think that’s necessary,” said Mikhail.

“Of course it is,” insisted Dos. “I was with his wife recently. I know how she thinks, I know what she has learned, I know what she expects.”

Dos’s voice was simultaneously firm and gentle. Yes, I would choose a name, I would do exactly as he suggested; I would continue to discard my personal history and, instead, embark on my personal legend—even if only out of sheer tiredness.

I was exhausted. The previous night I had slept for two hours at most: my body had still not adjusted to the enormous time difference. I had arrived in Almaty at about eleven o’clock at night local time, when in France it was only six o’clock in the evening. Mikhail had left me at the hotel and I had dozed for a bit, then woken up in the small hours. I had looked out at the lights below and thought how in Paris it would just be time to go out to supper. I was hungry and asked room service if they could send me up something to eat: “Of course we can, sir, but you really must try to sleep; if you don’t, your body will stay stuck on its European timetable.”

For me, the worst possible torture is not being able to sleep. I ate a sandwich and decided to go for a walk. I asked the receptionist my usual question: “Is it dangerous to go walking at this hour?” He told me it wasn’t, and so I set off down the empty streets, narrow alleyways, broad avenues; it was a city like any other, with its neon signs, the occasional passing police car, a beggar here, a prostitute there. I had to keep repeating out loud: “I’m in Kazakhstan!” If I didn’t, I would end up thinking I was merely in some unfamiliar quarter of Paris.

“I’m in Kazakhstan!” I said to the deserted city, and a voice replied:

“Of course you are.”

I jumped. A man was sitting close by, on a bench in a square at dead of night, with his backpack by his side. He got up and introduced himself as Jan, from Holland, adding:

“And I know why you’re here.”

Was he a friend of Mikhail’s? Or was I being followed by the secret police?

“Why am I here, then?”

“Like me, you’ve traveled from Istanbul, following the Silk Road.”

I gave a sigh of relief, and decided to continue the conversation.

“On foot? As I understand it, that means crossing the whole of Asia.”

“It’s something I needed to do. I was dissatisfied with my life. I’ve got money, a wife, children, I own a hosiery factory in Rotterdam. For a time, I knew what I was fighting for—my family’s stability. Now I’m not so sure. Everything that once made me happy just bores me, leaves me cold. For the sake of my marriage, the love of my children, and my enthusiasm for my work, I decided to take two months off just for myself, and to take a long look at my life. And it’s working.”

“I’ve been doing the same thing these last few months. Are there a lot of pilgrims like you?”

“Lots of them. Loads. It can be dangerous, because the political situation in some of these countries is very tricky indeed, and they hate Westerners. But we get by. I think that, as a pilgrim, you’ll always be treated with respect, as long as you can prove you’re not a spy. But I gather from what you say that you have different reasons for being here. What brings you to Almaty?”

“The same thing as you. I came to reach the end of a particular road. Couldn’t you sleep either?”

“I’ve just woken up. The earlier I set out, the more chance I have of getting to the next town; if not, I’ll have to spend the night in the freezing cold steppes, with that constant wind blowing.”

“Have a good journey, then.”

“No, stay a while. I need to talk, to share my experiences. Most of the other pilgrims don’t speak English.”

And he started telling me about his life, while I tried to remember what I knew about the Silk Road, the old commercial route that connected Europe with the countries of the East. The traditional route started in Beirut, passed through Antioch and went all the way to the shores of the Yangtse in China; but in Central Asia it became a kind of web, with roads heading off in all directions, which allowed for the establishment of trading posts, which, in time, became towns, which were later destroyed in battles between rival tribes, rebuilt by the inhabitants, destroyed, and rebuilt again. Although almost everything passed along that route—gold, strange animals, ivory, seeds, political ideas, refugees from civil wars, armed bandits, private armies to protect the caravans—silk was the rarest and most coveted item. It was thanks to one of these branch roads that Buddhism traveled from China to India.

“I left Antioch with about two hundred dollars in my pocket,” said the Dutchman, having described mountains, landscapes, exotic tribes, and endless problems in various countries with police patrols. “I needed to find out if I was capable of becoming myself again. Do you know what I mean?”

“Yes, I do.”

“I was forced to beg, to ask for money. To my surprise, people are much more generous than I had imagined.”

Beg? I studied his backpack and his clothes to see if I could spot the symbol of the tribe—Mikhail’s tribe—but I couldn’t find it.

“Have you ever been to an Armenian restaurant in Paris?”

“I’ve been to lots of Armenian restaurants, but never in Paris.”

“Do you know someone called Mikhail?”

“It’s a pretty common name in these parts. If I did know a Mikhail, I can’t remember, so I’m afraid I can’t help you.”

“No, I don’t need your help. I’m just surprised by certain coincidences. It seems there are a lot of people, all over the world, who are becoming aware of the same thing and acting in a very similar way.”

