“Have you not seen how your Lord dealt with the People of the Elephant? Did He not frustrate their scheme? For He sent against them flocks of birds, that pelted them with stones of baked clay, leaving them like chewed up straw.”
The Qur’an, Chapter 105 (The Elephant)
Translation by Dr. Mustafa Khattab, The Clear Quran
Long before civilization had crept through the cracks of natural time, before upright postures and the binding of feet, the vain etchings of life onto rock face; before we could hunt or think, whichever came first and will leave us first, there lived great creatures of ivory and bone that ruled this land. Before our incessant search for control disguised as meaning, the mammoth led its own less meditated search.
Before our incessant search for control disguised as meaning, the mammoth led its own less meditated search.
There are fossils in the earth to prove it, if one looks in the right place, under rock and sediment where compactified truths and semi-truths are found. But they no longer live among us. The only record of their existence lies behind glass panels or in scientists’ locked drawers and computers, but to deny their existence would be far worse than denial of evidence, it would be an affront to imagination, where all manner of creatures can live as long as someone somewhere can shut their eyes and picture what once was.
In such a conflicting time, where long-exhumed skeletons hang freely in exhibits yet the recent dead occupy little thought; in such an inversion of time, it would be understandable for these silhouetted facts to linger in Ahmad’s mind, but they didn’t. Walking past the painfully reconstructed mammoth he showed only a flicker, maybe of empathy, before moving on to the next implausible thing. It was not that he didn’t believe in such a beast or its unlikely demise, but rather that he felt such a weak pull toward it, a resistance to the time inversion, that it failed to impact him.
Walking outside the small museum hall took him back to the stale fresh air, caught between winds of past and present, neither clean nor particularly unwelcoming. Seeing the tree-lined near-horizon brought relief, and for an instant he forgot where he was, on a school trip surrounded not just by reminders of pasts but by caged relics of the present. Only once his eyes lowered below the tree line did the smell of manure and urine hit him, and the zoo came sharply back into focus.
How it must feel to be caged and unable to express it, he thought…
How it must feel to be caged and unable to express it, he thought, first looking into the realm of non-human feeling before thinking there was something distinctly human about this thought. Although it is less tasteful to turn people into zoo exhibits, that is not to say it isn’t done indirectly in the world, in war zones and under occupations.
The lone tiger resignedly prowled its rusted cage fence looking for weakness, its cage stinking most of collected filth, its muscles wasting away. It would sometimes bask on a rock face in the sun, but more often it bore the rain and chill with an outward stoicism. There was a giraffe that stood awkwardly, with back ache or perhaps it was dissatisfied with the view. There were some monkeys who couldn’t be spotted in the thicket of their enclosure, or maybe they had escaped to go nowhere. There used to be a polar bear but it had wallowed in so much pity that its fur yellowed completely, taking on a skeletal appearance that began to depress the crowds, and so it was sent to Siberia. Aside from some donkeys and wide-eyed camels, there were few further attractions.
It was on his way to the exit that Ahmad came across another beast, resting in a state of meditative calm unbefitting of its place as it watched him pass, eyes fixed and glassy, mottled skin grey and pink-brown, patchily covered in clumps of dark hair, its legs strong and stiff, its tail a metronome in the breeze. At once captured by its intelligent gaze, for it took in the world with some majesty and exuded a deep understanding of its predicament, Ahmad arced his path towards the Indian elephant, juvenile at most, looking out of its cage with wry wonder.
Ahmad’s image reflected back to him in the elephant’s great, dark eyes.
Ahmad’s image reflected back to him in the elephant’s great, dark eyes. Like Ahmad, it was so far from its homeland, or what should have been so, but it didn’t know of home other than vague and formless longings or memories passed down in some way not yet understood. Finding some connection between them, or some way of expressing a shared thing, the elephant reached out its trunk behind its rusting cage, unable to meet Ahmad through its prison walls but gesturing that it understood, that it was not a museum-bound skeleton of inconsequential size for him to gawk at, held upright by bolts and metal joints; it was flesh and sinew that lived and hoped with every breath, and it longed for its freedom too, conveying this in the futile stretch of its trunk and the slow movement of its wrinkled eyes.
On the way home, Ahmad stared through the semi-misted windows of the coach, thinking of the elephant, how powerless he was to help it, to help himself; how lost it really was, even if it should trample the fence and make a break through these fields and valleys, through hallowed countryside and car-lined avenues, even if it reached safety in a forgotten forest or a supply of leaf and bark it enjoyed, an unpolluted drinking stream in which it could bathe too; even then, what kind of life could it live, in frost and solitude, thousands of incomprehensible miles from where it ought to be?
