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Dollars do not always alleviate the pain of love

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Taj’s father had warned him that he would need dollars to buy a ticket to the garden where the flower of sight was. Taj did his best but never earned enough to do that.

But he was not the only unsuccessful seeker in this land of desires. There were many like him. One of them was Hassan the potter. Taj came here to cure his father’s blindness. Hassan came to forget the woman he loved.

Taj is still trying to get to the flower of sight. Hassan still suffers his pain. Sometimes he thinks, he loves this pain more than the woman who caused it. And that’s why he keeps nursing it.

Hassan’s journey started in his native city of Baghdad where he was living happily until he saw Sheherazade. He soon learned that the flower of his desire was beyond his reach, like the flower of sight was for Taj.

“OK, I cannot get her but I can desire her,” he thought and positioned himself in front of Sheherazade’s palace, disguised as a beggar.

When he first saw her at old Yusuf, the perfumer's shop, in her glance flashed the brilliance he longed for even when he was not aware of it. Years passed for him as time passes in a buried city; clay in the clay vats – which once ravished him with its fragrance – lay stone hard. Flask, jug and cup, candlestick and vase – props of his trivial life and of his art – lay broken. Hassan thought of nothing but those talisman eyes.

In her eyes was a bewitchment that numbed his body and soul. He spent 1,001 nights chained to the spell of those eyes, of the dreamy Baghdad streets, the bank of the Tigris and its sleepy boatmen. The potter's wheel did not turn; and hunger started knocking at the door of this master craftsman.

On night 1,002, he set sail for unknown lands across seven dark, unfathomable seas. He ignored the warning that those who cross the seven seas lose everything: land, friends, and family, even their names.

So in the land of desires nobody knows Hassan Koozagar. The owner of the liquor store, where he works calls him Zee and Zee is his name now. He is a Muslim but works at a liquor store, although his religion forbids drinking, selling or making alcohol. The owner is a Muslim too who was Maqsood back home but is now called Max.

Max is the son of a village imam. He feels bad about selling liquor. Whenever he has time, Max tells Zee how he would like to pull out of this business and open a grocery store. "Next year, God willing, next year," he says as Zee nods his head in affirmation.

Max has been saying this for nine years. Meanwhile, he has added merchandise to his store. A stack of fleshy magazines sits nicely behind his counter, enticing customers as they come to pay. "Perhaps you will always do this. So why don't you stop feeling bad about it," says Zee. Max does not agree.

"You should never forget who you are," says Max while showing off the rosary his father brought to him from the Holy Lands. Max used the money he made from selling forbidden drinks to send his parents for hajj but he never told them the source of the money.

Although they prefer to live in their village back home, Max's parents often visit. When they are in the land of desires, Max sometimes brings them to the store, presenting Zee as the man who owns all the "dirty bottles" in the store.

As far as the parents are concerned, their son Max makes his living selling food and non-alcoholic drinks to dozens of liquor stores. "Somebody has to sell halal (kosher) food to these non-believers too," says his mother, Bibi.

When the parents visit the shop, Bibi never tires of telling Zee how he should close down the liquor store, even if it means having to return home.

"You are sowing the seeds of sin. God will punish you for this," she says. And Zee assures her that one their next visit they will find him running a grocery store.

The father says nothing. Zee thinks he already knows who really owns the shop, but does not want to embarrass his son. Max disagrees. He says his father is a simple villager and if he knew the truth, he would say so. Max is an easygoing man, difficult to annoy. But he gets upset when someone suggests God would refuse to reward his parents for the hajj because the money came from a liquor store.

"God is not a magistrate. He is not always judging people," he argues. "I could not have sent my parents to the nearest city had I stayed in my village, toiling the land."

There is a sign behind the counter that says: "No politics, please." It is there because Max has customers of all faiths and ethnicities and he does not want his Muslim friends – and friends always seem to be in the shop – to drive off his customers with fiery debates, such as the Palestinian and Israeli disputes. Yet, politics is what Max and his friends discuss when there are no customers in the shop.

One of the subjects that has been hashed and rehashed but is still fresh: Who was behind the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks? Most of them do not want to believe Muslims are capable of such a horrible crime and so they are always receptive to conspiracy theories.

One of the theories that spark heated debate is that the Jews planned the attack on the World Trade Center to defame Muslims. The more educated among them do not agree. They argue that, unfortunately, there are people among the Muslims who would do anything to vent out their anger and frustration.

"A Muslim killing innocent people? No way, it is against the teachings of Islam," counters Max. He acknowledges similar attacks elsewhere in the world, but says: "That's different. Those attacks are politically motivated.

But the World Trade Center? No way. Don't you know that hundreds of Muslims were also killed in the attack? Why would a Muslim kill fellow Muslims?"

All this keeps Zee occupied. But when he closes the shop and walks back to his apartment at 2am., he almost always thinks of Baghdad and the large luminous eyes that forced him to leave.

Sheherazade forced Hassan the potter to leave Baghdad but she too was a captive, living and dying every night. But that’s a different story. Actually, it is not one story but a thousand and one stories that Sheherazade had to create, one each night. She knew that the night she fails to create a story, she will be beheaded.

“God is the only real king but we have other kings in this world too who act like God and this is the story of one such king,” said Sheherazade as she began each of her thousand and one stories. Sometimes, she looked out of the window, at the beggar who was there, all day and night.

It felt good to see him there and she spoke louder so that he could hear her stories too. One day, the beggar disappeared.

“Our men have journeyed to strange lands, leaving behind their women, who sometimes pray for them, sometimes curse them. Some return for a visit. Some do not,” said Sheherazade.

“What was that? Is it linked to the story?” asked the king, stroking his sword.

“It is your majesty, it is. All stories are linked,” Sheherazade assures him, eyeing his fierce face and sharp sword with intense fear.

“The trader finished his dates and threw away the stones. One stone hit the child of an invisible monster and killed him. Now the monster wants to kill the trader.

"Who will ask the monster how a date-seed can kill a child, that too of a giant? So we have to believe him because the monsters are always right.”


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