“The first thing you feel, when you set out on a journey like this, is that you’ll never arrive. Then you feel insecure, abandoned, and spend all your time thinking about giving up. But if you can last a week, then you’ll make it to the end.”

“I’ve been wandering like a pilgrim through the streets of one city, and yesterday I arrived in a different one. May I bless you?”

He gave me a strange look.

“I’m not traveling for religious reasons. Are you a priest?”

“No, I’m not a priest, but I feel that I should bless you. Some things aren’t logical, as you know.”

The Dutchman called Jan, whom I would never see again, bowed his head and closed his eyes. I placed my hands on his shoulders and, in my native tongue—which he wouldn’t understand—I prayed that he would reach his destination safely and leave behind him on the Silk Road both his sadness and his sense that life was meaningless; I prayed, too, that he would return to his family with shining eyes and with his soul washed clean.

He thanked me, took up his backpack, and headed off in the direction of China. I went back to the hotel thinking that I had never, in my whole life, blessed anyone before. But I had responded to an impulse, and the impulse was right; my prayer would be answered.

 

The following day, Mikhail turned up with his friend, Dos, who would accompany us. Dos had a car, knew my wife, and knew the steppes, and he, too, wanted to be there when I reached the village where Esther was living.

I considered remonstrating with them—first, it was Mikhail, now it was his friend, and by the time we finally reached the village, there would be a huge crowd following me, applauding and weeping, waiting to see what would happen. But I was too tired to say anything. The next day, I would remind Mikhail of the promise he had made, not to allow any witnesses to that moment.

We got into the car and, for some time, followed the Silk Road. They asked me if I knew what it was and I told them that I had met a Silk Road pilgrim the previous night, and they said that such journeys were becoming more and more commonplace and could soon bring benefits to the country’s tourist industry.

Two hours later, we left the main road and continued along a minor road as far as the bunker where we are now, eating fish and listening to the soft wind that blows across the steppes.

“Esther was very important for me,” Dos explains, showing me a photo of one of his paintings, which includes one of those pieces of bloodstained cloth. “I used to dream of leaving here, like Oleg…”

“You’d better call me Mikhail, otherwise he’ll get confused.”

“I used to dream of leaving here, like lots of people my age. Then one day, Oleg—or, rather, Mikhail—phoned me. He said that his benefactress had decided to come and live in the steppes for a while and he wanted me to help her. I agreed, thinking that here was my chance and that perhaps I could extract the same favors from her: a visa, a plane ticket, and a job in France. She asked me to go with her to some remote village that she knew from an earlier visit.

“I didn’t ask her why, I simply did as she requested. On the way, she insisted on going to the house of a nomad she had visited years before. To my surprise, it was my grandfather she wanted to see! She was received with the hospitality that is typical of the people who live in this infinite space. My grandfather told her that, although she thought she was sad, her soul was, in fact, happy and free, and love’s energy had begun to flow again. He assured her that this would have an effect upon the whole world, including her husband. My grandfather taught her many things about the culture of the steppes, and asked me to teach her the rest. In the end, he decided that she could keep her name, even though this was contrary to tradition.

“And while she learned from my grandfather, I learned from her, and realized that I didn’t need to go far away, as Mikhail had done: my mission was to be in this empty space—the steppes—and to understand its colors and transform them into paintings.”

“I don’t quite understand what you mean about teaching my wife. I thought your grandfather said that we should forget everything.”

“I’ll show you tomorrow,” said Dos.

 

And the following day, he did show me and there was no need for words. I saw the endless steppes, which, although they appeared to be nothing but desert, were, in fact, full of life, full of creatures hidden in the low scrub. I saw the flat horizon, the vast empty space, heard the sound of horses’ hooves, the quiet wind, and then, all around us, nothing, absolutely nothing. It was as if the world had chosen this place to display, at once, its vastness, its simplicity, and its complexity. It was as if we could—and should—become like the steppes—empty, infinite, and, at the same time, full of life.

I looked up at the blue sky, took off my dark glasses, and allowed myself to be filled by that light, by the feeling of being simultaneously nowhere and everywhere. We rode on in silence, stopping now and then to let the horses drink from streams that only someone who knew the place would have been able to find. Occasionally, we would see other horsemen in the distance or shepherds with their flocks, framed by the plain and by the sky.

Where was I going? I hadn’t the slightest idea and I didn’t care. The woman I was looking for was somewhere in that infinite space. I could touch her soul, hear the song she was singing as she wove her carpets. Now I understood why she had chosen this place: there was nothing, absolutely nothing to distract her attention; it was the emptiness she had so yearned for. The wind would gradually blow her pain away. Could she ever have imagined that one day I would be here, on horseback, riding to meet her?

