If on a winter's night...

I like it when one catch a glimpse of the future in the present...a hint of the imminent summer in spring. But what I like even better is when things revert to the past: when, all of a sudden, a winter's night weaves its way into the steady course of the spring days.

Was at the book fair last night. Outside in a huge tent, with blue patterned carpets on the cold grass and the vague smell of something. What was it? Had they been keeping cattle here the night before?

Delighted to find Calvino's Marcovaldo and AnneMarie Schimmel's I am Wind, You are Fire. But the strange thing was that every book I picked up was like the exact copy of the Dougal's..i.e. the same edition, same cover. It was as if I had walked into her room and picked them up from the white knee-high shelves myself whilst she wasn't looking. I was half expecting to find a dry brown leaf in one of them. Also, I was convinced that I'd find Roxana's Solitude of Ravens, just because one always finds strange, unexpected things on a winter's night....

Lots of books on Islam. Lots. Earlier, Moaiz had visited and showed me a copy of Abdullahi Naim's new book on secularism in Islam. Had he been reading my blog or was it a sheer coincidence? Good book. Pity it's completely irrelevant here. Power, not knowledge.

About to leave the tent for dinner when I stumble across the unheard of 'Hero Books' , Partap Street. It says on the card: Founder: Syed Ghulam Ali Hero; Deals: All Kinds of Rare& General Books. Okay, let's see what you've got.

Pick up the following, all for 700 Rs (about 5 pounds):

Odes of Pindar,
Humboldt's Gift by Bellow
Some book by Harold Bloom
Anna K by Tolstoy (again, the Dougal's copy)
Islam: Reform or Subvert, by Arkoun
Tawney's book on Radicalism
John Gray's on Al-Q.
Some book by Stefan Zweig in Germanish so the Dougal can practice.

J found a book written by his great great uncle. A first-edition, published in 1882. On Lahore. Old Lahore. The Lahore that is no longer, even though it's all around you. Lost track of time as I lost myself amongst those old bookshelves, with the books scattered haphazardly everywhere. For a moment the seasons didn't matter, nor did the horrible events unfolding in Swat trouble me. A magical night. As I walked out of the tent -was I circus performer in a previous life (some, no doubt, will say: previous?) - I half imagined that it would be foggy outside or-and this amounts to the same thing-that the world had disappeared.

I have to end on this, a story from Marcovaldo.

Marcovaldo goes to the cinema to escape the drab days of his life. He leaves in the early hours of the morning.

But the return home in the drizzling night, the wait at the stop for tram number 30, the realization that his life would know no other setting beyond trams, traffic-lights, rooms in the half basement, gas stoves, drying laundry, warehouses and shipping rooms, made the film's splendour fade for him to a worn and grey sadness.

On his way home, though, it is foggy, so foggy that he can hardly see to the end of his nose.

At that moment he realized he was happy; the fog, erasing the world, allowed him to hold in his eyes the visions of the wide screen..the Ganges, the jungle, Calcutta.

Marcovaldo gets lost, or willingly lets himself get lost. One can only truly lose oneself in what is utterly familiar.

If he met a passer-by it would be easy to ask him the way: but whether because of the loneliness of this place, or because the hour or the bad weather, there wasn't a shadow of a human being to be seen.

Marcovaldo climbs a wall and reaches a great height (without him knowing it). At a certain height one can see the world clearly, in all its detail (Baron in the Trees). But sometimes one also needs to see things at eye-level. Snakes and ladders.

...he soon took a step into the void and fell headlong...I'm dead! he thought; but at the same moment he found himself seated on some soft earth...He lost heart. What did it matter which direction he chose to follow if, all around, there was only this empty fog?

ah, how easy it is to lose heart, lose one's heart. Why do people say: Take heart ! ?

Well, where does Marcovaldo end up? That, you'll never know, dear reader. But if on a winter's night you find yourself lost and as lonely as a bird in the vast darkness of the sky, then remember this simple truth, or imagine it if you like: what isn't lost cannot possibly be found.