A spider's web...

At times, I wondered what I was after in this strange place, surrounded by sand, nothing but sand. As far as the eye can see, it was a world of dunes, subtly rippling through. They were like waves, and if you knew how to read them, you could ride them. One could either travel with the grain, or against it. One could journey in ease, or struggle in ignorance. It was just a matter of paying attention, being continuously aware, and willing to adjust one’s course as needed.

For the first time since I had begun walking with Aslam, we had climbed a dune, a large one. Rather, the dune had slipped under our feet, so that we found ourselves standing at its tip, without having exerted ourselves to get there. Beyond us, and wherever I turned, was just the desert, teeming with travelers, walking in every direction, some alone, but mostly, they were moving in groups of varied sizes and collective behaviors.

Although we had encountered some of them already, I was still awed by what I was seeing from our elevated vintage point. What I had mistaken, during those encounters, for completely unrelated traveling tribes were actually all connected, now appearing as lines that crossed and merged with one another, resembling when viewed from a distance, the intricate shape of a continuously growing, shifting spider's web.

There they were, with their idiosyncratic beliefs, those who walked backwards, those who bowed down every ten steps, those who carried rocks, those who moved sideways like crabs, those who carried spears, and so many others, those who walked on their knees, or on all fours. All moving, all connected at points where separation had happened, where discord had appeared, where a belief was challenged; revolutions.

In these intersections, where divisions, often violent, had taken place, a single group would break into two, or more, factions. If the newly created group remained too close to those who had chosen to stay their course, clashes would occur, and continue to occur until the paths separated clearly, by moving each in a different direction. Until then, and as I could clearly see now, they would be loses, fatalities, corpses left to be absorbed by the sand.

Meanwhile, the spider’s web was growing, from division to division, belief to belief, from faith to faith, from fear to fear. Thus, if you followed the lines backwards, bridging the gaps filled by the passage of dunes, you would, as I did, reach the main trunk, the source, the original line, one too far to reveal its details, but an existing line nonetheless.

The spider’s web was a big family that seemed to be forgetting as it advances that it is a family. Hard divisions, foolish divisions, based on hard beliefs, based on hard fears, based on ignorance, creating suffering, creating pain. Looking at Aslam, I could understand his tears.

To be continued