When did Maqroll enter my life?
When did Maqroll become me ?
the always about to sink steamer Halcyon and the absent minded owner from the Levant Abdur Bashur and his sister Warda.
I knew Maqroll had come incorporate into my persona when I read in a magazine a poem by Alvaro Mutis
Caravansary
Many years later, in an exclusive suburb of Medellin where I had just arrived from the San Blas Islands, with the sand still clinging on to me, the delightful matron of a hostress, Amparo asked him: what would you like to do during your stay in Medellin. I had no hesitancy in replying
Botero and Mutis
Mutis? the well known Botanist? No I said, Mutis the writer who left these shores for Mexico City a long time ago
By the time i emerged fresh and clean from the shower, the hostess had called the bookstore and had four books delivered to the house
Caravansary was among them, now lost to oblivion, in which country? in which continent?
So I have written down for you, some of my Maqroll moments.
In Akko, he was ejected from the Hummus store of Sayed the Palestinian, only to find himself staying at the lodgings of the poet from Isfahan.
A proto-Dravidian immigration officer, at the height of the night, refused him entry into the land of Dosai and Idly, forcing him to spend the night on the cold floor of a run down airport with a group of Nigerians waiting to be deported.
In Cochin, overcome by hunger, dressed as a priest, he helped himself to the sacred wine and wafers, was condemned but forgiven by the venerable patriarch of the Syrian Catholic Church, on the promise to become a Christian, a promise he never kept.
In Baracoa, his name is written on plaques honouring him as an authority on indigenous archeology, a photo of him dressed in Lakota regalia is kept beneath the cross that Cristobal Colon left there on his visit to Cuba in 1493. The syncretic followers of the Afro-Cuban religion worship im as Yehoo the spirit of Friendship and Fertility.
