The Bookseller of Samarkand

Far away, where the Silk Road wound through dusty mountains, lay the city of Samarkand. In the evenings, its bazaar smelled of cardamom, warm bread and freshly dyed cloth. A boy named Aram lived in a small mud-brick courtyard behind the camel market. He was nine years old and had two pockets: one for date stones and one for coins he had saved all year. That evening, as the sky turned rose over the domes, he went out to look for something fine. He did not know he was about to find a book that refused to keep still.

The bazaar was a world of its own. Caravan men in dusty robes sipped tea from little glasses and traded tales of distant sandstorms. Bookbinders hammered leather covers with wooden mallets, and the lanes rang with the sound. Aram squeezed past a merchant selling blue jars, a woman roasting pumpkin seeds over a bed of coals, and an old man who slept with a parrot-cage lid on his head. He paused a moment at a spice stall where pyramids of turmeric, paprika and cumin glowed like little coloured hills. Deepest in, in a vaulted alley that smelled of old cinnamon and ink, he found a small book stall he had never seen before. Six books lay in a neat row on the table, and beside them sat a bookseller whose eyebrows were so white they looked like wool.

'You are looking for a book,' said the bookseller without looking up. 'Not just any book.' Aram nodded. He pointed to the smallest one. It was bound in soft brown leather and had no title on the cover. 'That one,' Aram whispered. The bookseller smiled with half his mouth. 'That book is special. It sleeps in the day and wakes at night. Do you still want it?' Aram thought for a long while. Then he laid all his saved coins on the table, one by one, until his pocket was empty.

The bookseller counted the coins without hurrying. He laid them in a small brass bowl and wrapped the book in a piece of cloth. 'Three things you must remember,' he said. 'Read slowly. Close it when you are tired. And if it grows heavy, give it something in return.' Aram opened his mouth to ask what he meant, but the bookseller had already turned to sweep the floor with a broom of palm leaves. Aram walked home through the dark alleys, the book in his hands as if it were a sleeping bird.