A sense of paradise descends from the skies. And I am aware that I am living through an unforgettable moment in my life; it is the kind of awareness we often have precisely when the magic moment has passed. I am entirely here, without past, without future, entirely focused on the morning, on the music of the horses’ hooves, on the gentleness of the wind caressing my body, on the unexpected grace of contemplating sky, earth, men. I feel a sense of adoration and ecstasy. I am thankful for being alive. I pray quietly, listening to the voice of nature, and understanding that the invisible world always manifests itself in the visible world.

I ask the sky some questions, the same questions I used to ask my mother when I was a child:

 

Why do we love certain people and hate others?

Where do we go after we die?

Why are we born if, in the end, we die?

What does God mean?

 

The steppes respond with the constant sound of the wind. And that is enough: knowing that the fundamental questions of life will never be answered, and that we can, nevertheless, still go forward.

 

Mountains loomed on the horizon, and Dos asked us to stop. I saw that there was a stream nearby.

“We’ll camp here.”

We removed the saddlebags from the horses and put up the tent. Mikhail started digging a hole in the ground.

“This is how the nomads used to do it; we dig a hole, fill the bottom with stones, put more stones all around the edge, and that way we have a place to light a fire without the wind bothering us.”

To the south, between the mountains and us, a cloud of dust appeared, which I realized at once was caused by galloping horses. I pointed this out to my two friends, who jumped to their feet. I could see that they were tense. Then they exchanged a few words in Russian and relaxed. Dos went back to putting up the tent and Mikhail set about lighting the fire.

“Would you mind telling me what’s going on?” I said.

“It may look as if we’re surrounded by empty space, but it can’t have escaped your notice that we’ve already seen all kinds of things: shepherds, rivers, tortoises, foxes, and horsemen. It feels as if we had a clear view all around us, so where do these people come from? Where are their houses? Where do they keep their flocks?

“That sense of emptiness is an illusion: we are constantly watching and being watched. To a stranger who cannot read the signs of the steppes, everything is under control and the only thing he can see are the horses and the riders. To those of us who were brought up here, we can also see the yurts, the circular houses that blend in with the landscape. We know how to read what’s going on by observing how horsemen are moving and in which direction they’re heading. In the olden days, the survival of the tribe depended on that ability, because there were enemies, invaders, smugglers.

“And now the bad news: they’ve found out that we’re riding toward the village at the foot of those mountains and are sending people to kill the shaman who sees visions of children as well as the man who has come to disturb the peace of the foreign woman.”

He gave a loud laugh.

“Just wait a moment and you’ll understand.”

The riders were approaching, and I was soon able to see what was going on.

“It looks very odd to me—a woman being pursued by a man.”

“It is odd, but it’s also part of our lives.”

The woman rode past us, wielding a long whip, and, by way of a greeting, gave a shout and a smile directed at Dos, then started galloping around and around the place where we were setting up camp. The smiling, sweating man pursuing her gave us a brief greeting too, all the while trying to keep up with the woman.

“Nina shouldn’t be so cruel,” said Mikhail. “There’s no need for all this.”

“It’s precisely because there’s no need for it that she can afford to be cruel,” replied Dos. “She just has to be beautiful and have a good horse.”

“But she does this to everyone.”

“I unseated her once,” said Dos proudly.

“The fact that you’re speaking English means that you want me to understand.”

The woman was laughing and riding ever faster; her laughter filled the steppes with joy.

“It’s a form of flirtation. It’s called Kyz Kuu, or ‘Bring the girl down.’ And we’ve all taken part in it at some time in our childhood or youth.”

The man pursuing her was getting closer and closer, but we could see that his horse couldn’t take much more.

“Later on, we’ll talk a bit about Tengri, the culture of the steppes,” Dos went on. “But now that you’re seeing this, let me just explain something very important. Here, in this land, the woman is in charge. She comes first. In the event of a divorce, she receives half the dowry back even if she’s the one who wants the divorce. Whenever a man sees a woman wearing a white turban, that means she’s a mother and we, as men, must place our hand on our heart and bow our head as a sign of respect.”

“But what’s that got to do with ‘Bring the girl down’?”

“In the village at the foot of the mountains, a group of men on horseback would have gathered around this girl; her name is Nina and she’s the most desirable girl in the area. They would have begun playing the game of Kyz Kuu, which was thought up in ancient times, when the women of the steppes, known as amazons, were also warriors.

At the time, no one would have dreamt of consulting the family if they wanted to get married: the suitors and the girl would simply get together in a particular place, all on horseback. She would ride around the men, laughing, provoking them, whipping them. Then the bravest of the men would start chasing her. If the girl was able to keep out of his grasp for a set period of time, then the man would have to call on the earth to cover him forever, because he would be considered a bad horseman—the warrior’s greatest shame.

