Zahir means: Someone or something which once we have come into contact with, gradually occupies our every thought, until we can think of nothing else. This can be considered either as a state of holiness, or madness.
As I started reading this book, I started hating Paulo Coelho. Why? You will know as we move on.
The main character of the book is based on the author himself, though it is not declared so. In the first scene, author’s wife has left him and gone missing. He is questioned about where he was on the night she left.
One of the lady friends of his wife came forward and informed the police that the author was with her on that night. Police inspector asks if his wife left because he was having an affair with his wife’s friend. He answers, “It wasn’t an affair; it came about simply because we had nothing else to do. It had been a bit of a dull day, neither of us had any pressing engagements after lunch, and the game of seduction always adds a little zest to life, which is why we ended up in bed together.”
Inspector asks, “You go to bed with someone just because it is a bit of a dull day?”
He replies, “Sometimes, yes. There’s nothing else very interesting to do, the woman is looking for excitement, I’m looking for adventure, and that’s that. The next day, you both pretend that nothing happened, and life goes on.’
The inspector says that in his world, things aren’t quite like that. Naturally, boredom and tedium exist, as does the desire to go to bed with someone, but everything is much more controlled, and no one ever acts on their thoughts or desires. …
As if this incident was not enough, the author says that in Madrid he was enjoying the Madrid that was killing him, and how? :“the discotheques that open at 10 in the morning, the bullfights, the endless conversations about the same old topics, the alcohol, the women, more bullfights, more alcohol, more women, and absolutely no timetable.”
So women counted in life along with alcohol and bullfights! I can’t stop hating him more.
He also tells that in their marriage, he and his wife had one pact: that no one would ask or enquire about the other’s extra-marital affairs. What a good way of living an enlightened life!
The book was interesting and I wanted to see its end. It came at 4 in the morning. This is what happened as I read through:
After his wife left him without a clue about where and why, he gets into relationship with an actress and lives with her. In the mean time, since she had left without giving him a reason, he starts thinking about her – and realises that he can’t live without her. He searches for her and along with that, he searches himself, where did he go wrong. In between, a lot of philosophical things happen, if I speak lightly, and he meets with her new boyfriend who again takes him into a new world of ‘divine things’, read dancing, living like a nomad and all that is against the conventions of the society.
His wife’s boyfriend reveals to him that she had left him because he was not giving her enough respect and thought only about himself. She was on a stage where ‘she had everything, but still had a sense of emptiness’. So she had migrated to a small country in central Asia and lived her life making carpets and teaching French to people. Interesting?
He goes restless about meeting his wife again and asking her why she left him. That is what is called Zahir – the single thought to see her again occupies his mind and soul. In the end, he reaches his wife, this is a really interesting episode.
When he reaches that remote village and enters the house where his wife lived, he finds her reading out his own new book to children and ladies. Of course he gets the biggest flattery of his life: her wife who was away from him for 2 years was reading out his book to others! She tells him that she was waiting for him. Sounds good? Here is more:
She tells him that she had fallen in love with a local painter. Shocked? There is more. He is still having his wonderful time when she says, “I am pregnant”. It was as if his world had ‘fallen over him’. He asks if it was by the painter. She replies, “No. It was someone who stayed for a while and then left again.” The authors laughs, even though his ‘heart was breaking’.
The two of them chat, laugh, and then they went on to return back to their old world in France…
~!~
Do I still hate the author? Lesser than before. Because he got what he had reaped.
He claimed to get to know the truth, connect to the Divine, and a lot of philosophical stuff, which as he must be thinking, common people don’t care about and live their same life day in and day out. What any common man on the road could see that his lifestyle with ‘alcohol, women and bullfights’ all equated with the stuff that gave him ‘pleasure’ was responsible for his misery.
His ‘lookout for adventure’ was necessary because he was leading a worthless life, and the sense of emptiness that his wife was feeling was because of their marriage of convenience where they maintained the rule of not asking about the extra-marital affair of the partner! All in the name of not following the norms of the ‘less-fortunate’ society, they were themselves following their own rules, without realising it.
And how would they find the ‘truth’ and connect with their ‘divine’ part? To go to some obscure village in Central Asia, live with nomads, live on Vodka for days, dance as a prayer, and get a feel that they were working so hard to find the ultimate truth. While the ultimate truth lied in simple things that still existed in the lives of simple people.
Do I still hate him? I can’t. But I hate his demeanour. I don’t want to lead his way of life J
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Reap as you sow