Ibn Battuta: A Private Life

1355, Fez

The desk is not an interruption. It is the last correct station. Men here speak as though they have recalled me from the road and put an end to movement by setting wood before my hands and paper before another man’s pen, but that is their provincial error. The road did not break upon the walls of Fez. It arrived here because it had always been coming here. I wake before dawn with the body’s old readiness to depart, and for a moment the chamber is a caravanserai, a ship’s cabin, a borrowed room in Delhi, a scholar’s corner in Damascus, then the light settles upon the plaster and the scribe’s papers and I understand again that none of those places has receded. They have narrowed toward this point. The Sultan desires marvels preserved and improprieties omitted. The scholars desire order. The chamberlain desires a narrative that will not stain the hand that houses it. Let them desire what they wish. The journey has its own line, and I know that line better than they do. I left Tangier for the pilgrimage and did not stop because stopping was never contained within the first departure. What has been so long in motion cannot end in argument. It can only take a new form. The book is that form, and I would sooner trust a sandstorm to hold still than trust other men to arrange my years if I leave the ordering to them.