If he got close, despite her whip, and pulled her to the ground, then he was a real man and was allowed to kiss her and to marry her. Obviously, then just as now, the girls knew who they should escape from and who they should let themselves be caught by.”

Nina was clearly just having a bit of fun. She had got ahead of the man again and was riding back to the village.

“She only came to show off. She knows we’re on our way and will take the news back to the village.”

“I have two questions. The first might seem stupid: Do you still choose your brides like that?”

Dos said that, nowadays, it was just a game. In the West, people got all dressed up and went to bars or fashionable clubs, whereas in the steppes, Kyz Kuu was the favored game of seduction. Nina had already humiliated quite a number of young men, and had allowed herself to be unseated by a few as well—exactly as happens in all the best discotheques.

“The second question will seem even more idiotic: Is the village at the foot of the mountains where my wife is living?”

Dos nodded.

“If we’re only two hours away, why don’t we sleep there? It’ll be a while yet before it gets dark.”

“You’re right, we are only two hours away, and there are two reasons why we’re stopping here for the night. First, even if Nina hadn’t come out here, someone would already have seen us and would have gone to tell Esther that we were coming. This way, she can decide whether or not she wants to see us, or if she would prefer to go to another village for a few days. If she did that, we wouldn’t follow her.”

My heart contracted.

“Even after all I’ve been through to get here?”

“If that’s how you feel, then you have understood nothing. What makes you think that your efforts should be rewarded with the submission, gratitude, and recognition of the person you love? You came here because this was the road you must follow, not in order to buy your wife’s love.”

However unfair his words might seem, he was right. I asked him about the second reason.

“You still haven’t chosen your name.”

“That doesn’t matter,” Mikhail said again. “He doesn’t understand our culture, and he’s not part of it.”

“It’s important to me,” said Dos. “My grandfather said that I must protect and help the foreign woman, just as she protected and helped me. I owe Esther the peace of my eyes, and I want her eyes to be at peace too.

“He will have to choose a name. He will have to forget forever his history of pain and suffering, and accept that he is a new person who has just been reborn and that, from now on, he will be reborn every day. If he doesn’t do that, and if they ever do live together again, he will expect her to pay him back for all the pain she once caused him.”

“I chose a name last night,” I said.

“Wait until this evening to tell me.”

 

As soon as the sun began to sink low on the horizon, we went to an area on the steppes that was full of vast sand dunes. I became aware of a different sound, a kind of resonance, an intense vibration. Mikhail said that it was one of the few places in the world where the dunes sing.

“When I was in Paris and I talked to people about this, they only believed me because an American said that he had experienced the same thing in North Africa; there are only thirty places like it in the world. Nowadays, of course, scientists can explain everything. It seems that because of the place’s unique formation, the wind penetrates the actual grains of sand and creates this sound. For the ancients, though, this was one of the magical places in the steppes, and it is a great honor that Dos should have chosen it for your name-changing.”

We started climbing one of the dunes, and as we proceeded the noise grew more intense and the wind stronger. When we reached the top, we could see the mountains standing out clearly to the south and the gigantic plain stretching out all around us.

“Turn toward the west and take off your clothes,” Dos said.

I did as he ordered, without asking why. I started to feel cold, but they seemed unconcerned about my well-being. Mikhail knelt down and appeared to be praying. Dos looked up at the sky, at the earth, at me, then placed his hands on my shoulders, just as I had done to the Dutchman, though without knowing why.

“In the name of the Lady, I dedicate you. I dedicate you to the earth, which belongs to the Lady. In the name of the horse, I dedicate you. I dedicate you to the world, and pray that the world helps you on your journey. In the name of the steppes, which are infinite, I dedicate you. I dedicate you to the infinite Wisdom, and pray that your horizon may always be wider than you can see. You have chosen your name and will speak it now for the first time.”

“In the name of the infinite steppes, I choose a name,” I replied, without asking if I was doing as the ritual demanded, merely allowing myself to be guided by the noise of the wind in the dunes. “Many centuries ago, a poet described the wanderings of a man called Ulysses on his way back to an island called Ithaca, where his beloved awaits him. He confronts many perils, from storms to the temptations of comfort. At one point, in a cave, he encounters a monster with only one eye.

“The monster asks him his name. ‘Nobody,’ says Ulysses. They fight and he manages to pierce the monster’s one eye with his sword and then seals the mouth of the cave with a rock. The monster’s companions hear his cries and rush to help him. Seeing that there is a rock covering the mouth of the cave, they ask who is with him. ‘Nobody! Nobody!’ replies the monster. His companions leave, since there is clearly no threat to the community, and Ulysses can then continue on his journey back to the woman who waits for him.”

“So your name is Ulysses?”

“My name is Nobody.”

I am trembling all over, as if my skin were being pierced by hundreds of needles.

