Well, it was nicer in my head.
The couple walks through the gates. Every guide in the vicinity jumps at the sight of them. The two are unmistakenly foreigners, their fairness stark against the brown sea milling around them. The guides swarm around them hungrily, shouting, pushing, scavengers fighting over a fresh carcass. The girl shrinks back in fear.
‘English? French? I give you tour in your language!’
‘Guide? Guide? Approved guide, see pass!’
‘Sir, Madam, guide, please! Best rate!’
The man desperately looks around, hunting for an escape route. Then he spots the old man, standing to one side, looking at him calmly. A white card hangs around his neck, marking him as an approved guide. The man pulls his partner through the mob encircling them, furiously shaking his head, and walks up to the old man.
‘Guide?’
The old man smiles encouragingly at the couple, and leads them away. He walks them through the fort and its grounds, pointing out courts, battlements, gardens. He tells them stories about the kings who had ruled an empire from the fort, and the soldiers that had died defending its walls. He spins tales about the courtiers who conspired to overthrow the royalty, and the nautch girls who conspired to seduce them.
He’s not like the other guides. Where they see ruins, he sees majesty. Where they see barren land, he sees sprawling gardens. Where they see stones, he sees edifices. And most importantly, while they expound facts, he tells stories.
To him, these aren’t just ruins of a castle, stones spared from the depredations of time, silent markers of the passing of something that once was. They’re stories; every crumbling pillar and forlorn arch a page in the tale of the people that had once lived under them.
They speak to him, these ruins. Ramparts that proudly bear the scars of scores of failed attacks, gnarled trees that gently whisper of the poets who found inspiration in their cool shade, walls that coyly recount the conquests they’ve borne witness to.
He shares these stories with his customers, or at least, he tries to. But mostly, they don’t want to listen, don’t want to see what he sees. They want cold, hard, facts, and keep the guff to yourself, we’ve got five more places to see, thank you very much.
This couple’s different, though, they actually listen to him. They drink in the tales he weaves, and before he knows it, they’ve covered the entire fort. The young man asks him how much he needs to pay, the old man just shrugs and smiles, whatever you feel is right. They end up paying him a little over the offical rate. Not much, considering how little it is for them in their currency, but he doesn’t mind, he liked them.
The rest of the day isn’t so good, though. The younger, more aggressive guides always get more customers than he does, but today’s even worse than usual. He stands at his usual spot, smiling at the people who walk past, but no one stops. Mostly people just hire the first guide who approaches them, and he can’t jostle with the younger ones any more.
As the day wears on, it gets hotter. The hot sun beats down upon the stone walkway, its rays bouncing back off the smooth surface. He waits patiently, moving only to wipe his brow with a faded handkerchief. Eventually the heat gives way to the merciful evening, and the sun falls below the horizon.
The smile on his face is the same for every tourist who passes by; he learnt to keep it that way a long time ago. As the shadows lengthen, the flow of visitors slows to a trickle, but he gives each one of them the same smile. Only the barely perceptible tightness at the corners of his eyes belies the resignation in his soul. Finally the sun sets, plunging the fort into darkness. He takes one last look at the silhouettes around him, their contours softened by the darkness. For a brief moment, he lets his imagination take over, visualising the way the fort would have been when it was alive. Then he turns, and sets off along the road to his home.
As he walks back, he fingers the pitiful few notes in his pocket. He wonders what it would have been like, back in the days of kings and empires. He’d have liked to be one of those storytellers of old, those favourites of the royalty who entertained them with tales about the world. He imagines what it would have been like, standing in the centre of the court, narrating a tale of awe and wonder, of beauty and bravery, every person in the room hanging onto his every word…
Her voice jerks him back to the present, high and shrill. ‘There you are, you lazy bum! It’s about time you got back! How much did you make today?’
He timidly hands over the money to her, without saying a word.
‘Is that all?!,’ she shrieks. ‘Did you spend all day sleeping?! This is what you expect to me to run a house on? Do you know how much even potatoes cost nowadays?’
He mumbles his excuses, his head lowered. He knows they won’t work.
‘You’re unbelievable. Why don’t you make more of an effort to get customers, you oaf? They won’t fall from heaven onto your lap!’
She bustles away, still shouting. He exhales, and lowers himself into a chair. She comes back in a few minutes, bangs a plate of food on the table in front of him, and walks off in a huff. He eats alone, grateful for the silence, and then goes out into the backyard.
He doesn’t blame her, she’s used to better things. When he was young, he had a proper job, in the refinery. He was good at his work, and hoped to become foreman one day. Then came the day when the doctor said he had to leave, if he wanted to live; his lungs were functioning at half their capacity. He couldn’t find another, and had to resort to being a tourist guide, at the fort. They have a son, who works in the big city, and sends home money whenever he can, but it never goes far.
He sits and watches the sky, ragged clouds passing by, grey on purple. Stars twinkling through their straggling tendrils, the old, old face of the moon looking down over him. He thinks about times gone by, and slowly, ever so softly, sleep steals over him.
The next morning, he’s back at his usual spot, smiling at the tourists passing by. This morning, he gets lucky, he’s onto his second set of customers already. This one’s slightly unusual, it’s a father with a young daughter. He wonders briefly about her mother, but then puts the thought out of his mind.
He doesn’t plan to narrate many stories to these two, the impatience on the face of the father is all too familiar to him. However, something in the daughter’s eyes changes his mind. He stops holding back himself, and lets the story become a part of him. He speaks and enacts, he gestures and mimes, and hits the high points with a flourish. The girl’s eyes become wider and wider, as she hangs onto every word of his, rapt. And when he shows them the view from the highest parapet, and tells the tale of the spectacles that the privileged few witnessed from this vantage point, sketching it out for them in vivid detail, drawing pictures with his words, the girl’s mouth shapes into a perfect ‘O’.
And suddenly, for a moment, all of the hardships in his life cease to matter. The penury, the hopelessness, the daily struggle for existence; all fade away. Because for that one moment, he’s not a guide... He’s a storyteller.
