35053668-Empire-of-the-Soul-Paul-William-Roberts

EMPIRE OF THE SOUL
sort of built-in rococo shelf unit moulded from white clay and inlaid
with coin-sized mirrors. No two were alike; their twisting organic
forms were as similar, yet as different, as human faces.
‘My mother make this,’ a small boy proudly explained in halting
English, displaying the series of shelves that grew from one wall, a
collaboration of nature and man. On each shelf, behind curved
crenellations almost like fat leaves, were piled the family possessions:
folded clothes, cheaply framed photographs of relatives and prints
of gods, an ancient alarm clock, a couple of plastic toys.
‘Your mother?’ I looked at the shelf unit’s extravagantly writhing
pediment – forms adapted from nature, improved, then studded
with sparkling mirrors that made light dance around the small,
dark room.
‘This tradition for our people,’ the boy elaborated, clearly pleased
by my reaction.
I wondered how these shy, happy folk lived out here with nothing
but their camels and goats, on what seemed to be the edge of human
history, in such an unfriendly wasteland of stones, shells, fossils –
still in many ways resembling the seabed it had been a few million
years ago. But then, we all live on the edge of human history. And
where there had once been nothing but water – nature loves irony,
of course – now there was only the once precious well, its muddy
depths often drying up entirely as subterranean streams shifted their
course. When this happened, the whole village would have to move
on or die. For all I know, Jajiya may no longer be there at all now, its
murals and mirrored shelf units already dust in the desert, rain on the
ocean . . .
Barely an hour or so farther on, incendiary air biting through
my thin cotton trousers at that masterpiece of a saddle sore, we
passed one such village exodus, now merely a camp of skinny,
depressed camels and ragged, weary nomads, their crimson turbans
and saris the only colour we’d seen beneath this pitiless white sky.
Grimy, bright-eyed children ran screaming toward our caravan,
demanding rupees, pens, even empty pop bottles, and throwing up
clouds of dust. A sly-looking man, his moustaches like the silhouette
of a diving swallow, produced a flaccid snake from a battered basket
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