their daughters passed through the garden today, on the way to ballet class, or so the clothes the rescued daughter and her elder sister wore suggested. Another neighbour came out with a small dog tucked beneath her arm. She wasn’t meant to have a dog: the estate was dog-free. She’d had an order served against her, a writ from the corporation, which she seemed to be ignoring. I was torn between annoyance at this old woman for keeping the pet, since this displayed an arrogant disdain towardsher other neighbours, not least me; and admiration for her solitary, resolute defiance of the forces of the law which were being brought to bear on her. Was she a rebel or a die-hard bourgeois individualist? I chewed this question over as I sat at my teak and leather desk. The dog was a Chihuahua—barely a dog at all; more like a guinea pig or hamster. Its owner teetered (she’d had a small stroke a year earlier) as she carried it across the garden in a shopping bag, like a degraded version of some Hollywood star. When she’d passed from view I looked back at the empty desktop. How much time had passed? I couldn’t tell, since I’d removed the clock. But time had passed. And I was hungry. I decided to go out for lunch; or brunch; or breakfast; whatever. No Report had been commenced, no frame or outline set up, but that was okay. I didn’t need to force things. I had staked a claim, made space: that was enough.
8.11 One day the following week, I visited Daniel’s office again. This time I found him watching a projection that showed Muslim pilgrims performing the Hajj inside the giant mosque in Mecca. Thousands, tens of thousands, of them knelt and stood in neat, concentric rows; as these static rows converged towards the cube, itself the size of a large building, that lay at the centre of the mosque, they turned into a swirl of slowly moving bodies circling the object. Did you film this? I asked Daniel. No, he said; I found it on the Internet. It had a soundtrack, he said, prayer and music, but I turned it off. Youknow what this is called? he asked me. No, I told him. Tawaf , he said: circumambulation. They move anti-clockwise round the Kaaba . Anti -clockwise? I asked. How come? I don’t know, he said. Something to do with heavenly bodies: galaxies and planets and the like—some theory of universal movement. We watched some more. As pilgrims shifted from kneeling to standing positions, all in unison, the image’s whole texture changed. When, nearer the centre, they all started circling, they became a spinning comet, petals on a flower, bright water flowing down a plughole. At the very centre, the smooth movement met with some resistance as hands reached out to the cube and got some traction on its granite, if just for a second, before being swept onwards as new hands replaced them. The process seemed endless, self-perpetuating: as each static row of white-robed figures was picked up and swept into the swirl, the next row moved up one to take its place, and each row behind this one did the same, a new row forming at the back, more pilgrims waiting behind this, and more behind. The hands grabbed towards the granite passionately, almost desperately, the angles, tautness and extension of the arms beneath them all exuding longing and abandon. We watched, as was our wont, in silence.
8.12 Later that evening I sat down, once more, to plot the framework of my Great Report. The clearing I’d made on my desktop was still there, untouched and un-encroached-on—save by a small, dead moth whose corpse had landed thereafter whatever parachute it had put its faith in had failed. I swept it aside; and, once again, the space was pristine, perfect, blank. Tabula rasa: I pronounced the words aloud as I surveyed the leather, breathing in its smell of cut grass and detergent. Just sitting before it, above it, filled me with a sense of infinite possibility. I pictured myself as an industrialist, viewing a clearing in the forest where his factory
8.11 One day the following week, I visited Daniel’s office again. This time I found him watching a projection that showed Muslim pilgrims performing the Hajj inside the giant mosque in Mecca. Thousands, tens of thousands, of them knelt and stood in neat, concentric rows; as these static rows converged towards the cube, itself the size of a large building, that lay at the centre of the mosque, they turned into a swirl of slowly moving bodies circling the object. Did you film this? I asked Daniel. No, he said; I found it on the Internet. It had a soundtrack, he said, prayer and music, but I turned it off. Youknow what this is called? he asked me. No, I told him. Tawaf , he said: circumambulation. They move anti-clockwise round the Kaaba . Anti -clockwise? I asked. How come? I don’t know, he said. Something to do with heavenly bodies: galaxies and planets and the like—some theory of universal movement. We watched some more. As pilgrims shifted from kneeling to standing positions, all in unison, the image’s whole texture changed. When, nearer the centre, they all started circling, they became a spinning comet, petals on a flower, bright water flowing down a plughole. At the very centre, the smooth movement met with some resistance as hands reached out to the cube and got some traction on its granite, if just for a second, before being swept onwards as new hands replaced them. The process seemed endless, self-perpetuating: as each static row of white-robed figures was picked up and swept into the swirl, the next row moved up one to take its place, and each row behind this one did the same, a new row forming at the back, more pilgrims waiting behind this, and more behind. The hands grabbed towards the granite passionately, almost desperately, the angles, tautness and extension of the arms beneath them all exuding longing and abandon. We watched, as was our wont, in silence.
8.12 Later that evening I sat down, once more, to plot the framework of my Great Report. The clearing I’d made on my desktop was still there, untouched and un-encroached-on—save by a small, dead moth whose corpse had landed thereafter whatever parachute it had put its faith in had failed. I swept it aside; and, once again, the space was pristine, perfect, blank. Tabula rasa: I pronounced the words aloud as I surveyed the leather, breathing in its smell of cut grass and detergent. Just sitting before it, above it, filled me with a sense of infinite possibility. I pictured myself as an industrialist, viewing a clearing in the forest where his factory
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