The Year of Rice and Salt

'Yes. Perhaps I could ask your servants what you said while under the… under the spell?'

'Certainly.'

'Thank you.' Another seated bow, another sip. 'Also… I was wondering if you might agree to help me attempt to reach this… this other voice inside you.'

'How do you propose to do this?'

'It is a method developed by the doctors of al Andalus. It involves a kind of meditation on an object, as in a Buddhist temple. An examiner helps to put the meditating subject under a description, as they call it, and then the inner voices sometimes will speak with the examiner.'

'Like soul stealing, then?'

He smiled. 'No stealing is involved. It is mainly conversation, you see. Like calling the spirit of someone absent, even to themselves. Like the soul calling done in your southern cities. Then when the meditation ends, all returns to normal.'

'Do you believe in the soul, doctor?'

'Of course.'

'And in soul stealing?'

'Well.' Long pause. 'This concept has to do with a Chinese understanding of the soul, I think. Perhaps you can clarify it for me. Do you make a distinction between the hun, the spiritual soul, and the po, or bodily soul?'

'Yes, of course,' Kang said. 'It is an aspect of yin yang. The hun soul belongs to the yang, the po soul to the yin.'

Ibrahim nodded. 'And the hun soul, being light and active, volatile, is the one that can separate from the living person. Indeed it does separate, every night in sleep, and returns on waking. Normally.'

'Yes.'

'And if by chance, or design, it does not return, this is a cause of illness, especially in children's illnesses, like colic, and in various forms of sleeplessness, madness and the like.'

'Yes.' Now the widow Kang was not looking at him.

'And the hun is the soul that the soul stealers supposedly roaming the countryside are after. Chiao hun.'

'Yes. Obviously you don't believe this.'

'No no, not at all. I reserve judgment for what is shown. I can see the distinction being made, no doubt of that. I myself travel in dreams – believe me, I travel. And I have treated unconscious patients, whose bodies continue to function well, in the pink of health you might say, while they lie there on their bed and never move, no, not for years. I cleaned her face – I was washing her eyelashes, and all of a sudden she said, "Don't do that." After sixteen years. No, I have seen the hunsoul go and return, I think. I think it is like most matters. The Chinese have certain words, certain concepts and categories, while Islam has other words, naturally, and slightly different categories, but on closer inspection these can all be correlated and shown to be one. Because reality is one.'

Kang frowned, as if perhaps she did not agree.

'Do you know the poem by Rumi Balkhi, "I Died As Mineral"? No? It is by the voice of the sufis, the most spiritual of Muslims.' He recited: 'Died as mineral and came back as plant, Died as plant and came back as animal, Died as animal and came back a man. Why should I fear? When have I ever lost by dying? Yet once more I shall die human, To soar with angels blessed above. And when I sacrifice my angel soul I shall become what no mind ever conceived.

'That last death I think refers to the hun soul, moving away from the po soul to some transcendence.'

Kang was thinking it over. 'So, in Islam you believe that souls come back? That we live many lives, and are reincarnated?'

Ibrahim sipped his green tea. 'The Quran says, "God generates beings, and sends them back over and over again, till they return to Him. – 'Really!' Now Kang regarded Ibrahim with interest. 'This is what we Buddhists believe.'

Ibrahim nodded. 'A sufi teacher I have followed, Sharif Din Maneri, said to us, "Know for certain that this work has been before thee and me in bygone ages, and that each person has already reached a certain stage. No one has begun this work for the first time. – Kang stared at Ibrahim, leaning from her wall seat towards him. She cleared her throat delicately. 'I remember bits of these sleepwalking spells,' she admitted. 'I often seem to be some other person. Usually a young woman, a – a queen, of some far country, in trouble. I have the impression it was long ago, but it is all confused. Sometimes I wake with the sense of a year or more having passed. Then I come fully into this world again, and it all falls apart, and I can recall nothing but an image or two, like a dream, or an illustration in a book, but less whole, less… I'm sorry. I can't make it clear.'

'But you can,' Ibrahim said. 'Very clear.'

'I think I knew you,' she whispered. 'You and Bao, and my son Shih, and Pao, and certain others. I… it's like that moment one sometimes feels, when it seems that whatever is happening has already happened before, in just the same way.'

Ibrahim nodded. 'I have felt that. Elsewhere in the Quran, it says, "I tell you of a truth, that the spirits which now have affinity will be kindred together, although they all meet in new persons and names. – 'Truly?' Kang exclaimed.