He began to imagine the journey the elephant had taken…
He began to imagine the journey the elephant had taken, must have been forced to take: stolen from family while young, maybe kidnapped by ivory poachers who also stole the gleaming tusks that raised it; nursed on dairy from a cattle plantation taking over old elephant grounds; perhaps rescued by government officials who would sell it to a foreign zoo for a modest fortune. That was all forgotten now anyway in those big eyes that see so much but cannot speak their truths. How it must have been forced onto a boat, likely whipped or sedated, where it would spend lonely weeks staring at the abyss, seasick, restless, passing through storms that would feel like the end of days, the smell of the forest replaced by salty air and packaged food, lurching all the while.
What must the elephant have thought, arriving on new soil, a different colour perhaps—lighter, less rich, faded and filtered—rushed onto a vehicle and hurtled down the highway, in and out of frightful sleep, now unaware of its own state of consciousness let alone of how to retrace its steps in this hostile world it could never explore. Its tusks were only just breaking through, getting ready for a world where they would be just ornaments weighing it down.
Only one thing can be certain in our interactions with others, elephants as much as people: presented with their differences to us, which are unavoidable, we view them as canvases on which to display our thoughts, and what emotions we see and take away are mirrored from within.
Ahmad had seen many elephants before but not in the flesh; as skeletons or waxwork, on TV in circuses or nature documentaries, in cartoons and drawings, or as statues bronzed and fallen to their knees under the weight of their trials, the conquests into which they are ridden. Elephants should not buckle under the weight of humans and yet they so often do, burdened and crushed by what we force upon them.
We are surely the people of the elephant, charging forwards on their backs as if they are indestructible, failing to look up.
We are surely the people of the elephant, charging forwards on their backs as if they are indestructible, failing to look up. Though the age of war elephants has passed, not to say we have evolved but just moved on, now waging war with more destruction and throwing the old toys in cages; a lesson in how quickly time forgets, or how the unstoppable can become time’s sacrifice. The elephant in the cage remembers it used to be free, or at least it has inherited the taste of freedom. It recalls when it was crushed and cast in bronze, legs extended forward like felled trees; when it was peppered with arrows on someone’s forgotten charge, or when it was burned to the ground by baked clay falling from the sky.
Tragedy and injustice run through more than just blood and tears and physical things. The actions of conquerors last in the looks of caged animals and shackled people whose eyes show they cannot forget; they are just waiting, passing.
A while later, the fresh and rotting air of the countryside zoo was replaced by the post-combustion fumes, currents of burnt dust and grease circulating inside the coach taking Ahmad back home. He stared out of the smoke-stained windows, watching rivulets of rain streak down like slow tears, lazily, shed out of avoidance rather than genuine grief. It was only then that the elephant, once seen shackled and caged, was reborn in his imagination; as it would never see freedom in its lifetime, its path to a new life was to haunt others, survive through symbols. The ghost of the elephant now rode with the coach, alongside dozens of spirit elephants, marching again, but not on one of the great conquests of old. Around them, petrol engines burned, the world running on fire, ready to engulf them.
Sometimes stories, fables, allegories find their own path to prediction; but more often they are transformed…
Sometimes stories, fables, allegories find their own path to prediction; but more often they are transformed, by the times or by people holding on looking for meaning, into something much larger than ink on a page could be, a vessel for unfulfilled emotions and spirited dreams. With the turn of such a force, myth can become reality and vice versa, molten rock of stories really can rain from the sky on an army that is not there, only to pass again into mythology.
A bang awoke Ahmad from the slumber in which he found himself, subconsciously tracing the paths of raindrops flowing and disappearing. Now all the passengers were alert, and the coach came to a ragged stop.
The engine had blown: a stone pitched through the air, maybe from the tire of another vehicle, had flown perfectly through the grill, and now the coach seized up and the driver announced they would have to wait until a replacement arrived. How fragile this formidable machine really was. They were now stuck on the side of a highway under the light drizzle, unable to hear each other over the roaring of the other machines.
Sitting on a damp grassy slope bordering the highway, waiting for some sort of rescue, Ahmad turned his mind away from this very modern predicament, thinking instead of the elephant, longing for imagined days of old, of silk-robed emperors mounting gilded elephants on their crusades, followed by a parade of hundreds on foot. He could feel in his blood that he was from the line of these Mughal kings and queens of old, though he had no evidence of such lineage… but in their tales of splendour and colour, of poetry, painting, opulent clothes and joyful food, he found more intrigue and desire to belong than he ever had in his own time.