“Focus on the cold, until you stop trembling. Let the cold fill your every thought, until there is no space for anything else, until it becomes your companion and your friend. Do not try to control it. Do not think about the sun, that will only make it worse, because you will know then that something else—heat—exists and then the cold will feel that it is not loved or desired.”

My muscles were furiously stretching and contracting in order to produce energy and keep my organism alive. However, I did as Dos ordered, because I trusted him, trusted in his calm, his tenderness, and his authority. I let the needles pierce my skin, allowed my muscles to struggle, my teeth to chatter, all the while repeating to myself: “Don’t fight; the cold is your friend.” My muscles refused to obey, and I remained like that for almost fifteen minutes, until my muscles eventually gave in and stopped shaking, and I entered a state of torpor. I tried to sit down, but Mikhail grabbed hold of me and held me up, while Dos spoke to me. His words seemed to come from a long way off, from a place where the steppes meet the sky.

“Welcome, nomad who crosses the steppes. Welcome to the place where we always say that the sky is blue even when it is gray, because we know that the color is still there above the clouds. Welcome to the land of the Tengri. Welcome to me, for I am here to receive you and to honor you for your search.”

Mikhail sat down on the ground and asked me to drink something that immediately warmed my blood. Dos helped me to get dressed, and we made our way back down the dunes that continued to talk among themselves; we made our way back to our improvised campsite. Before Dos and Mikhail had even started cooking, I had fallen into a deep sleep.

 

What’s happening? Isn’t it light yet?”

“It’s been light for ages. It’s just a sandstorm, don’t worry. Put your dark glasses on to protect your eyes.”

“Where’s Dos?”

“He’s gone back to Almaty, but he was very moved by the ceremony yesterday evening. He didn’t really need to do that. It was a bit of a waste of time for you really and a great opportunity to catch pneumonia. I hope you realize that it was just his way of showing you how welcome you are. Here, take the oil.”

“I overslept.”

“It’s only a two-hour ride to the village. We’ll be there before the sun is at its highest point.”

“I need a bath. I need to change my clothes.”

“That’s impossible. You’re in the middle of the steppes. Put the oil in the pan, but first offer it up to the Lady. Apart from salt, it’s our most valuable commodity.”

“What is Tengri?”

“The word means ‘sky worship’; it’s a kind of religion without religion. Everyone has passed through here—Buddhists, Hindus, Catholics, Muslims, different sects with their beliefs and superstitions. The nomads became converts to avoid being killed, but they continued and continue to profess the idea that the Divinity is everywhere all the time. You can’t take the Divinity out of nature and put it in a book or between four walls. I’ve felt so much better since coming back to the steppes, as if I had been in real need of nourishment. Thank you for letting me come with you.”

“Thank you for introducing me to Dos. Yesterday, during that dedication ceremony, I sensed that he was someone special.”

“He learned from his grandfather, who learned from his father, who learned from his father, and so on. The nomadic way of life, and the absence of a written language until the end of the nineteenth century, meant that they had to develop the tradition of the akyn, the person who must remember everything and pass on the stories. Dos is an akyn. When I say ‘learn,’ though, I hope you don’t take that to mean ‘accumulate knowledge.’ The stories have nothing to do with dates and names and facts. They are legends about heroes and heroines, animals and battles, about the symbols of man’s essential self, not just his deeds. They’re not stories about the vanquishers or the vanquished, but about people who travel the world, contemplate the steppes, and allow themselves to be filled by the energy of love. Pour the oil in more slowly, otherwise it will spit.”

“I felt blessed.”

“I’d like to feel that too. Yesterday, I went to visit my mother in Almaty. She asked if I was well and if I was earning money. I lied and said I was fine, that I was putting on a successful theater production in Paris. I’m going back to my own people today, and it’s as if I had left yesterday, and as if during all the time I’ve spent abroad, I had done nothing of any importance. I talk to beggars, wander the streets with the tribe, organize the meetings at the restaurant, and what have I achieved? Nothing. I’m not like Dos, who learned from his grandfather. I only have the presence to guide me and sometimes I think that perhaps it is just a hallucination; perhaps my visions really are just epileptic fits, and nothing more.”

“A minute ago you were thanking me for bringing you with me, and now it seems to have brought you nothing but sadness. Make up your mind what you’re feeling.”

“I feel both things at once, I don’t have to choose. I can travel back and forth between the oppositions inside me, between my contradictions.”

“I want to tell you something, Mikhail. I too have traveled back and forth between many contradictions since I first met you. I began by hating you, then I accepted you, and as I’ve followed in your footsteps, that acceptance has become respect. You’re still young, and the powerlessness you feel is perfectly normal. I don’t know how many people your work has touched so far, but I can tell you one thing: you changed my life.”

“You were only interested in finding your wife.”

