Luke Williams: The Echo Chamber

Although it depicts continents and seas, nations and towers, it is not only a map but a decorative altarpiece, an object of desire among collectors and unscrupulous cheats. Painted on vellum, it measures three feet high and two feet six inches wide. The map itself is almost perfectly round. Asia occupies the upper half, Europe the bottom left-hand quarter, and Africa the lower right of the world disk. This scheme, the tripartite division of the earth, is based on the biblical story of Noah. After one hundred and fifty days at sea, Noah sent his three sons to repopulate the land, giving a continent to each. Japheth received Europe, Shem received Asia, and Ham Africa. The continents (only three are depicted on the map), are named accordingly. Diverse images embellish the mappa mundi. Christ is nailed to the cross. The Apocalypse is revealed to St John at Patmos. The Sphinx, the elephant and the pelican are portrayed inhabiting the western region of the African continent. Of these, it is the fearsome image of the pelican which my mind returns to most often: she is perched on the edge of her nest teeming with her offspring, who feed from a gaping wound in her side. Ragged gaps, where the moths have feasted, disfigure the map: an elliptical fissure in the Dead Sea, a growing tear enveloping Edinburgh, a hole east of Syria where the Garden of Eden formerly lay. The Mediterranean covers almost one-third of the work’s surface. It is mottled with islands, notably Crete with its Labyrinth, and Sicily in flames. The rivers Don and Nile, which flow into the Mediterranean, mark the boundaries of Europe, Asia and Africa. Europe is dotted with cities and familiar landmarks. The greater parts of Africa and Asia are filled with pictures of fabulous cities and mythical beings. Africa, east of the Nile, is populated by a bestiary of monstrous races arranged in alphabetical order.

AMYCTYRAE·

I have a bottom lip that protrudes far from my face. It serves as an umbrella against the sun. I live on raw meat and am unsociable.

ANDROGINI·

I am a man-woman. My people make sacrifices to Osiris and the Moon.

ANTHROPOPHAGI·

I eat my parents when they are old, or anyone else I can find.

ASTOMI·

…

BLEMMYAE·

I am one whose head grows beneath the shoulders. I curse the sun and never dream.

CYCLOPS·

Round-eye, I am mistaken for treachery. Son of Cain.

DONESTRE·

I speak the language of any traveller I meet and claim to know his wife. Then I kill him and mourn over his head.

ETHIOPIAN·

I am named by Greeks. My face is burned black by the sun.

GORGADES·

I am a hairy woman. I will not tell you how I survived the Flood.

PANOTII·

My ears reach the ground and serve as blankets. Should I meet a traveller, I’ll unfurl them and fly away.

PANPHAGI·

I devour anything and everything.

PYGMIE·

I am but two cubits tall, as are my cows.

SCIOPOD·

I am one-legged but uncommonly swift. In summer I lie on my back and shade myself with my giant foot.

SCIRITAE·

I am a noseless flat-faced man. I belong to the uninhabitable city.

TROGLODYTE·

Grrioeejubarbaraesdrthsjkslah.

WIFE-GIVER·

I honour travellers with wives.

Examining the mappa mundi in recent days, I have come to understand both its beauty and its menace, in a way that was not apparent to me when my fascination for the map was born.

The mappa mundi is like a travelogue, which reflects not the material world, but the fantasies of the traveller’s mind; as if the mapmaker projected his desires on to vellum. It is a spatial imagining of the world, just as an encyclopaedia is an alphabetical imagining of the world, or a chronicle is an arrangement of common happenings in temporal order. But forgetting for the moment the mappa mundi — and turning to an earlier map — I skip back through centuries.

…

to another island in Europe, smaller than Britain and warmer, where the Norman King Roger II has lately established an uneasy empire, a merging of three religions, four cultures and diverse sensibilities, where splendid cathedrals vie for space in the skyline with palaces and mosques.

…

to an airy courtyard in Palermo, where scholars and courtesans gather beneath bronze cupolas and towering fountains, shaded by date palms, cooled by eunuchs wielding peacock-feather fans.

