‘Past was a dream, future is a fantasy, and present is all that ever matters.’

A lyrical philosophical tale spanning ancient Damascus to the desert mountains of Balkh, exploring humanity’s relationship with time through the teachings of a defrocked priest and the mystical wisdom of Maga, an enigmatic desert woman. The story weaves together the concept of the “sacred triangle” - where survival, love, and desire intersect within the singular reality of the present moment.

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‘Jawdat, please listen to me, son.’ My old father requested me, while we sat on the dunes, watching the long worms of caravans, leaving and entering Damascus.

‘Jawdat, my darling son, everything in this universe speaks. The mountains, the deserts, the oceans, and the clouds - they all speak. But to understand them, you have to first learn their sacred language.’ My father said in his usual poetic manner.

He was a strange man - my father. He was a priest once, but not anymore. Once he started questioning the power of the gods, he was soon ousted from the ranks of the holy. The other priests thought him mad, and I shared their opinion. But strangely, his unceremonious ousting from the temple did bring us two closer. We started sitting together and eating together, and took long walks in the golden deserts surrounding the ancient city of Damascus.

It was only when I started listening to him with attention that I realized something. He was not mad. Instead, he was blessed with a miraculous ability to see the invisible and look past the obvious. He had seen the true light, and his wise words vibrated with the rationale of his beliefs.

‘What about the light father?’ I asked him.

‘What about it?’ He looked at me with confusion.

‘Does the light speak too?’ I asked thoughtfully.

‘Yes, it does, and so does the darkness.’ He nodded his head, and his eyes reflected the expanse of the clear blue sky.

‘The darkness?’ I was confused. ‘Darkness is nothing. Even pure darkness is the absolute absence of light.’

‘Not at all, Jawdat.’ He smiled knowingly. ‘Where light is all energy, darkness carries neither matter nor energy. But still it exists. And its independence from energy ensures that darkness travels through time without any transformation. This intactness of darkness makes it wiser than the light.’

‘But what do they say? What do they tell us - the light and the darkness?’ I asked without completely understanding his line of reasoning.

‘The light tells us that life is a sacred triangle.’ He bent down and drew a triangle in the sand with his brass-tipped staff. ‘The first corner of this triangle is survival, the second corner is love, and the third corner is desire.’ He drew the ancient symbols for each of these elements - a smaller baseless triangle within a circle for survival, a crowned heart for love, and a snake for desire.

‘And where does this triangle reside? Does it remain suspended within the confines of the soul?’ I asked him as to me, the soul encompassed all.

‘No, my son!’ My father said, drawing a circle enclosing the sacred triangle and the three symbols within. ‘The scared triangle with all its three elements, exists within a real moment of time.’

‘All moments of time are real, Father.’ I laughed.

‘No, Jawdat!’ he looked at me sternly. ‘The past is obscured in the dust of time, and the future is just a vague possibility. Only the present is real. So it is in the present that the sacred triangle hangs and resides. And that is something that the darkness tells us.’

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I scooped up some sand in my palm and looked at it closely. The grains were all together, yet separate and individual. Some shone with a sparkling brilliance, while others were just grey and black speckles. I clenched my fist, and the sand slipped out. I tried to hold it in, but it all drained out.

I looked up and found the old woman watching me intently.

‘Tell me, O’ Maga, the wise one!’ I asked her, watching her silver hair blowing with the night wind.

‘What is the most significant of the past, the present, and the future?’

‘Hmm!’ She raised both her hands and tied her hair in a loose bun with her ringed fingers. The reds and greens of the rubies and emeralds flashed from within the silver threads. ‘What do you think, child? What do you believe is the most significant of these three?’

I looked up at her. She was silent, but there was a subtle smile dancing at the corners of her mouth.

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The old woman was strange. Maga - that’s what she told me her name was. And I was beginning to believe that Maga was the embodiment of the sacred triangle for me.

I found her in the desert. Rather, it was she who found me. My caravan was attacked by the robbers two nights out of Balkh. I was deeply wounded and was left for dead by the other survivors. How many days and nights I spent in the cold mountains, I do not know. Each sunrise brought along a new intensity of misery and thirst, while each night burnt me with her cold, freezing fingers.

Then one evening, something cold and wet was pressed against my blackened and dry lips. Slowly, a few drops of water trickled onto my thorny tongue and down my parched throat. I slowly opened my eyes. My head was resting on her folded thigh, and her kind face was smiling down at me. She had drenched her black scarf in water and was moistening my lips.

Gradually, I came back to life. She had snatched me away from the clutches of death. At first, I thought she was just a vision - an illusion and product of my deranged mind. But the revival of my strength assured me of the reality of her existence.

We were inseparable thereafter, though Maga did not need my company at all. She was old but still wild enough to carry a curved dagger, hidden within the folds of her black robe. She apparently needed neither food nor water. I had never seen her eating anything except that sometimes she chewed on some dried roots and mushrooms.