The empire of imagination rules firmly, but it is often the first to fall.
The empire of imagination rules firmly, but it is often the first to fall. Its ruin is ongoing; all fall victim to it in time, in their own personal apocalypse. Ahmad had his own empire to retreat to for now. While its conquest expanded in his mind, scheming and plotting internalized, his thoughts became occupied by jewels and peacocks and heat-hazed gardens, and all he had read about those lands as they once were and would never truly be again. Where sandstone forts once stood now lay crumbling apartment blocks and modern temples. Where princely elephants once walked now spluttered coaches and buses filled with tourists, paupers, businessmen and other seekers of the world.
From the jewelled throne where he now sat, it struck Ahmad how different it all looked, how perspective can be a matter of metres, not centuries. Below his eyeline the highway streamed on, blinkered as it rushed past the now-retired coach banked on the emergency lane and the scattered children on the hill beyond it… the army of elephants marching past, with planes soaring ominously overhead, birds circling over carcasses lining the road but not finding courage to swoop, time dragging past slowly. At least the elephant in its enclosure had space to stretch and feed itself, air to breathe; it had an audience on which to turn its bewitching eyes. With those eyes it could say, were you not warned of this?
Not only remembering, its sympathetic eyes found the lostness in Ahmad that he himself had forgotten.
There is a strange anti-correlation between knowledge and memory at times, or maybe knowledge can set memory traps, choosing what will be forgotten and what won’t, what will be replaced. Falling into the trap, the visitors of the elephant forget where it came from, the hardships of its journey or that it once had a community, that it once roamed free or at least that it longed to, some urge of a previous life beneath its wrinkled skin. Not only remembering, its sympathetic eyes found the lostness in Ahmad that he himself had forgotten. Without this chance encounter across a moat and electrified fence, he would not have caught his own glimpses of a past, real or otherwise.
Inspiration burned within Ahmad, on this hillside rendered silent like a long-caged thing. His teachers and the other students wouldn’t understand; they too were caught in the fog of collective amnesia. They would either be the deniers and repressors of the stories of others, stories that stain the name of their imagined nation; a fabricated map of collective love and hatred, a nation written for them and shovelled into them until its odour oozes from their sweat; or they too would be bewitched by the elephant or some substitute for it, lost in the internal labyrinth of self-reflection or discovery, walled in by the dissonance around them in their falling empire of imagination.
Was it really that Ahmad had forgotten his longing for the past, for his inheritance and his place…?
No, he was surely alone in this. No cars stopped on the road for them. There was nowhere else to go. The memory would slip away and nobody would be there to catch it; or they would watch it fall under the pretence of ignorance, amnesia of national importance. Was it really that Ahmad had forgotten his longing for the past, for his inheritance and his place, or was it that in this world of magnetic want, such memories of agency and desire were harder to hold on to against the relentless motorway traffic? Maybe the birds had already passed with their stones and decided there was no need to drop them.
It was several hours later, after the first coach had been towed away under the last strong burst of daylight, after this too had tired and the vehicles rushing past with blinding headlights had thinned, the air stiff with fumes and stalling engines, before dispersing almost completely, finally a replacement came and they continued on the same rutted path. By this point, the exhaustion of passivity had reduced them all to brooding silence. Having fought off jolts of slumber on the second journey, Ahmad found himself back home not a moment too soon, walking through the mango-tree-lined courtyard of what had once been a small suburban family apartment but had grown beyond its walls.
Paintings of his great ancestors watched him as he sank into deep sleep.
The humid night air carried the sound of peacocks roaming and the distant beat of drums as Ahmad passed through the great carved teak doorway of his ancestral home, framed with dancing deities and vines. He glided up the velveted carpet steps, past his throne room, silent from the weight it must bear, bejewelled daggers and gold embroidery glinting in the moonlight beside it, finding his servants to undress and bathe him and finally set him down on his poster bed. Paintings of his great ancestors watched him as he sank into deep sleep.
In the stables not a hundred yards away, the elephants rested too. Although they belonged in neither this empire nor that, they could roam in the mornings as the fog lifted, before the peace was punctured by human voices and shrill peacock cries, and could pluck some of the lower mangoes before being chased away. They had the illusion that this was their life, without cages and chains. Knowing they too were at peace, Ahmad fell asleep in no time.
Later, he would have no memory of being lifted off the coach and into the car by both his parents, forcefully belted in, and carried likewise to his real bed, in the home of his real dynasty.
