Eventhough we tend to associate Caravansary with the Silk Road and the Arab and Turkic traders, they were found in Iran hundreds of years earlier, during acheamened rulers 2500 years ago.
During my travels through central asia, I did not stay at any caravansary but was acutely aware of the presence of them, as an arquitectural memory and also in the discourse of the people.
But my own association with Caravansary is far removed from the levantine desert traveller's inns but with the lyrical poetry of Alvaro Mutis, creator of Maqroll with whom I identify strongly.
On a visit to New York, one of the magazines devoted to the Americas (hey Yanks, there is more to the Americas than your United States), i read four poems by Alvaro Mutis and I remember them distinctly to this day.
On a visit to Medellin, my gracious hostess, Amparo Jaramillo, gifted me a copy of Caravansary by Mutis along with a copy of a recently published novel by Gabo, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, El amor del tiempo del colera
I enjoyed and fancied myself as the Maqroll who dressed himself as a travel agent, depicted in the poem Caravansary, who try to enter the west african country of Ivory Coast by using a cookbook in Tagalog language as identification.
Alvaro Mutis and his presence grew stronger. Halcyon the slanting cargo ship owned by Maqroll's friend Abdur Bashur appeared in many of my travels, I did go to Pollensa in Baleares to pay respect to that memorable boat.
A dear friend promised me a copy of this book, my own copy had been devoured in a fire in a decaying reservation of a group of Indians. But she took her copy and departed behind the veil of oblvion where she rests restlessly clutching on to a copy.
Imagine my surprise today when a small packet arrived and when i opened, to my great surprise , was a copy of Caravansary from a friend who disappeared into the clouds long time ago, but recently emerged after falling in love with the city of eternal spring, Medellin. Thank you for this very gracious gift, very thoughtful gift
Gracias Muito Obrigado Merci Beaucoup Shukran
Maqroll El Gaviero became my alter ego and I became Maqroll El Gaviero Judio with a good friend Abdur Bashur, the lover of palms and many others from the latin american literary dream world...
Here is an excerpt from the CV of Maqroll El Gaviero Judio.
...On receiving a note from the Malabar coast that home of an aging Jew was about to be passed on to him, he imagined himself ensconced there, waited on by thin Malabari Moslems who questioned their faith, with his traveling companion, the Prince of Palms and the little girl who loved him so much that she continually adoringly attached herself to other lovers in faraway lands she dreamt of visiting with him. Making vagrancy a profession young people all over the world could aspire to, he plans to convert the 700 year old synagogue, when it is not in use, of course, into a Museum of Vagrant Peoples where others may find refuge from the restriction imposed upon them by their fear of being alive
Alvaro Mutis, Gabo, Neruda, Alejo Carpentier, Lezama Lima these classic writers are always in my world view and my head. Leonardo Padura is trying to enter that space.
Imagine my great pleasure when a close friend from that huge land to the south that speak the lusitanian tongue, said she had managed to procure a copy of the poems by Alvaro Mutis!
I have been dreaming of this poem for months if not years and it is to arrive from that land in the south..
Some unexpected pleasures are too sweet to describe.
I repaired my self to Ricky's cafe and gave special instructions to the venezuelan waitress to make Cafe Cortadito like we drink in Havana and began writing what came to my mind
so this is my CV (dont ask me where I went to medical school or studied my postgraduate course in Anthropology)
In Akko, he as ejected from the Hummus Store of Sayed the Palestinian, only to find himself staring at the lodgings of the medieval poet from Isfahan.
A proto-dravidian immigration offer at the middle of the night refused him entry to the land of Dosai and Idly, forcing him to spend the night on the cold floor of a rundown airport, with a group of Nigerians waiting to be deported.
In Cochin, overcome by hunger, he dressed himself as a priest and helped himself to the sacred wine and wafers, he 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, in the eastern part of the island of Cuba, his name is written on plaques honouring him as an authority on local indigenous archeology and a photo of him dressed in Lakota Indian regalia is kept besides the Cross that Cristobal Colon left there on his visit to Cuba in 1493. Syncretic followers of the afro-cuban religion worship him as YEHOO the spirit of Friendship and Fertility.
I have visited many of the places Maqroll of Mutis had lived and visited, also sat on the table at Cafe Geneva in Cuernavaca where they might have met, Gabo and Mutis
Two Colombians to admire and love, Mutis and Gabo.
So, thank you for bringing back memories of my favourite prose writer in Spanish, Alvaro Mutis from Colombia (who lived for a long time in Mexico).
