Mark is having a very bad time. It feels like his whole world has collapsed. His relationship, which had lasted for five years, recently fell apart. Mark's mind, instead of focusing on the exam that is going to take place a week later, is imagining scenarios where Mark is still together with his girlfriend. "What could have I done better? What went wrong? Can I still redeem myself?" Questions, and more questions, but with no answers.
There's a lot weighing on Mark right now. His academic future hangs in the balance, his family life is in disarray, and he has the added responsibility of taking care of his sister. But all his thoughts revolve around what could have been. He can't even bring himself to read a single line from the history book in front of him, a chapter of which must be read within today to submit a report by tomorrow. The chapter is something about the Invasion of Baghdad in 1258 by the Mongols but unfortunately, Mark's mind is unable to process a single word from the page. "Fuck this", Mark says and and tries to find solace in chewing on a melatonin tablet, hoping that a good night's sleep will help him gather his thoughts.
Musa is on a caravan on the way to the golden city. Rumours are circulating that the golden city is no longer shining. An army has invaded from the east, ruthless warriors riding on horseback, and siege weaponry that the world has never seen before. The golden city was impregnable to trebuchets perhaps, but not to firecrackers that the known world had not heard of until 30 days ago.
Musa and the rajaz of camels stepped through the gates of the ruined city. Once a bustling city of a million people, now dead and deserted. It has been 30 days, but yet the bodies have not been cleaned from the streets. In every corner of the city, Mongol guards stand watch, closely observing anyone who enters or leaves the city center.
Musa leaves the company of the caravan and steps through the Grand Bazaar, once bustling with people from all corners of the world, trading exotic goods that only the Grand city can showcase. Now the only thing traded here is a loaf of bread for a quarter, which almost all the people in the city would die to have. Musa walks towards the Tigris bridge and turns westward towards the House of Wisdom. Afterall, he was sent here to deliver an important scroll to the Mufti at the House of Wisdom. The river has turned very dark, as if someone has sucked the life out of it, and Musa sees dead fishes everywhere, floating on the black river of dread. "It's ink", an old man says, his eyes as dark as the river. "Chenghis ordered to burn all the scrolls but they ran out of firewood hahaha! So the fuckers dumped all the scrolls in the river. Still, there were so many left, the whole river turned black with the ink!" "I see", says Musa. He politely asks the old man in dirty robes, "Does the Grand Mufti still sit in his chamber at the House?" "What house and what Mufti?", the old man bursts into hysterical laughter as they walk towards the House of Wisdom. The House of Wisdom, once the epicenter of world knowledge and a shining beacon during the Islamic Golden Age, now lies in ruins with smoke still rising from its center.
The old man says, "People don't realize the value of something until they lose it, hahah! It took centuries to gather all the scrolls here! Knowledge of the entire world. Cumulative knowledge of humans from across thousands of years! All gone, in the space of a few days." Musa realizes the gravity of the destruction and stands in silence. "Imagine how many generations of knowledge were stored here! Imagine the writings of so many people, now lost forever to time. Perhaps it speaks a lot about us as well. We mere mortals, try so hard to be remembered! But all this is just a facade. Everything is lost to time. You will die. The people you know will die. All of the people that remember you will die. You try to gain immortality through paper? That will also be lost to time, it is inevitable. Even if it manages to survive a few hundred years, the people reading your work, will never know who you were, how you were, what pleasure or pain you had in life, what made you happy, what made you sad. You see, only you can know you. And you will die, sooner or later. Why do we find it so hard to face the inevitable and accept all the pain and suffering that the world throws at us? You see, accepting the suffering and realizing that to live is to live through constant pain helps a lot in alleviating the pain. I have accepted my pain, so should you." "Me, what pain?" asks Musa. "You have something for me." "Ah, yes, here." Musa hands over the scroll. "I asked for this scroll from the Byzantine emperor. That fool says this scroll is heretic, hahah! It was written by some Roman emperor a thousand years ago and passed on from one Roman emperor to the next. Do you want to know what it says?"
Mark wakes up on his desk. He looks at the sticky note he had strung up on the desk infront of him. It says,
Treat everything around you as a dream."
"Everything is only for a day, both that which remembers and that which is remembered."
ReplyDeleteOne of my favorite quotes from Meditations
It's a nice one.
Delete