Today, I go out for a bit because it’s been long enough that the people in my life will all come and cut me up into little pieces and stuff me into their pockets if I don’t meet them somewhere first. There’s an antiquarian book fair in Boston, and I come home feverish, panting, and stomping this way and that way, wringing the sweat out of my hands into puddles around my feet. Oh, God. Oh, God. What I’ve seen, oh, God. It’s impossible. It’s ridiculous. I call Ahmed, but he doesn’t pick up. He must be busy. He’s always busy. I call Basma, but obviously, she doesn’t pick up, either. I’m an idiot. She and her two little daughters… I’ve forgotten about the time-difference.

And Esraa.

I don’t try to call Esraa.

Here’s a true story for you:

Terry Gilliam read Don Quixote in 1989 and immediately started trying to make a film. And immediately, the whole thing turns to sawdust. He can’t get enough money, and then he quits the project, and then the studio cancels the project anyway, and so he starts the project all over again because he is great; he is great; he is great. He is the best person in the world to do this film; it can only be him; he is great.

I call up Antonia Quijana to tell her about the antiquarian book fair. What else does she have to do? “It means very old,” I explain to Antonia. “They have collections of anatomical diagrams from the 1400s, stuff like that. They have comic books from the 30s, stuff like that, and prayer books from the 1600s, on and on, all sorts of stuff... Stuff like that.”

I’m doing the daily puzzles on the breakfast table on my laptop, the Sudoku, and then the memory game, and then the tile game, and then I move on to the word games. The acrostic. The anagrams. The crossword, always, the crossword.

“What I saw today, what I saw today, here is what I saw today, here is what happened to me today, here is what I did today...”

I’m speaking a mile a minute. Antonia only hears every third word or so because I’ve put my phone down on the kitchen table and I’m pacing back and forth past the speaker. Once she’s finally put enough of it together, she shakes her head, I can’t see that part, and she tries to interrupt me.

“You,” she says, and that doesn’t work, so she tries again, a little more forcefully, “You spent how much?”

“It’s eight books,” I tell her. “That’s the set. Four for the first volume, and four for the second, three hundred dollars a book when you buy the set, six hundred individually.”

“And you bought the whole set,” says Antonia.

I stop pacing and go digging around in my bag.

“Here. See.”

I show her.

By the year 2000, Gilliam had gathered a good budget, or close enough to a good enough budget, and he had his actors, and he started filming in Spain, and immediately, the whole thing turned to sawdust. All of the cast have different schedules, nobody can be on the set at the same time. Fighter jets are flying back and forth above them, and the audio is terrible, you can’t hear anything but just the

Rumble,
The screech,
The roar,
The
Miserable
Howl,
And then comes
The
Rain—
The water
Is rising
Is rising,

And there go the lights, and there go the cameras, washed away and ruined, and even the color of the soil has been changed to make all the previous shots useless. Terry Gilliam is holding his head in his hands; he is pressing his palms to his temples like he is trying to complete a circuit through his parietal lobes.

There is no insurance money; the floods were an Act of the One True God. Filming starts up again a few days later, and now the lead actor has suffered a double-herniated disc in his back, and he can’t ride a horse, or walk, or stand, or sit upright without help; he is lost in the fever of his mind, he is swirling and swimming.

Eight beautiful books from the 1700s. Not an original printing, obviously, but aren’t they lovely? Look at the binding, that’s real leather on the covers. I open one of them, let her see the pages. She can’t feel the texture of the old paper like I can, on my fingertips, but she can hear that certain dusty sound the pages make when I gently flip between them, and can’t she just imagine? I show Antonia the dark ink, the beautiful lettering.

“You don’t speak Spanish,” she tells me.

“And I don’t speak the language of the tree roots,” I tell her breathlessly, “but I still stumble in the forest in the dark of the night, and in the light of the day I can see all the beautiful patterns sewn into the soil, and I can know that they have written there by God.”

Somebody makes a film about how much of a failure Terry Gilliam’s Don Quixote film is. It is cursed, they say. This film cannot be made. It will never be made. In 2005, he tried again, but nobody would pay for it.

“We know how it is,” they say. “We know how you are.”

“This is a book of fiction, written by Miguel de Cervantes,” says Antonia. “It isn’t scripture.”

“But he never could have written it without the will of God!” I tell her right back.

Every other film Gillian tries to make turns immediately to sawdust.

“Nobody can do anything without God’s allowance; nobody can even fail to do anything! We cannot even die without the permission of God! Miguel de Cervantes never could have survived the Battle of Lepanto and gone on to write his book if God had not wished it to be so! These books here never could have shown up in front of me at the book fair, just like that, all in a line, if God had not wished it to be so!”