Maga was my scared triangle - in that there was no doubt. She was my survival when I needed to cling to life. She was my warmth when I was tortured by my loneliness. And one night she became my desire, when my senses were heavy with lust and my body was craving human touch. I expected myself to be disgusted in the morning. But when the sun rose, I found my heart filled with only love for her. So yes, she had become my sacred triangle.

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‘So what do you think, child? Maga asked, breaking my reverie.

‘Huh?’ I looked at her questioningly.

‘What is the most significant of these three, the past, the present, or the future?’

I thought hard before presenting an answer. ‘My past has made me what I am, and my future is pulling me into itself. But I am breathing in the present. So perhaps, the present is the most significant of all.’ I brushed off the dust on my hands and looked up at her.

‘Yes!’ She smiled with her kohl-lined eyes. I peered back into them, and the reflection of the bright moon peered back at me. ‘Past is only a dream and the future is a fantasy. Only the present is real - as real as it can be.’

‘But what if the present is also a dream?’ I asked.

‘That is possible too, of course.’ She smiled at me. ‘But you are living this dream…aren’t you?’

‘Yes, I am.’ I confessed.

‘Past is important because it started with your birth, and the future is important because it will end with your death.’ She spread her hands, and the night wind blew her long robe in a trail of grey shadows. ‘But what is enclosed in between these two absolute realities is a series of moments. Each of these moments becomes the future, the present, and then the past, in turn. But it is only when the moment exists in the present that it matters the most. Because it encompasses the entirety of your existence.’ She finished her brief lecture and smiled at me.

‘Maga?’ I asked her, ‘Do the dead regret not living in the moment?’

‘That is something only the dead can tell you, child.’

I sat down on the cold sand, and she rested her head on my shoulder. I smelt the sandalwood smell of her silver hair and closed my eyes peacefully. The night was melting fast around us, and the moon was diving below the horizon. Soon, it became just a yellow shadow in the West.

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‘Jawdat!’ Maga whispered in my ear, and I opened my eyes.

The night had enveloped us completely, and the desert was all silent. The wind had died down, and the lonely stars were sparkling silently - witnessing our present.

I looked at her, and she directed my gaze towards a few stars lining the horizon. Some of them gradually detached from the others and slowly crept nearer until they became a short trail of moving lanterns. The dead night air sighed again and brought the murmuring of the wavering wails to our ears.

Shadows were hiding behind the lanterns. Slowly, the shadows started assuming human forms. It looked like a funeral procession, creeping along the soft sand with deliberate steps. By then, the wail had become a rich mixture of grief and tears, the heralds of some unspoken tragedy.

I saw the wooden box, solemn in its quiet grace, riding the shoulders of wailing mourners. Though it jerked and rolled with each step, its occupant was very much dead and lifeless.

‘Jawdat!’ Maga again whispered my name and then muttered some words under her breath.

I felt my body dissolving into the darkness. I became the night wind and caressed the wet cheeks of the tired mourners. I tasted the bitterness of tragedy and then stole into the dark coffin. I became the darkness itself and crawled underneath the dead eyelids. And the dead spoke to me:

‘Touch my lips, which have kissed a hundred beauties,

caress my eyes, that have dreamt a million dreams

Feel my heart, that preferred passion over duties,

and run in my veins, that once pulsated with extremes

But no more, my friend, no more, no more,

I breathe no more, I am dead for sure

I am a lonesome traveller, walking a dark path,

my fate is unsure, my end is all vague

There is no light in my eyes, neither joy nor wrath,

my heart silently suffers - loneliness is the deadliest plague

I was a man once, but now I am just a bundle of flesh,

the flesh that is beginning to rot and stink

I wish I could start my whole life afresh,

I wish I had more time to ponder and to think

Look at my wife, beating her chest in grief,

but her tears are drying up really very fast

Tomorrow she will live again, for this tragedy was brief,

I was her joy in the present, but now I am her past

Listen to the shuffling steps that belong to my weary sons,

they are burdened with sorrow, but their hearts are filled with hope

Tomorrow they will rise again, for death only stuns,

for their future is bright, as they will slowly climb the rope

Listen, my friend, and listen carefully,

my time has come, and yours will come soon

Listen, my friend, and listen attentively,

I am now dead, and you too will die soon

Life is a dew drop, vanishing once kissed by the sun,

dust on a moth’s wings, only ash once kissed by a flame

So live your life, live it to the full; have all the joy, have all the fun,

for in the end, there’ll be nothing left but regrets and shame’

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‘Did you hear the dead man’s words?’ Maga asked me.

‘Yes, I did.’

‘And what have you understood?’ ‘That past was a dream, future is a fantasy, and present is all that ever matters.’