Henry, Kabir, and That Little Book
It wasn’t the fluid groove of the sentences, or any finesse on the author’s part—frankly, the tiny book featured far from perfect prose. But the simple, aw-shucks style struck a chord with Henry, made him smile, and feel eased, or at the very least, lifted. The story worked because it didn’t pretend to be anything other than unabashedly sentimental.Take that line:“Every love story is beautiful,
but ours is my favorite.”Henry’s wife, Sarah, had presented the gift to him on his fifty-third birthday, and that sentence was also half dribbled in dark chocolate across his celebratory cake that night. The couple gathered with his extended family at a Turkish restaurant near the Ninth Square neighborhood of New Haven. It was early March, always a difficult time for him, and although no family member mentioned it that evening, they weren’t surprised to later hear Henry was admitted to Yale Psychiatric, a spot he’d avoided for eleven years. Henry felt crumpled and ashamed to be back—the ward had morphed into a 50 + Geriatric Unit since he’d been away. He tried to stay even keeled by reading a book of poems by Mary Oliver, “Blue Horses,” which contains the following epigraph by 15th century mystic, Kabir: “If you don’t break ropes while you’re alive,
do you think ghosts will do it after?”Henry obsessed over the line - so much so that he imagined Kabir would be a colleague, a good friend, even, if he were around today. For the record, though, he figured what the mystic actually meant about breaking ropes was that Henry should separate from his conscious mind for now and use a new moisturizer on his face. Forget Clinique, Noxzema, or Neutrogena—instead use hearty splashes of low cost, homegrown urine added with a sign of the cross to Henry’s forehead, lips, chin, and cheeks. Henry committed this act at home, and in the hospital numerous times, and it both titillated and shamed him, a secret between him, the mystic, and a willowy, visiting shrink from Prague.Kabir even appeared before Henry in the hospital on the first two nights, hovering on the ceiling in a white robe, sandals, and a saffron polo, holding a flashing neon purple sign reading: “Let your ropes dissolve, my friend, and pursue everything.” Barbo, Henry’s roommate at the hospital, was an eighty-five-year-old stocky Italian Brit who got enraged at one psychiatric nurse in particular, a six-foot-five Gambian gentleman with a shaved head named Scotty. As soon as Barbo spotted Scotty anywhere on the unit, wild shrieking began. Henry snuck back into his room to hide from the noise—he also told staff he wouldn’t write about his experience at the hospital as he’d done numerous times before. He believed it would be detrimental to separate himself as a narrator, figured he would stay involved, turn down urges to put pencil to paper, and concentrate on his own recovery. Immerse yourself in the healing, Henry told himself, trying to cram the mantra into his head like it was a sponge. Don’t observe life from the periphery any longer.Published in:
Running Wild
Anthology of Stories:
Volume 6, 2023