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.
AUTHOR'S NOTE
I wrote The Zahir between January and June 2004, while I was making my own pilgrimage through this world. Parts of the book were written in Paris and St-Martin in France, in Madrid and Barcelona in Spain, in Amsterdam, on a road in Belgium, in Almaty and on the Kazakhstan steppes.
I would like to thank my French publishers, Anne and Alain Carriere, who unde
rtook to check all the information about French law mentioned in the book.
I first read about the Favor Bank in The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe. The story that Esther tells about Fritz and Hans is based on a story in Ishmael by Daniel Quinn. The mystic quoted by Marie on the importance of remaining vigilant is Kenan Rifai. Most of what the "tribe" in Paris say was told to me by young people who belong to such groups. Some of them post their ideas on the Internet, but it's impossible to pinpoint an author.
The lines that the main character learned as a child and remembers when he is in the hospital ("When the Unwanted Guest arrives...") are from the poem Consoada by the Brazilian poet Manuel Bandeira. Some of Marie's remarks following the chapter when the main character goes to the station to meet the American actor are based on a conversation with the Swedish actress Agneta Sjodin. The concept of forgetting one's personal history, which is part of many initiation traditions, is clearly set out in Journey to Ixtlan by Carlos Castaneda. The law of Jante was developed by the Danish writer Aksel Sandemose in his novel A Fugitive Crossing His Tracks.
Two people who do me the great honor of being my friends, Dmitry Voskoboynikov and Evgenia Dotsuk, made my visit to Kazakhstan possible.
In Almaty, I met Imangali Tasmagambetov, author of the book The Centaurs of the Great Steppe and an expert on Kazakh culture, who provided me with much important information about the political and cultural situation in Kazakhstan, both past and present. I would also like to thank the president of the Kazakhstan Republic, Nursultan Nazarbaev, for making me so welcome, and I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate him for putting a stop to nuclear tests in his country, even though all the necessary technology is there, and for deciding instead to destroy Kazakhstan's entire nuclear arsenal.
Lastly, I owe many of my magical experiences on the steppes to my three very patient companions: Kaisar Alimkulov, Dos (Dosbol Kasymov), an extremely talented painter, on whom I based the character of the same name who appears at the end of the book, and Marie Nimirovskaya, who, initially, was just my interpreter but soon became my friend.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Born in Brazil, PAULO COELHO is one of the most beloved writers of our time, renowned for his international bestseller The Alchemist. His books have been translated into 59 languages and published in 150 countries. He is also the recipient of numerous prestigious international awards, among them the Crystal Award by the World Economic Forum, France's Chevalier de l'Ordre National de la Legion d'Honneur, and Germany's Bambi 2001 Award. He was inducted into the Brazilian Academy of Letters in 2002. Mr. Coelho writes a weekly column syndicated throughout the world.
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ALSO BY PAULO COELHO
The Alchemist
The Pilgrimage
The Valkyries
By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept
The Fifth Mountain
Veronika Decides to Die
Warrior of the Light: A Manual
Eleven Minutes
CREDITS
Photograph of mountains (c) Romilly Lockyer / Getty Images
Photograph of woman (c) Superstock
Copyright
THE ZAHIR: A NOVEL OF OBSESSION. Copyright (c) 2005 by Paulo Coelho. English translation copyright (c) 2005 Margaret Jull Costa. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
ePub edition August 2005 ISBN 9780061758010
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Coelho, Paulo.
[Zahir. English]
The Zahir: a novel of obsession / Paulo Coelho ; translated from the Portuguese by Margaret Jull Costa.--Ist US ed.
p. cm.
ISBN 10: 0-06-082521-9 (hardcover: alk. paper)
ISBN 13: 978-0-06-082521-8
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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Paulo Coelho, The Zahir: A Novel of Obsession
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