The Reed That Remembered

In the old city of Konya, when the sun went down behind the round dome of the great teacher's tomb, the bazaar lit its small oil lamps and the whole street smelled of bread, and rose-water, and dust that had been walked on for eight hundred years.

A boy of about seven, named Yusuf, was walking through the bazaar holding his grandfather Ibrahim's hand.

Yusuf had a question. Yusuf almost always had a question.

"Dede," he said — that is Turkish for 'grandfather' — "why does the flute in the music house always sound sad? Even when the people are dancing."

Ibrahim smiled into his white beard. "That is a good question, my little lion. Come. Let us go and ask a flute itself."

He led the boy past the spice stalls, past the carpet seller, into a small shop tucked between a bookseller and a man who sold honey from the hills. The shop had no sign. The shopkeeper was old, even older than Ibrahim, with hands like knots of olive wood.

On the counter lay rows of slender flutes. They were called ney. They were made from a kind of river-reed that grew in the marshes far to the south.

"Selamun aleykum," said Ibrahim.

"Aleykum selam," said the old man.

The shopkeeper looked at the boy and at the boy's question, which was sitting on his face very visibly.

"You want to know," he said, "why the ney sounds the way it sounds."

Yusuf nodded.

The old man picked up a ney. He held it up to the lamplight. He turned it slowly so the boy could see the small ring of darker wood at one end.

"This," he said, "is where the knife came."

He tapped it gently. "This reed grew in a wet field, in a great soft crowd of other reeds, all leaning together in the wind. It was warm there. The water was always at its feet. The other reeds whispered to it day and night. It did not know it was anyone. It was just one more reed in a sea of reeds."

He paused. He turned the flute the other way.

"Then one day, a man came with a sharp knife. He chose this reed. He cut it. He took it away. He took it to a dry workshop where there was no field and no wind and no whispering. He cleaned it. He carved holes in it. He polished it. He left it alone for many months. The reed became a flute."

The boy was very quiet now.

"And when the flute is played," the old man went on, "what comes out of it is not exactly a song. It is the sound of the reed remembering the field. The reed has not forgotten where it came from. Every note is a small longing."

Ibrahim was watching his grandson's face.

"It is not crying because something is wrong," the old man said. "It is crying because it remembers home. And that crying — that is its music. That is why people who have wept also can listen to the ney and feel themselves a little less alone."

He handed the flute to Yusuf.

"You can try," he said. "But you will not get a sound the first time. The ney is shy."

Yusuf put it to his lips. He blew. Nothing happened. He blew again. A small, breathy noise.

The old shopkeeper laughed gently. He took the flute back. He raised it to his own lips. He closed his eyes.

The sound that came out of the small piece of cane filled the shop, and then the alleyway, and then somehow the whole evening bazaar, which slowed for a moment without knowing why.

It was not a sad sound exactly. It was not a happy sound either. It was the sound of someone who had once lived in a field of soft reeds and had not stopped remembering.

When he lowered the flute, the boy's eyes were wet.

"It is alright," said Ibrahim, putting his big hand on the boy's small shoulder. "That is the sound your soul knows, even if your head is still learning."

They walked home through the lantern-lit streets. Yusuf did not speak for a long time. Then, as they came near the door of their house, he looked up at his grandfather.

"Dede," he said, "do people have a field too? That they came from? Before they were born?"

Ibrahim stopped under the wooden doorway. He looked at his grandson for a long moment.

"Yes, my little lion," he said. "And every now and then, when we hear something very beautiful, we remember it for a second. That is why grown men cry sometimes for no reason. They have heard the field calling, very faintly."

Little mother, the small one inside you is still very close to the field. They have not been cut from the reed-bed yet. The warm water is still at their feet. The whispering is still all around them — and a great deal of that whispering is your own heartbeat.

One day, gently, they will be lifted out of the field and into the dry, bright world where they will become a particular flute. They will cry. The first cries, in the first night, will not all be about milk. Some of them will be the reed remembering.

Tonight, hum something soft. A line of an old song. A tune your own grandmother knew. Place your hand on your belly while you hum. They are listening. The field is humming with them. You are the warm water that is still, for a few more weeks, at their feet.