CONVERSATION ACROSS TIME

The Trader From Samarkand

For a year, I had the good fortune to have an apartment situated on a branch of the fabled Silk Road. This is a “conversation” between myself and a previous traveller going from west to east on this ancient trade route.

He: So what are you trading? Amber? Silver? Jade? Amber from Siberia? Tell me.

I:    I am a trader in words, in views and feelings, of the interactions between people.

He: Ptah! What can they get you? You look thin and wasted – shows there’s no profit in those things. And how can you trade words? Who cares about feelings? How can you cost interactions?

I:  But in my western country, these things DO have a price. People want to know what I see, who I talk with, the views of people like yourself.

He  (rudely interrupting). That place doesn’t exist. My friend, I have travelled from Cathay to Venice and back; from Siberia to Samarkand. I know this place like my own hand. So what is your fascination with strange lands?

I: Time runs like a frightened rabbit. When you’re young you don’t care; I am from the west, I want to keep my mind, my way of thinking, I want to hear the voices of those I left behind.

He: We change; when we experience the finality of everything we’ll be changed and won’t need those things. We will forget.

I: We say to forget is to break faith with those who have gone before.

He: Fool! Make your peace with them, move on, trade!

I: How do you know? We all go to dust. You’re as ignorant as I am, and there’s no hope in ignorance.

He: You have to live life as it’s real. So you think your journey is over? You’ve had enough “horizon”?

I: I can’t imagine never having enough horizon….

He: You will. I know. When you’re young each place you come to is poorer than the one ahead of you which you don’t know yet. So you go on for years. Soon younger men say you have lost ambition, the older that you have grown wise. Then, as you settle, there is comfort and a sort of sadness. Your stories are your religion.

I: We don’t insult religion.

He: Perhaps we’ve both been on the road too long. Too many places, too many roads. I have forgotten my people, my town. Perhaps it’s time to go back. I died in the desert carrying tea and salt with camels more dead than alive. The nighttime wind changes the dunes and in the morning you cannot tell where you are…my friend farewell….it’s not so bad.

Peripatetic Scribe