…

where one man, taller than the rest, strolls among his attendants, impatient, tugging at his beard, a man whose eyes bear the feral mark of storms — the sandstorms of the Sahara. A man for whom a crisis is approaching.

Who is this man, so tall and thin-lipped?

El-Edrisi — geographer, beekeeper, savant, lover, tyrant, philanthropist, maker of maps.

Lean and sun-black, El-Edrisi is a man fashioned by weather. He has travelled in Europe, North Africa, Asia Minor and the Mediterranean. For twelve years Edrisi has been on the move. But now he is still, a city-dweller, residing in Palermo, where he is Chief Vizier to King Roger II.

I am getting ahead of myself, because this is not my story, or not entirely my own. I can tell it; punch the keys of my computer so as to arrange the letters on the screen. To record Edrisi’s tale, however, is to distort it, because he cannot wholly be captured in words. He is, rather, a voice, a pursing of lips, the narrowing of eyes, sudden jerky hand movements — most of all a voice. Edrisi’s story first came to me via Father, who would lecture Mother’s belly, which was where I first heard the tale. Years later, sitting at the foot of my bed in Lagos, he would retell the story so that Edrisi became familiar again.

Here is Father. He is sitting in my bedroom after supper. Ben — our cook — is washing up in the kitchen. Ade — Ben’s son, our servant-boy — is, I suspect, listening at the bedroom door. Mother is in the grave in Botley Cemetery, Oxford. Father begins, as he always begins, with a narrowing of his eyes, a half-grin and the single word: Well …

There was a young boy called El-Edrisi, who lived in the city of Ceuta on the North African coast. He was the son of a rich and prominent family of the Hammudid dynasty. When he was seven Edrisi found himself orphaned, and rich. He spent a wild and extravagant youth, eating and drinking freely, dressing flamboyantly, passing his days with friends. He believed this way of life would last for ever. But Edrisi woke, aged fourteen and a half, to find he’d lost almost everything. He’d spent his money on wine and women and bees.

Edrisi lay on his cool bed in the hot Moroccan summer. He was sad and listless, but all the time his cunning brain was at work. Eventually he thought of a plan. He sold all he had of clothes and property. Then this spoiled and ruined lad, this Moorish Sinbad, took himself to sea.

‘Who’s Sinbad?’ I ask.

‘I’ll tell you tomorrow.’

Edrisi travelled in vain. Spending months at sea only increased his desire for his boyhood home. Or, second best, a city, any city. Arriving in Córdoba or Baghdad or Timbuktu, Edrisi saw — in the blue domes and pleasure-gardens, in the sandalwood ashes glowing in the braziers — only what differed from his native Ceuta. He noted these differences meticulously. He drew maps of his city, trying to recreate as much detail as he could muster. But the further he travelled the more obscure Ceuta became. He forgot details: the precise length of his garden, the location of that tiny door, always locked, on Meedan Street. He began to associate his native town with loss: the loss of his parents, his fortune, the city he hadn’t seen for two, six, eleven, years. Edrisi attempted to fill this emptiness through movement.

He pictured the lands beyond as unmarked terrain. Suspended between a desire to keep moving and his fear of loss, Edrisi placed flags in cities and names on maps. In the North African desert he craved water so intensely he saw visions of paradise. Tall magnificent palm trees. A silver racetrack. Hordes of women. Beehives in perfect order. Edrisi babbled; ravaged, exhausted by thirst. He grabbed his goatskin flask and emptied the last drops of water. As he drank, feeling his thirst subside and the madness within him dying down, the dream-vista began to vanish. The water extended his life but took away his vision of paradise. In Ethiopia, during the rainy season, he saw a woman who became a man on her wedding-day. He learned that people struck by lightning when awake are found with their eyes closed, and, when asleep, with their eyes open. On the Sierra Nevada in Southern Spain, Edrisi was stupefied by snow. A miracle, he thought. How can something be at once so brilliant and cold?