The caliph Abd al-Malik heard an old story. Long ago, it went, brass bottles had been sealed shut. There were jinn inside them.
In chapter 4 the bottle the fisherman pulled up was one of these. The caliph wanted to see one. He sent Musa ibn Nusayr to find it.
An old man called Abd al-Samad went along as the one who knew the roads. He had read a great many old books. The party loaded water and went into the desert.
The Writing Standing in the Desert
For days on end they met nobody. What they met instead was something else. Pillars stood up out of the sand with writing cut into them.
The writing set down who had lived there and what they had held. And it said that none of it had kept them. At the end came a line addressed to whoever was reading. Look at us, it said, you who are passing.
Further on there was a black fortress. Inside it too there were no people, and the same kind of writing on every wall. Nobody spoke to them the whole way. In this chapter the only thing that speaks to them is writing.
A City with No Gate
At the far edge of the desert a wall came up. It was high and it had the colour of brass. The party went all the way around it. There was no gate anywhere.
Getting in meant going over. They set a ladder and one man climbed. He stood on top of the wall, and he laughed, and he threw himself down the inside.
The same thing happened again. Every man who climbed stood on the wall, laughed, and went over. Twelve of them did not come back. What they saw from up there, the story does not write.
Abd al-Samad climbed last. He shut his eyes and said aloud the words he kept by heart. Standing there, he did not throw himself down. He went down the inner stair and opened the gate from inside.
Everyone Still in Their Places
With the gate open, the city was simply there. Houses stood and shops were open. And there was no sound of any kind.
The one who sold goods was still at his scales. A shopkeeper sat among his wares. In one house people were sitting around a table. Nothing moved and nothing anywhere had fallen in.
A ruin makes you guess at what used to be there. This city left nothing at all to guess at. What everyone was doing that day had stopped exactly where it was. That is why it stays with you longer than a ruin does.
Where the Queen Lay
In the middle of the city there was a palace. The queen lay inside it, and her name was Tadmur. By her head there was writing again.
It set down what she had ruled. And it said that none of it had kept this from her. The last line said not to reach out a hand.
One of the party read that line and reached out anyway. He went down where he stood and did not get up. Musa pushed the others back and came out of that room.
What he took with him on the way out was not treasure. He copied down the writing from the walls and the pillars, one by one. It was the only thing, he judged, that could be carried home.
The party went to the coast and got bottles from the fishermen. Several brass bottles had come up in the nets. That was what the caliph had wanted to see.
Today, When All That Is Left Is Writing
There is nobody carrying this chapter along. The only things that speak are walls and pillars and a line by a bier. And everything they say comes to one thing. We held all of it, and it did not keep us.
But there is a place where this chapter does not stop. The men who read all of it on the way in still put out their hands. Between reading and being different there is no bridge at all. What the writers wanted was not the reading but what comes after it.
What Musa did sits somewhere in between. He left the treasure and carried the writing. That does not mean he came out having lost nothing. Twelve men who did not come down off that wall were left there by him too.
So what this city says to us has two layers. One is that what you hold does not stay. The other is that people who read that do not readily change. Whoever left the writing may have known that part as well.
Now this book turns back to its first chapter. In the next one, the woman who carried a thousand nights stops.