“I still am, but that didn’t just make me travel across the Kazakhstan steppes: it made me travel through the whole of my past life. I saw where I went wrong, I saw where I stopped, I saw the moment when I lost Esther, the moment that the Mexican Indians call the acomodador—the giving-up point. I experienced things I never imagined I would experience at my age. And all because you were by my side, guiding me, even though you might not have been aware that you were. And do you know something else? I believe that you do hear voices and that you did have visions when you were a child. I have always believed in many things, and now I believe even more.”

“You’re not the same man I first met.”

“No, I’m not. I hope Esther will be pleased.”

“Are you?”

“Of course.”

“Then that’s all that matters. Let’s have something to eat, wait until the storm eases, and then set off.”

“Let’s face the storm.”

“No, it’s all right. Well, we can if you want, but the storm isn’t a sign, it’s just one of the consequences of the destruction of the Aral Sea.”

 

The furious wind is abating, and the horses seem to be galloping faster. We enter a kind of valley, and the landscape changes completely. The infinite horizon is replaced by tall, bare cliffs. I look to the right and see a bush full of ribbons.

“It was here! It was here that you saw…”

“No, my tree was destroyed.”

“So what’s this, then?”

“A place where something very important must have happened.”

He dismounts, opens his saddlebag, takes out a knife, and cuts a strip off the sleeve of his shirt, then ties this to one of the branches. His eyes change; he may be feeling the presence beside him, but I prefer not to ask.

I follow his example. I ask for protection and help. I, too, feel a presence by my side: my dream, my long journey back to the woman I love.

We remount. He doesn’t tell me what he asked for, and nor do I. Five minutes later, we see a small village of white houses. A man is waiting for us; he comes over to Mikhail and speaks to him in Russian. They talk for a while, then the man goes away.

“What did he want?”

“He wanted me to go to his house to cure his daughter. Nina must have told him I was arriving today, and the older people still remember my visions.”

He seems uncertain. There is no one else around; it must be a time when everyone is working, or perhaps eating. We were crossing the main road, which seemed to lead to a white building surrounded by a garden.

“Remember what I told you this morning, Mikhail. You might well just be an epileptic who refuses to accept the diagnosis and who has allowed his unconscious to build a whole story around it, but it could also be that you have a mission in the world: to teach people to forget their personal history and to be more open to love as pure, divine energy.”

“I don’t understand you. All the months we’ve known each other, you’ve talked of nothing but this moment—finding Esther. And suddenly, ever since this morning, you seem more concerned about me than anything else. Perhaps Dos’s ritual last night had some effect.”

“Oh, I’m sure it did.”

What I meant to say was: I’m terrified. I want to think about anything except what is about to happen in the next few minutes. Today, I am the most generous person on the face of this earth, because I am close to my objective and afraid of what awaits me. My reaction is to try and help others, to show God that I’m a good person and that I deserve this blessing that I have pursued so long and hard.

 

Mikhail dismounted and asked me to do the same.

“I’m going to the house of the man whose daughter is ill. I’ll take care of your horse while you talk to Esther.”

He pointed to the small white building in the middle of the trees.

“Over there.”

I struggled to keep control of myself.

“What does she do?”

“As I told you before, she’s learning to make carpets and, in exchange, she teaches French. By the way, although the carpets may look simple, they are, in fact, very complicated—just like the steppes. The dyes come from plants that have to be picked at precisely the right time; otherwise the color won’t be right. Then the wool is spread out on the ground, mixed with hot water, and the threads are made while the wool is still wet; and then, after many days, when the sun has dried them, the work of weaving begins. The final details are done by children. Adult hands are too big for the smallest, most delicate bits of embroidery.”

He paused.

“And no jokes about it being child’s play. It’s a tradition that deserves respect.”

“How is she?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t spoken to her for about six months.”

“Mikhail, these carpets are another sign.”

“The carpets?”

“Do you remember yesterday, when Dos asked me to choose my name, I told you the story of a warrior who returns to an island in search of his beloved? The island is called Ithaca and the woman is called Penelope. What do you think Penelope has been doing since Ulysses left? Weaving! She has been weaving a shroud for her father-in-law, Laertes, as a way of putting off her suitors. Only when she finishes the shroud will she remarry. While she waits for Ulysses to return, she unpicks her work every night and begins again the following day.

“Her suitors want her to choose one of them, but she dreams of the return of the man she loves. Finally, when she has grown weary of waiting, Ulysses returns.”

“Except that the name of this village isn’t Ithaca and Esther’s name isn’t Penelope.”

Mikhail had clearly not understood the story, and I didn’t feel like explaining that it was just an example.

I handed him the reins of my horse and then walked the hundred meters that separated me from the woman who had been my wife, had then become the Zahir, and who was once more the beloved whom all men dream of finding when they return from war or from work.

