‘Then why did you?’ he asked, sounding genuinely keen to know.
‘Uhm, I saw this bird.’
‘What bird?’
Peri pointed to her left, where the creature had been a moment ago, but now there was only empty space. She glanced around nervously. The siskin had disappeared without a trace. ‘It must have left through the window while we were talking.’
For one full minute he stood silent, eyes focused and emanating a strange familiarity, as though she were yet another book he had read in times past that he was now trying to recall. Finally, he said, ‘That was amber, by the way.’
‘Excuse me?’
‘The incense you were looking at,’ he said. ‘Thursdays are amber. I burn different kinds on different days. Do you like amber?’
Peri’s heart skipped a beat. Yes, she knew about the power of amber.
‘Roman women carried balls of amber. Some say for the fragrance; others, for protection against witches.’
Peri’s eyes widened. She couldn’t tell whether it was the effect of Troy’s warning or something in Azur’s presence, but she felt flustered.
‘Don’t tell me you’re afraid?’ he asked, sensing her discomfort.
‘Of amber?’
‘Of witches!’
‘Of course not,’ Peri said quickly. A voice inside told her that if he had seen her examining the incense, he must have been here long enough to see the bird. ‘Again, Professor, I’m very sorry for having entered your room.’
‘How often do you apologize?’ Azur asked. ‘Twice in three minutes. If that’s your average, it’s a bit too much, don’t you think?’
Peri blushed. He had a point. She apologized excessively – for being a few minutes late to an appointment; for letting go of a door she was holding for the next person a second too soon; for passing someone on the pavement; for barely touching a shopper with her trolley in the supermarket … She said ‘sorry’ all the time.
‘Here’s a hypothesis,’ said Azur, flipping his hair out of his eyes. ‘People who apologize unnecessarily are also inclined to thank unnecessarily.’
Peri swallowed hard. ‘Maybe they’re just anxious souls trying to get by. They do what they can to keep up with others but they know there’s always a gap.’
‘What sort of a gap?’ asked Azur.
‘Like we don’t really belong,’ said Peri, and immediately regretted what she said. Why was she revealing her feelings to this man, who was not only a stranger but also a professor, twice removed from her world?
Azur walked past Peri, sat behind his desk, scribbled a note on a piece of paper and pinned it on the laundry line above his head. ‘So you’re worried that the other students might think you’re not one of them? An impostor pretending to be like everyone else? You think you’re … different? Possessed? Weird? Crazy?’
‘I didn’t say that,’ Peri objected. Every muscle in her body felt tense, waiting for the next blow.
Oblivious to her reaction, he said, ‘Tell me, what makes you think you don’t deserve to be at Oxford?’
‘I didn’t say that either!’ Her stare fell on the scarlet rug that reminded her of the carpets back home. ‘People here are so smart,’ she said to her feet.
‘You’re not?’
‘I am but I need to work hard. The other students, they adapt easily to university life. Whereas for me it’s more complicated,’ said Peri, only now remembering why she had come here. ‘Actually, I’d like to see the details of your seminar on God. Dr Raymond suggested that I should ask you directly.’
‘Ah, Dr Raymond?’
Azur sounded as if he didn’t think much of her ‘moral tutor’ – her academic adviser – but he did not dwell on it. Instead he pulled out a note from a leatherbound book, scanned it with a grimace, screwed it into a ball, threw it deftly into a waste-paper basket and announced, ‘You’re considering it for the Michaelmas term, I suppose. The seminar is full and there’s a waiting list.’
This Peri wasn’t expecting. Now that she had been told the seminar was beyond her reach, she was itching to get in.
‘However,’ said Azur, seeing her disappointment, ‘there’s one student who will have to drop out. So we might have an opening at some point.’
Peri’s face lit up. Underneath her eagerness, she felt a tad uneasy as it occurred to her that the student to whom he referred was probably Troy.
‘There was a boy –’
‘Yes … he’s angry and aggressive,’ Azur said. ‘The angry and the aggressive cannot study God.’