I’m holding my head with both hands up just above my ears like a jug of milk or a melon or a jar of sesame seeds that I’m about to smash down onto the floor, splatter it everywhere;

“I can’t not see what’s right in front of me!”

One film gets cancelled because a terrorist attack has made the mood of the world too somber for it. One film’s lead actor commits suicide. They lose a cinematographer. But Gilliam is great; he is great; he must make his film. He tries again in 2010. Don Quixote has taken hold of him; it is pulling at his skin from the inside, puckering his cheeks, bundling his intestines, shriveling his fingers and toes. He is great, and he cannot stop. He is at the intersection of so many lines of fate. He is where the glass shatters from.

“You spent $2400.00,” says Antonia.

“The signs are just adding up,” I tell her. “Stacking and stacking and stacking, piling on top of one another, heaping on top of one another. I am starting to be

crushed

under the weight of it all. Do you know what that is like? Carrying so much weight, the weight of a mission. The glass cracks from where all the pressure is, Antonia, where all the different lines intersect; that is where the glass cracks from. Do you know what that is like, Antonia? Being at the intersection point of so many different lines of fate?”

Another actor drops from the project, but that doesn’t matter; he isn’t great; Terry Gilliam is great. The funding vanishes, but that doesn’t matter. The plot of the film changes; now it is a film about making a film about Don Quixote. All the characters go mad after making the film; it’s great, isn’t it?

The new lead actor of the film gets prostate cancer and dies.

“You spent $2400.00 on books which you can’t read, but which you’ve also already read,” says Antonia.

“Everyone says they’re better in Spanish,” I say. “They are richer and alive in Spanish. Spanish is their real self,” I say.

“You can’t read in Spanish,” says Antonia.

“It was more like $2600.00 after taxes,” I say.

The distribution platform withdraws because they hate the producer. The producer hates everyone. The producer cuts the budget. The producer cuts everyone’s pay. The producer declares himself the captain of the project. The producer threatens to cancel the project and fire everyone unless he is acknowledged as the One True God of this Earth and All Creation. Terry Gilliam finds a new producer. Finally, after nearly thirty years, the film gets made.

The old producer declares the film illegal and sues Terry Gilliam. He gets the premier cancelled. The courts rule that he is, in fact, the One True God, and as such, the film is, in fact, illegal. The film releases anyway. Terry Gilliam suffers from a perforated artery. Critics shrug. “It’s alright,” they say. “It’s a film,” they say.

“It’s been made,” they say. “It’s nothing to bind up lovingly in fine leather and sell at a book fair.”

It’s nothing great, the problem. Whatever happened to that? It has

rotted

On the branch, and dropped off into the rain-dark soil.

“It feels,” they say, “like evidence of someone who spent too long obsessing over Don Quixote, losing sight along the way of whatever attracted him in the first place.”

“It’s not a sign,” says Antonia. “You went to a festival of old books, and you found an old copy of the most famous old book that there is, aside from the bible. You're losing it if you think that's something. You are just like my uncle if you think that’s something. You find what you look for because you look for it, and then when you find it, you say, 'Aha! A sign from the Universe! A sign from God! Just for me! And then, the other half of the time, when you don't find it, you decide that it is some great secret that of course nobody else would ever know about anyway, some forgotten heartbeat to everything. If you’d gone through the whole book fair without finding even a single copy of Don Quixote, you’d be on the phone with me right now saying that it is so strange and mysterious that nobody remembers this old book that just keeps going on and on and on without any real plot or character development or stakes or anything. And either way, here you are at the end of the day, special and special and special you, for finding it, or for knowing about it. And here you are, at the end of the day, look at you, down twenty-six hundred dollars that might have paid for someone’s food or tent or medicine.”

Here’s what I see, today; here’s why I lose my mind, today. Today:

“Five out of ten,” they say.

It’s three down; eight letters. I’ve worked out a few of them already, by the time I look at the clue:

“_ _ D E _ _ C _”

I’m not so sure about the “D”, from the word “P U D D L E”, which might be “S P L A S H” instead.

It might be “R I D E B A C K”, but that’s just the first thing I think when I glance at the letters, and that’s before the clue, and what’s a “R I D E B A C K”, anyway? It’s just a word I’ve gone and made up, is what I’ve done.

Let me tell you something funny about me, which is that I’m very easily distracted. I’m very easily distracted, which means that a lot of the time I’ll get started on something and not finish it. I’ll get started on a puzzle and not finish it, or I’ll drive to the grocery store and forget what I came for.

