In the morning, you will see your clansmen.
Reading these pages is an order by the emperor.
You will be in Azadniabad if you succeed.
I listen to these promises when I am tired, when I am in pain, my mind falling for those seductions, one lie after another; again, again and again. I dare not resist the pain; I dare not go soft. It becomes a game. I find I love games. In a strange quirk of fate, studying in Za’skar does not vary from my years in Azadniabad; it’s a routine of harsh monks and masters, a time of parchments and contemplation.
My superiors note a shift in my behaviour. Overseer Yabghu nods smugly when he runs across me – reluctantly – enlisting Cemil’s help to memorise the Jazatah annals in the Great Library. But my overseer was right; Cemil challenges my knowledge like no other initiate, probing for a hole, refuting with his own interpretations, and forcing me to build defence after defence in my logic, like a war decided by the planes of the mind.
Outside of classes, in the monastery, the Qabl monks begin physical training to complement our spiritual arts. They hand the novices a string of menial orders to complete on Friday and Saturday evenings. Parchments to ink, manuscripts to stringently illuminate, floors to sweep, cattle dung to shovel, garden pits to dig and date palms to trim.
Vaguely, I wonder if the monks are using the initiates to do chores, or if the labour holds any greater purpose. At other times, the monks command us to not eat for three straight days to understand the body’s responses, to recognise primal, animalistic hunger, so we know true bodily poverty, an infinitesimal glimpse into death. They command us to meditate on bone-stone tombs before ordering us into the rose and citrus gardens, to balance our Heavenly bonds; else, warriors who only meditate on death go mad into suicide.
They proclaim:The speaking body shall not be ignored. Awareness is the body’s greatest weapon, for only then shall one acknowledge its faults.I hate to admit that it is not a worship of death, it is a respect of it.
For weeks we haul muck, and the Qabl monks chuckle as if sensing our low morale. ‘Wipe those snotty faces, pigs. The purpose will reveal itself. For now, you must build the foundation of enlightenment to reach the bond between life and death.’
The purpose is revealed after we finish digging the sixth pit outside the monastery. With a cramped back, I rest with the other Zero-Slashes, between Aina and Katayoun.
Suddenly, Sister Umairah looms above the grass, which is swollen with rancid nuts and overripe mulberries that squirt dark juices all over our ochre tunics.
‘You require water?’ asks the grandmaster. We nod eagerly. She folds her arms. ‘Indulge me: did any of you think to use Heavenly bonds and escape the material world to relieve stress from the corporeal body? Did you even chant the Divine’s names to contemplate death? Our faith loves death, for it’s the highest honour to die in martyrdom. Then you are truly Qabl. If not, you become prone to jinn influence, even possession. Attacked by our enemies, will you crack?’
A shamed silence dwells upon us.
‘Now let us begin real Qabl training.’ She slaps the trunk of a fig tree.
‘And I shall enjoy these figs.’
The monastics explain how the world is a thousand illusions and a thousand covers. To seek truth is to behold, then shatter these constructs. Even when I look within myself and examine my own considerations, those, too, are an illusion viewed through a veil of doubt, and to understand this is to shatter myself.Enlightenment, they emphasise. In Qabl meditation, one must be struck in a flash.
As I meditate, a sage slaps me across the face. On impact, I glimpse a white flash. ‘Was that thus enlightenment?’ I mumble, through a swelling cheek.
‘No.’ He pinches my ear until I yelp. ‘I think it was your consciousness manifesting the pain of my slap. Not true enlightenment, but rather a self-defence mechanism.’
‘Is enlightenment supposed to be painful?’
In a wide-toothed smile, the sage says, ‘Very,’ and slaps me again. I do not resist.
At other times, I time-blank, forcing him to berate me.
‘Your memory is pathetic.’ His breath reeks, the smell of a fasting monk.By the Heavens, I pray for his sake.
The sutras claim that Veils appear everywhere, not solely in the Unseen world, but in the cosmic equation riddling the material world. Other Veils exist – between the mind and the heart, the corporeal self and the soul.
Time is spent emptying ourselves, counting bone-shards and edging closer to the spiritual dominion to relinquish our bonds with the material world and accept death. We find truth, until all that is left is lies. Some days we are closer, some days we are further, but the monks temper our inconstant nature, whittling to their roots the impulses of youth.
The monks snap the assumptions from Azadniabad within me one by one.The spiritual domain is an internal planetary system; the mind is the sun that knowledge revolves round and round.
The monks throw questions at us, too.
Are you simply a unit of consumption, eating, shitting, breathing, talking, filling space?
At another practice, Sister Umairah asks, ‘The soul is the window. To read it, you must polish its surface and gaze through. What do you see?’ The answer dangles on a thread before me tauntingly, but still out of reach. ‘What do you hear?’ she urges.
My Zahr clan. Louder than myself.
These meditative enquiries provoke a thousand fears, forcing me to acknowledge things that I wish to forget. So, I burn the memories in myriad flames until they crumble to ashes.