Silence extended between them, unfolding like a scroll. From behind his desk, Azur fixed his eyes on Peri. ‘Now tell me, why do you want to attend this seminar?’
‘In my family, faith is a divisive subject. My father is –’
‘Your parents aren’t here. I’m asking you.’
‘Well, I’ve always felt ambivalent about matters of faith – and also curious. I need to clarify my thoughts.’
‘Curiosity is sacred. Uncertainty is a blessing,’ Azur said, repeating the views he had expressed at the panel. ‘As for clarifying your thoughts, I’m the last person in Oxford you should come to for that.’
Outside a bird chirruped and Peri wondered if it might be the siskin, back in the nature that, though full of danger and savagery, was nevertheless home. In her distraction she didn’t notice the professor leaning forward and reaching for the book of poems she had laid down.
‘Aha! What have we here? I say, an old edition of the Rubáiyát!’ Azur said. Before she could react he had already opened it and found the CV inside.
‘Oh, that’s just a …’ Peri stumbled.
With a mixture of delight and disbelief, Professor Azur scanned the page that Shirin had prepared. ‘Well, well. You have taken care of an octopus?’
Peri froze.
‘Mysterious creature, extremely intelligent,’ he said. ‘About two-thirds of its neurons reside in its tentacles, as I’m sure you know.’
Having no other option, Peri agreed.
‘Do you think the arms of an octopus have minds of their own?’ asked Azur. To Peri’s relief, he didn’t seem to expect an answer. ‘For decades people thought the larger an animal’s brain, the cleverer it was. They associated intelligence with brain size. How sexist! Men have more brain tissue than women. Then comes the magnificent octopus, debunking myths with its six arms – not eight, by the way, people mistakenly count the legs. What if, instead of a big clunky centralized brain, a complex network of multiple brains was the next step in evolution?’
A subtle thrill of excitement spread through Peri, almost against her will. She enjoyed listening to him, she realized.
‘Since it gets smarter with age, if it only lived longer, the octopus would be the most brilliant species on earth. But Aristotle, that greatest of philosophers, thought octopuses were dumb. Now what does that say about Aristotle?’
Peri had the strangest feeling that wherever this conversation was heading, it was not about a philosopher and a mollusc any more, but about Azur and herself. She said, ‘That Aristotle was wrong, maybe biased. He thought there was nothing interesting about the octopus; he already knew what there was to know. So he failed to see it was full of wonders.’
The professor smiled. ‘That’s right … Peri,’ he said, glancing at her name on the resumé. ‘Just like Aristotle’s octopus, God is an enigma that calls for exploration.’
‘But it’s different. We don’t need to believe in an octopus; we know it exists. Whereas with God, we can’t even agree on whether there is one or not.’
Azur frowned. ‘My seminar has nothing to do with belief. We’re seeking knowledge.’
A firmness in his voice. Brooding and impatient. Peri suspected that when he talked to himself, while working late into the night or walking on dew-soaked mornings, this was the tone he used.
‘The seminar on God is a meeting of curious minds. We come from all sorts of backgrounds but we have one thing in common. The spirit of i
nquiry! It is a programme that requires a lot of reading and research. I don’t care whether you’re a believer or not. Amongst my students, there is only one sin: laziness.’
Peri asked, cautiously, ‘And the syllabus –’
‘Oh, the holy syllabus!’ Azur thundered. ‘Academia abhors improvisation. Undergraduates must be told what they’ll be reading every week, one must give them a month’s notice. Otherwise, they’ll panic!’
Thus saying, he opened a drawer, took out a sheet, put it inside the Rubáiyát and handed it to her. ‘Here it is, if you must,’ he said. The CV he kept for himself.
‘Thank you,’ Peri said, even though she suspected the document she held was no more representative of the truth than the CV Shirin had prepared for her.
‘Before you go,’ Azur said, ‘you said you were confused and curious, and you seem to make things complicated for yourself: these are the three C’s essential to an honest study of the possibility of God.’
