We have met and to some degree have come to know Abdul, the great friend of Maqroll, by the time we reach Abdul Bashur, Dreamer of Ships, the sixth of the seven novellas that comprise Álvaro Mutis’ The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll. The two men are complementary parts of one man, a sense that has been communicated and reinforced through the previous novellas. But…
As the title suggests, there is a fundamental difference between the two. Maqroll is not a dreamer. At best, he deludes himself at the beginning of an adventure, a necessary evil in order for him to engage upon it. But even as he deludes himself, he knows that is what he is doing.
Abdul is different. He is a dreamer, and pursues those dreams in much the same way Maqroll does his delusions, indifferent to the odds against him and the likelihood of failure.
The novella is almost an anodyne to the previous story, Amirbar, even to the collection of Maqroll stories as a whole. While as dark and fatalistic as the other novellas, this one comes across with a lighter touch.
It’s in the character of Abdul Bashur, who is really another version of Maqroll. However, where the Gaviero always devolves into a lethargic, bored fatalism, Abdul accepts the inevitable with a shrug. He just moves on, always ready to be engaged by a new adventure. He shares an detached, dark view of the world with Maqroll, but with a key difference:
Maqroll acted on the conviction that everything was already hopelessly lost …. Bashur believed that everything was waiting to be done and that those who lost were the others … He had no faith in humans as a species but always gave each person the opportunity to prove to him that he was wrong.
The novella is episodic. It begins with an introduction to Abdul and his relationship with Maqroll, and is followed by eight parts, each more or less an accounting of one of Abdul Bashur’s adventures, though some are more interstices than stories. Throughout them, sometimes in the foreground, sometimes in the background, is Abdul’s dream, an “endless search, in every port on earth, for the ideal freighter.” He makes numerous efforts to acquire it, or what he hopes is it.
Many of the incidents in the novella centre around his attempts to acquire a ship, or the acquisition of it, or its loss (as Fate intervenes).
Over the stories, while the dream remains, something about it changes in Abdul. It becomes more chimera than possibility to him. The change is due to the cumulative impact of his (and Maqroll’s) adventures. There is his meeting with the Mirror Breaker, a man who is purely evil; then there is Abdul’s learning about the fate of Ilona, a great friend and lover (Abdul, Ilona, and Maqroll were bound together by their kindred spirits); finally, there is a love affair he has with a Muslim woman who is married to the brother of the imam of pilgrims he is taking to Mecca.
Following the disaster of the pilgrims, Abdul’s life takes a significant downturn, though his essential spirit seems unchanged, at least to him. He wanders aimlessly in a world of criminality, which he is indifferent to. He sees nothing either good or bad in crime.
As the novella draws to its end, we are presented with Abdul’s last adventure, a final effort at acquiring the ship he has dreamed of throughout his life.
The novella concludes on an unfortunate note, however. The eighth and final part is a coda presented as a dialogue between Maqroll and Abdul, transcribed by the Gaviero and sent to the narrator, who is Mutis.
It’s unfortunate because it’s a pretentious rumination on death and makes both Maqroll and Abdul come across as pompous asses. It’s unnecessary and ends what has been a wonderful story with a sour taste. It should have been deleted. The story would have been better.