 

I am filthy. My clothes and my face are caked with sand, my body drenched in sweat, even though it’s very cold.

I worry about my appearance, the most superficial thing in the world, as if I had made this long journey to my personal Ithaca merely in order to show off my new clothes. As I walk the remaining hundred meters, I must make an effort to think of all the important things that have happened during her—or was it my?—absence.

What should I say when we meet? I have often pondered this and come up with such phrases as: “I’ve waited a long time for this moment,” or “I know now that I was wrong,” or “I came here to tell you that I love you,” or even “You’re lovelier than ever.”

I decide just to say hello. As if she had never left. As if only a day had passed, not two years, nine months, eleven days, and eleven hours.

And she needs to understand that I have changed as I’ve traveled through the same places she traveled through, places about which I knew nothing or in which I had simply never been interested. I had seen the scrap of bloodstained cloth in the hand of a beggar, in the hands of young people and adults in a Paris restaurant, in the hand of a painter, a doctor, and a young man who claimed to see visions and hear voices. While I was following in her footsteps, I had gotten to know the woman I had married and had rediscovered, too, the meaning of my own life, which had been through so many changes and was now about to change again.

Despite being married all those years, I had never really known my wife. I had created a love story like the ones I’d seen in the movies, read about in books and magazines, watched on TV. In my story, love was something that grew until it reached a certain size and, from then on, it was just a matter of keeping it alive, like a plant, watering it now and again and removing any dead leaves. Love was also a synonym for tenderness, security, prestige, comfort, success. Love could be translated into smiles, into words like “I love you” or “I feel so happy when you come home.”

But things were more complicated than I thought. I could be madly in love with Esther while I was crossing the road, and yet, by the time I had reached the other side, I could be feeling trapped and wretched at having committed myself to someone, and longing to be able to set off once more in search of adventure. And then I would think: “I don’t love her anymore.” And when love returned with the same intensity as before, I would doubt it and say to myself: “I must have just gotten used to it.”

Perhaps Esther had had the same thoughts and had said to herself: “Don’t be silly, we’re happy, we can spend the rest of our lives like this.” After all, she had read the same stories, seen the same films, watched the same TV series, and although none of them said that love was anything more than a happy ending, why give herself a hard time about it? If she repeated every morning that she was happy with her life, then she would doubtless end up believing it herself and making everyone around us believe it too.

However, she thought differently and acted differently. She tried to show me, but I couldn’t see. I had to lose her in order to understand that the taste of things recovered is the sweetest honey we will ever know. Now I was there, walking down a street in a tiny, cold, sleepy village, once again following a road because of her. The first and most important thread that bound me—“All love stories are the same”—had broken when I was knocked down by that motorbike.

In the hospital, love had spoken to me: “I am everything and I am nothing. I am the wind, and I cannot enter windows and doors that are shut.”

And I said to love: “But I am open to you.”

And love said to me: “The wind is made of air. There is air inside your house, but everything is shut up. The furniture will get covered in dust, the damp will ruin the paintings and stain the walls. You will continue to breathe, you will know a small part of me, but I am not a part, I am Everything, and you will never know that.”

I saw that the furniture was covered in dust, that the paintings were being corroded by damp, and I had no alternative but to open the windows and doors. When I did that, the wind swept everything away. I wanted to cling to my memories, to protect what I thought I had worked hard to achieve, but everything had disappeared and I was as empty as the steppes.

As empty as the steppes: I understood now why Esther had decided to come here. It was precisely because everything was empty that the wind brought with it new things, noises I had never heard, people with whom I had never spoken. I recovered my old enthusiasm, because I had freed myself from my personal history; I had destroyed the acomodador and discovered that I was a man capable of blessing others, just as the nomads and shamans of the steppes blessed their fellows. I had discovered that I was much better and much more capable than I myself had thought; age only slows down those who never had the courage to walk at their own pace.

One day, because of a woman, I made a long pilgrimage in order to find my dream. Many years later, the same woman had made me set off again, this time to find the man who had gotten lost along the way.

Now I am thinking about everything except important things: I am mentally humming a tune, I wonder why there aren’t any cars parked here, I notice that my shoe is rubbing, and that my wristwatch is still on European time.

And all because a woman, my wife, my guide, and the love of my life, is now only a few steps away; anything to fend off the reality I have so longed for and which I am so afraid to face.

I sit down on the front steps of the house and smoke a cigarette. I think about going back to France. I’ve reached my goal, why go on?

I get up. My legs are trembling. Instead of setting off on the return journey, I clean off as much sand from my clothes and my face as I can, grasp the door handle, and go in.

 

Although I know that I may have lost forever the woman I love, I must try to enjoy all the graces that God has given me today. Grace cannot be hoarded. There are no banks where it can be deposited to be used when I feel more at peace with myself. If I do not make full use of these blessings, I will lose them forever.