‘You mean confusion and curiosity –’
‘And complicatedness! Some call it chaos!’ Azur added. ‘Anyone who has the necessary C’s is in a good position to study God.’
Not sure whether that meant she would be admitted to the seminar, but feeling the need to thank him nonetheless, Peri smiled and gently closed the door on Azur. As she crossed the quadrangle, she glanced back towards the building, trying to find the window that had trapped the siskin. Her eyes travelled across the weathered façade and fixed on one glazed sash, behind which the professor’s shadow glided past, like a fleeting thought. But perhaps it was only her imagination.
The Holy Syllabus
Entering the Mind of God/God of the Mind
(Honour School of Philosophy and Theology)
Thursdays 2 p.m.–4.30 p.m.
Lecture Room, 10 Merton Street
Seminar Description
In this course of weekly classes we shall address questions of growing relevance to a large number of people around the world today. Our aim is to equip ourselves with the necessary intellectual tools for better understanding and to encourage a free debate devoid of all manner of bigotry and dogmatism. Students are expected to read, research, ruminate on and respect opinions that they might not personally share.
This seminar does NOT promote any particular religion or adhere to any particular view. Whether you are Jewish, Hindu, Zoroastrian, Buddhist, Taoist, Christian, Muslim, Tibetan Buddhist, Mormon, Bahai, agnostic, atheist, New Age practitioner or about to initiate your own cult, you will have an equal say. In the lecture room we hold our discussions sitting in a circle so that everyone is equidistant from the centre.
Seminar Objectives
To promote empathy, knowledge, understanding and wisdom, sophos, in matters pertaining to the notion of God;
To provide students with a wide array of answers to the most demanding questions of our times;
To encourage students to think critically and carefully about a topic that is important not only in theology or philosophy, but also in psychology, sociology, politics and international relations;
To approach universal dilemmas without mechanical repetition, lack of information, fanaticism and fear of offending others;
In short, to confuse and to be confused …
Seminar Materials
The reading lists will be tailored individually according to your determination, diligence and academic performance. Be prepared to be assigned materials that may be at odds with your own beliefs and to comment on them (e.g. atheist students might be given books by pious authors; theist students will study works by atheist scholars, etc.).
What to Expect from This Seminar
Since God is our main subject, this seminar is open-ended, with no beginning and probably no conclusion. It is up to the student to decide how much to take from the experience and how far to journey.
The Cranes. Those who, dissatisfied with flying at average altitudes, aim to rise above everyone else, including their tutor. They will ask for additional readings, question the questions, demand intellectual challenges, soar over the mountain passes.
The Owls. Not as ambitious as the cranes, the owls are nonetheless great thinkers. Instead of devouring hundreds of pages, they prefer to dig into the material at hand, aiming for depth. They will doubt the seminar, doubt the readings, doubt the instructor, even doubt themselves. Their contribution to the group will be immense and unique.
The Alpine Swifts. Perhaps not as motivated as the cranes or as intense as the owls, the swifts will nevertheless fly the longest distances. They will continue reading on the subject long after the seminar has come to an end, even long after they have graduated.
The Robins. Content with the minimum, concerned more about the grade they will receive at the end than about the intellectual challenges along the way, timid and reluctant to go beyond surface-level thinking, the robins will in all likelihood derive the least from the seminar.
Rules of This Seminar
All ideas, provided they are supported by research, a skilful presentation and an openness of mind, are welcome. Eating during class does not constitute a problem. In truth, food (within reason, don’t go overboard) and beverages (non-alcoholic, we need our brains sober) are encouraged – not only because they lift the mood and help the intellect to focus, but also because it is hard to feel hostile towards someone you share bread with. Ergo, share your food with fellow classmates, especially with those who oppose your views.
