7 July 2020
Dearest Fazal,
This man. A landscape. His face lined from life. In shadow and light, his eyes illuminated. I imagine him sitting by a fire, in a trance, as flames flicker and fade into the night. He appears to be looking outward, but his gaze is inward—past or future—where is he? What memories have been ignited, what worries have become inflamed? Or is he simply watching fire, unaware of yours that is making this picture. And always, my friend, I wonder where you are situated. How do you make yourself known and unknown, at once?
This man. A landscape. My father at home retreating further and further into the despair. “If I have only two more years to live and it is inside this pandemic, what is the point?”
This man. A landscape. In Pakistan, Afghanistan? Does he feel this way, too? What has he seen, what does he carry, hidden, untold? Do we ever really know another? And here is something I wonder about, does everyone on earth hold a secret?
I was once told a story that took place in the Maasai Mara of Kenya, a landscape as you know contiguous with the Serengeti. The storyteller was a woman of immense powers whose face held lines eroded by grief. This is what I remember: we were walking in the savannah, a sea of waving grasses as if they were being spun into gold by the wind.
“You see these grasses?” she said. “Their roots hold a great burden in place that is noted by ground-dwelling insects, the retention of snakes and the trustworthy nature of burrowing creatures.” We stopped.
“You see these grasses?” she said. “Their roots hold a great burden in place that is noted by ground-dwelling insects, the retention of snakes and the trustworthy nature of burrowing creatures.” We stopped.
I scanned the grasses all the way to the horizon. “Nothing is ever as it appears,” she said. “Since the beginning of time, people come to the grasslands that stretch across all continents of the world to shed their secrets. They come to sing their solitary woes to the grasses who will listen in the heat of high noon. The humans kneel, hidden in the height of the grasses, as their hands start to dig a depression, a hollow, their hole to confess what is too heavy to carry any more. They bring their mouths down to the dirt and speak their shame to the grass roots as though they are whispering their allegiance to their lovers or those they have murdered or to the moment they lost themselves to anger, envy, or avarice. Some water their secrets with tears, while others bury them with remorse or relief or exhaustion. They cover their deep and dark confessions with a light patting of soil and the grasses once removed are returned to reclaim their upright stature—” the storyteller said as we continued to walk on a well-worn path tamped down by elephants and giraffes.
“But here is what people forget,” she said, as she faced the tall animated grasses and extended her hands to them. “The grasses remember each secret given to them as a reversal of guilt and because we all know a secret cannot ever be kept alone, each blade of grass takes the whispers they have received and offers them up as a song or a prayer to each wandering breeze that touches them and in a split second of sweet agreement, the breezes carry them to a far-off place where darkness is married to the moon and gives birth each day to the sun.” She takes my hand and looks ahead, “and that is why whenever the wind blows through the grasses in the savanna, we hear the songs and prayers of the forgiven.”
This man. This landscape. This light held in the darkness of his eyes has a story to tell.
All my love,
Terry