Week 2: A Governor's Nod, a Pebble of Gold
Read this week: Chapters 1–2.
Last week's question was who holds the pen. This week, how far that pen reaches. A governor nods at a language he cannot follow, and the nod is taken for understanding. An officer writes down a pebble of gold, and an army begins walking toward a kingdom nobody in the room has seen. Notice how much of the world here is made simply by saying so, and by having the right man say it. Notice too that the servant pouring the officers' drinks keeps the only honest tally of what the march costs — complicity and testimony in the same body, on the same evening, at the same table. Watch a name handed down from above settle over a thing so smoothly that the older name goes quiet without vanishing. Then the book turns toward smaller rooms, where a mother's widowhood is already neighborhood gossip, where old poems are still recited in a tongue the neighbors no longer speak, and where a ferryman's morning schedule is at the mercy of a man who will not wait. Ask as the week closes: which of the names you answer to were given to you, by whom, and what was the name underneath?
Week 2 is for paid members
This week's 12 passages from Chapters 1–2, with the commentary, lineage and criticism on each, are for paid members. The introduction to every week is free on the book's main page.
Passages quoted from Laila Lalami, The Moor's Account (Pantheon, 2014), for criticism and commentary.