Bullying, tyranny, hate speech or malicious conduct against other students will not be tolerated (nor will it be allowed against your tutor, needless to say). Taking offence will not be permitted either. By agreeing to join this seminar, you are entering a tacit agreement to give primacy to freedom of speech over your personal sensitivities. If you cannot stand hearing objectionable ideas, we cannot have a free debate. When you feel offended, which is human, remember the counsel of a wise man: ‘If you are irritated by every rub, how will your mirror be polished?’*
If you think you already know all you need to know about God and are not interested in filling your mind with new information, kindly stay away and ‘stand out of my light’.† Time is precious – mine and yours. This seminar is for the Seekers. Those who are ‘willing to be a beginner every single morning’.‡ If all this seems like too much drudgery, bear in mind: ‘The highest activity a human being can attain is learning for understanding, because to understand is to be free.’§
The Marketing Strategy
Istanbul, 2016
Two maids – wearing starched black uniforms, crisp white aprons and identical expressions – bustled in bearing crystal plates of chocolate truffles.
‘Everyone, try them! They’re my babies,’ said the businessman’s wife.
This, too, had been in the newspapers. The businessman had taken over a chocolate factory that had gone bankrupt. As an anniversary gift to his wife, he had put her in charge of production and marketing. She had changed the name of the factory to Atelier and called the brand Les Bonbons du harem. Turkish customers could not pronounce the name in full, but its Frenchness, Europeanness, otherness was enough to make the product desirable, sophisticated, à la mode.
Now the hostess enthused, ‘Just taste one, I reckon you’ll eat your fingers too.’
The guests leaned forward to examine the delicacies, neatly arranged on lacy paper doilies.
‘We’ve named them after world cities. See the one with raspberries, that’s Amsterdam. This with marzipan, Madrid. Berlin is with beer and ginger. London, with aged whisky. When it comes to ingredients, we spare no expense.’
‘You can say that again!’ chimed in the businessman. ‘She insisted on using eighteen-year-old single malt! It will ruin me.’
The guests laughed.
Ignoring the interruption, the hostess said, ‘I’m no longer called the businessman’s wife. From now on I am a businesswoman in my own right.’
The guests cheered.
Emboldened, the businesswoman
carried on, ‘Venice, with cherry liquor. Milano, we’ve made with Amaretto. Zurich, cognac and passion fruit. And Paris, with champagne!’
‘Tell them about your marketing strategy,’ said the businessman.
‘We have two selections: for the toper and the teetotal,’ the businesswoman explained. ‘Same box, different products. To Europe and Russia, we export truffles with alcohol. To the Middle East, the ones without. Smart, don’t you think?’
‘Do the halal chocolates also have names?’ asked the journalist.
‘Sure, darling.’ The businesswoman pointed at the next crystal plate. ‘Medina, with dates. Dubai, coconut cream. Amman, caramel and hazelnuts. That pink one with rosewater, Isfahan.’
‘How about Istanbul?’ asked Peri
‘A-ha, how can we forget!’ said the businesswoman. ‘Istanbul had to be based on contrasts: vanilla custard meets cracked black pepper!’
As they kept chattering and devouring the truffles, the maids began to serve hot drinks. Most of the women opted for chamomile or black tea, while most of the men asked for coffee – espresso, Americano. No one at the table requested Turkish coffee, except for the American hedge-fund manager, who was determined to adhere to the maxim ‘When in Rome …’ although in this case the Romans themselves behaved as though they were not in Rome.
Eager to do things the local way, the American asked, ‘Can someone read my cup afterwards?’
‘Don’t worry,’ the businesswoman replied in English. ‘You don’t have to save coffee grounds. The psychic will be here any minute now!’
‘I can’t wait for him to arrive,’ said the journalist’s girlfriend. ‘I need some time with him.’
Peri looked around. These were God-fearing, husband-fearing, divorce-fearing, poverty-fearing, terrorism-fearing, crowd-fearing, disgrace-fearing, madness-fearing women, whose houses were immaculately clean, whose minds were clear about what they expected from the future. Early on in their lives they had exchanged ‘the art of coaxing the father’ for ‘the art of coaxing the husband’. Those who had been married long enough had become bolder and louder in their opinions, yet they knew when not to cross the line.