     God knows that we are all artists of life. One day, he gives us a hammer with which to make sculptures, another day he gives us brushes and paints with which to make a picture, or paper and a pencil to write with. But you cannot make a painting with a hammer, or a sculpture with a paintbrush. Therefore, however difficult it may be, I must accept today’s small blessings, even if they seem like curses because I am suffering and it’s a beautiful day, the sun is shining, and the children are singing in the street. This is the only way I will manage to leave my pain behind and rebuild my life.

 

The room was flooded with light. She looked up when I came in and smiled, then continued reading A Time to Rend and a Time to Sew to the women and children sitting on the floor, with colorful fabrics all around them. Whenever Esther paused, they would repeat the words, keeping their eyes on their work.

I felt a lump in my throat, I struggled not to cry, and then I felt nothing. I just stood studying the scene, hearing my words on her lips, surrounded by colors and light and by people entirely focused on what they were doing.

 

In the words of a Persian sage: Love is a disease no one wants to get rid of. Those who catch it never try to get better, and those who suffer do not wish to be cured.

 

Esther closed the book. The women and children looked up and saw me.

“I’m going for a stroll with a friend of mine who has just arrived,” she told the group. “Class is over for today.”

They all laughed and bowed. She came over and kissed my cheek, linked arms with me, and we went outside.

 

“Hello,” I said.

“I’ve been waiting for you,” she said.

I embraced her, rested my head on her shoulder, and began to cry. She stroked my hair, and by the way she touched me I began to understand what I did not want to understand, I began to accept what I did not want to accept.

“I’ve waited for you in so many ways,” she said, when she saw that my tears were abating. “Like a desperate wife who knows that her husband has never understood her life, and that he will never come to her, and so she has no option but to get on a plane and go back, only to leave again after the next crisis, then go back and leave and go back….”

The wind had dropped; the trees were listening to what she was saying.

“I waited as Penelope waited for Ulysses, as Romeo waited for Juliet, as Beatrice waited for Dante. The empty steppes were full of memories of you, of the times we had spent together, of the countries we had visited, of our joys and our battles. Then I looked back at the trail left by my footprints and I couldn’t see you.

“I suffered greatly. I realized that I had set off on a path of no return and that when one does that, one can only go forward. I went to the nomad I had met before and asked him to teach me to forget my personal history, to open me up to the love that is present everywhere. With him I began to learn about the Tengri tradition. One day, I glanced to one side and saw that same love reflected in someone else’s eyes, in the eyes of a painter called Dos.”

I said nothing.

“I was still very bruised. I couldn’t believe it was possible to love again. He didn’t say much; he taught me to speak Russian and told me that in the steppes they use the word ‘blue’ to describe the sky even when it’s gray, because they know that, above the clouds, the sky is always blue. He took me by the hand and helped me to go through those clouds. He taught me to love myself rather than to love him. He showed me that my heart was at the service of myself and of God, and not at the service of others.

“He said that my past would always go with me, but that the more I freed myself from facts and concentrated on emotions, the more I would come to realize that in the present there is always a space as vast as the steppes waiting to be filled up with more love and with more of life’s joy.

“Finally, he explained to me that suffering occurs when we want other people to love us in the way we imagine we want to be loved, and not in the way that love should manifest itself—free and untrammeled, guiding us with its force and driving us on.”

I looked up at her.

“And do you love him?”

“I did.”

“Do you still love him?”

“What do you think? If I did love another man and was told that you were about to arrive, do you think I would still be here?”

“No, I don’t. I think you’ve been waiting all morning for the door to open.”

“Why ask silly questions, then?”

Out of insecurity, I thought. But it was wonderful that she had tried to find love again.

“I’m pregnant.”

For a second, it was as if the world had fallen in on me.

“By Dos?”

“No. It was someone who stayed for a while and then left again.”

I laughed, even though my heart was breaking.

“Well, I suppose there’s not much else to do here in this one-horse town,” I said.

“Hardly a one-horse town,” she replied, laughing too.

“But perhaps it’s time you came back to Paris. Your newspaper phoned me asking if I knew where to find you. They wanted you to report on a NATO patrol in Afghanistan, but you’ll have to say no.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re pregnant! You don’t want the baby being exposed to all the negative energy of a war, surely.”

“The baby? You don’t think a baby’s going to stop me working, do you? Besides, why should you worry? You didn’t do anything to contribute.”

“Didn’t contribute? It’s thanks to me that you came here in the first place. Or doesn’t that count?”

She took a piece of bloodstained cloth from the pocket of her white dress and gave it to me, her eyes full of tears.

“This is for you. I’ve missed our arguments.”

And then, after a pause, she added:

“Ask Mikhail to get another horse.”

I placed my hands on her shoulders and blessed her just as I had been blessed.