The Geographer's Library

gone green with age. This is an Arab seaman’s navigational device, known as
a kamal, used to maintain a particular latitude on a familiar journey.
Alchemy can add to the number of years a person lives, but it cannot
extend a single life indefinitely: no matter the precautions taken, lives are
populated, and people inevitably begin to wonder when a neighbor, an
acquaintance, a frequently passing apparition, or even (occasionally) a friend
fails to age. Alchemists revere Mercury rather than Nebuchadnezzar or
Tithonus for a reason: alchemists escape. None ever became, or becomes,
known for extraordinary longevity: when one’s age or appearance becomes
conspicuous, he simply disappears, casting off an old life as a snake sheds
skins, and reappears as someone else, somewhere else. A compass, or in this
case a kamal with a telling history, reminds its bearer that he must eventually
make peace with his life and abandon it, though this admittedly means something
quite different and altogether less painful and permanent than it does
for most.
Date of manufacture: 7 Jumada ’l-’ula 538. In the Western calendar,
this date fell during the period of Advent, a.d. 1150.
Manufacturer: This is engraved on the copper board’s edge: “In the
name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate. In your hand is the kamal of
Yahya Rifaat Tawfit al-Hashemi, artisan of Umm Qasr. His hands wove the
final strand and struck the final blow to this copper on 7 Jumada ’l-’ula 538.
May it bring God’s blessing on its user and guide him through calm seas and
gentle breezes wheresoever it pleases God to send him.”
Place of origin: See above.
Jon Fasman
Last known owner: Herve Tiima, tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor, galley
cook, hermit, priest, and purveyor of strange and unsubstantiated historical
theories.
Tiima was the son of Paldiski’s mayor, Jaan-Uus, who wrote but never
published a “hexadecalogue” of novels that told Estonia’s history from the
perspective of a series of waves trapped in between the Baltic Sea and Mat-
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