I’ll open an email and forget to answer it; all the time, these sorts of things are happening to me. The number of children I have and can’t even remember. The number of books I’ve gotten halfway through writing and then just left sitting in a document file somewhere, or dangling like vines from a clogged gutter, out of one of my ears.

I don’t even read the clue for three down or try to fill in any more of the letters. I get distracted enough by the word “R I D E B A C K” that I forget what I was doing and just move on to other clues. By the time I come back to three down, I’ve done most of the rest of the puzzle, and gotten most of the rest of the letters: “S I D E K _ C K”

Antonia breathes. In. Out. Slow. Heavy. She closes her eyes. She breathes until she’s just sighing, and then she sighs until she’s breathing, normally. She says to me that she’s sorry, sorry. She’s sorry. She shouldn’t have unloaded like that.

I tell her it’s fine, it’s fine.

She says she’s watched this happen before, is all.

I tell her that she’s right, it’s so much money. I shouldn’t have done this. What have I done, I’m telling her. I shouldn’t have done this.

She says that it’s a lovely set of books.

I tell her that I’ve killed people today, that’s what I’ve done today, haven’t I? I’ve gone, and I’ve killed people, just like that.

She says that it’s kind of a beautiful thing to imagine, though. It’s a beautiful thing to imagine, isn’t it? Imagine writing a book which someday someone might bind up so lovingly like that and which might someday sell for so much. Can I imagine being so precious?

I tell her that it’s all a joke. The book, my book, or my life, take her pick. “It’s never good enough for that, I’m never even close to that,” I tell her. “It’s all a delusion,” I tell her. “A self-delusion,” I tell her. It’s all just a self-obsession, all I am is self-obsessed, and all I can seem to obsess about is why isn’t it good enough? It’s just not good enough, but it should be good enough.

I should be able to do this. This should be easy for me; I am great, I am great, I am great.

I managed to find the film online and watch it. I call up Antonia Quijana to tell her about it; “It was alright,” I tell her. “A little odd in parts. Some of the performances and cinematography, nevermind,” I tell her.

“That’s not the point,” I tell her.

“What’s the point?” she asks me. It’s the middle of the night in early 1600s Spain. She’s woken up to talk to me. I can see the full moon out the big round window of the manor’s bricked-off library, where she’s been sleeping. She’s been sleeping in the chair where her uncle used to sit and read.

“The point is that halfway through the movie, the main character finds this whole village of Moriscos who are trying to hide their faith from the Inquisition. Moriscos!” I cry.

Can you see? Can you see? Can you see the way it is hunting me? Can you see the way that it is haunting me? I drop my pen, my hand goes slack. A sign from God. The burning bush, am I meant to take off my shoes? Am I meant to drop to my knees? How is it possible? What are the chances?

“Nobody ever talks about the Moriscos! But here they are! Can you believe it? A movie about a movie about Don Quixote, and here are the Moriscos, and I’m writing a book about a book about Don Quixote, aren’t I?” It’s something like that, what I’m writing, I think. “I’m writing about Don Quixote and the Moriscos. What are the chances of that? How am I supposed to feel?”

How is a person supposed to react?

I’ve got both hands up on my head, like I’m about to pop off my own skull and toss it like somebody. Antonia is silent for a minute, thinking. Breathing. In. Out. She nods. She knows what to say. “It’s a sign. It’s a signal. It’s a message from God. How could it not be?”

How is a person supposed to react to a message like this? “You are great, you are great; your destiny is the size of a mountain; you are great.” How is a person supposed to react? How is a person supposed to carry all that weight?

“But what does it mean?” I ask her. I’ve seen so many signs now, felt the wild winds of fortune upon my face over and over and over, and I am only feeling lost.

“I will tell you what it means,” Antonia tells me, and then she tells me. “It means you have to keep going. You have to keep writing, no matter what happens, what gets in your way. You have to keep writing. You are great, and you are doing a great thing, and the One True God of this Earth and All Creation is trying to tell you to keep going. This is more important than anything.”

“This is more important than anything,” I repeat back to her.

“You have to keep going,” she says. “You can’t stop. You can’t get distracted. You shouldn’t even be wasting your time talking to me. You need to get back to work. Anything could happen,” she tells me. “You could have a heart attack. Lightning could strike. You could die today. You could die tomorrow, and what would happen to your book then? Every minute you spend not working is a minute less of this that gets done before you’re gone.”

Who permitted me to stop working, she asks me. Who told me to take breaks? Who told me to eat or sleep? Don’t I know anything about signs from God? You can’t just go on living like it’s normal. It becomes everything; it's what it does.

“You’re right,” I tell her. “You’re right. I have to go. I have to keep going.”

“Good luck,” Antonia tells me.