The Pen, Sultan's Wisdom

By Dennis Galloway

From the desk of the Best Selling Author, Dennis Galloway; The Pen, Sultan's Wisdom

Harold wanted a better life. He wanted a life that would free him from the shackles of his mundane existence. He wanted freedom, love, and a life that made his soul soar high. But how could he obtain those things?
The surprising solution lay in an antique pen Harold purchased. At first, he thought he would just write down his thoughts, but he soon discovered the pen had a mind of its own. The pen took over, forcing Harold to write what it wanted, using a beautiful curly script in a language he didn’t understand.
Soon he found himself writing—and translating—the thousand-year-old story of the Bedouin Al-Hamid Akbar, a man who rose from his existence as a street urchin and thief to becoming a sultan esteemed by all. Al-Hamid’s life was filled with excitement, including his escape from slavery, facing crocodiles on the Nile, battles with Bedouin tribes, and finding the love of his life. But most importantly, Al-Hamid’s life provided Harold with solutions to change his own. When he sleeps, he dream-travels back to Al-Hamid’s time, where he sees, touches, feels everything as if he is really there, because he is.

Set in 1920s Edinburgh, The Pen is a great adventure story, and a blend of fiction and personal development. Dennis Galloway takes readers on a journey to discover ancient wisdom to transform our current lives, yet we won’t need a magical pen to make those positive changes happen.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dennis Galloway
• Release date: Mar 3, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005747657

Dennis Galloway

Dennis Galloway has lived in a variety of cultures, giving him a wide range of experiences. He incorporates many of these experiences in his writing so the characters you meet feel real and it seems like you are really there in the places he writes about.Dennis grew up with a vivid, active imagination which serves him well in developing unique and exciting stories. His imagination provides him with ideas in the creative areas not only of writing, but in video, photography, and public speaking.Dennis's stories have been incorporated in documentaries, videos, podcast programs, articles, short stories and novels that cover a wide range of venues from children's stories to adult fiction.

Book preview

4

Al-Hamid Akbar

Harold returned to his apartment, dutifully hanging his hat and coat on the wall rack before trudging up the stairs to his study. There, he placed the pen case on the shelf with the other pens and left the room.

For more than two weeks, Harold avoided using the pen at all, even though it tugged at his heart whenever he picked up a rival writing utensil.

He went about his life, bored, unchanged, or so he thought.

Harold Duncan was thirty-seven, short, with thinning hair and stood slightly hunched over as a rule. He had a paunch and a pale complexion. He was clean shaven, and wore neat, clean clothes that had gone out of date two decades earlier. His small hands and roundish face made him seem delicate. He was shy and a bit reclusive, and his gentle disposition shone quietly behind unremarkable brown eyes. He did not like confrontation and would go out of his way to avoid it. At work, he did what was expected and no more—the perpetual frown on his face effectively shielding him from mundane inquiries or requests to work late. He responded to others with a slow wave but uttered no words. His coworkers could see his sullen mood, but no one asked what was wrong. They just let him be.

Harold had many restless nights. He had a general uneasiness and could not get his mind focused. It was as if there was something he was supposed to do, but he could not name it.

Maybe it was something I ate, he said out loud. Maybe I was tired and just imagined it. Maybe it was…well…what?

One evening, his uneasiness was more intense. He tossed and turned in his bed, sweating profusely. He sat up, suddenly, with a thought:

Maybe my experience with the pen was just my imagination.

All Harold felt now was a compelling need to see the pen, to hold the pen, and to write. He got up from his bed, put on his slippers, wrapped his robe about himself, and shuffled off to the study.

As Harold entered the room, his eyes were drawn immediately to where the pen sat on the shelf. The case seemed to glow in the dim night. He reached over and turned on a low lamp that illuminated the room a bit more. The black velvet pen case looked inviting. He felt the pen calling him, inviting him, begging him, to open the case and pick it up.

Well, we will just see. It is just a pen after all. Nothing but a pen… he whispered to himself.

Harold walked over to the shelf where the pen case lay. Reaching out his arm, he picked up the case lightly, with a gentle hand. It felt warm, almost comfy in his grip.

He went over to the desk, turning on the lamp as he sat down. Still holding the pen case, he opened a drawer with his other hand, got out a clean sheet of paper and placed it on the desk. Setting the pen case down carefully, he opened it and gazed at the instrument a little apprehensively. Seeing the pen there, he smiled, admiring its ebony beauty.

What a beautiful pen. How could anyone be afraid of you? Harold asked it.

He reached inside the case and picked up the pen. His mood brightened immediately. He was instantly happier than he had been for the last two weeks. With the smile still on his face, he began to write.

For a moment or two, Harold’s sentences lay down smoothly on the paper. Every thought flowed smoothly out of his head and onto the paper.

Then, it happened. His hand was lovingly frozen to the pen, as it began to twist and gently bend down to wrap itself around his wrist and forearm. The writing changed again to the swirly, beautiful, unrecognizable letters Harold had written during his first encounter with the pen. He hadn’t written them. He didn’t even know what he was writing.

Harold’s eyes grew wide, but this time he was not terrified; he was fascinated by this amazing instrument and its ability to guide his hand across the page. The pen wrapped around his wrist and forearm like a lover taking his arm as they strolled through an unknown garden. It did not hurt, nor give him any discomfort. In fact, he felt pleasure as he witnessed this magic happening before his eyes.

As the pen came to the end of a page, it stopped writing, as if waiting. Harold instinctively replaced the page with a blank one, on which the pen continued in its foreign script.

Soon, Harold had several sheets of paper piled up on the desk. He kept at it for hours, late into the night. Finally, exhausted, he removed the pen from his forearm, put it in its case, and gently closed the lid, leaving it on the desk.

He folded his arms across the desktop and laid his head down.

Just a bit of rest, he thought and fell fast asleep. The clock struck midnight.

As Harold slept, head down on his crossed arms, the words on the paper began to rise off the page, floating into the air and swirling around his head. Then the letters formed a line and entered his head through his left temple.

Harold woke with a start. No, he wasn’t awake. Maybe. He felt he was in a fog that was slowly clearing. He saw himself looking at a wealthy man, in a richly adorned robe, perhaps sixty years of age, sitting on an elegant, richly embroidered cushion. The man was writing on parchment upon a small…desk, Harold supposed. It was wood and had a hinged lid. It looked like a desk with no legs and sat across the rich man’s lap.

Harold looked around the room. It appeared to be a palace of some sort. On the walls hung very large tapestries on golden ropes. In the corners of the room were large potted palms. One end of the room opened onto a veranda, outside of which Harold saw stars twinkling in the dark sky. He felt he was not actually present, but merely observing. He looked down again at the man and what he was writing. It looked like the swirly, twirly script the pen had written earlier.

The man wrote with Harold’s pen.

Words entered Harold’s mind, not through his ears, but spreading outward. He knew they were not his own. They were in some dialect strange to him. And the voice that recited the words was deeper than his. The words had a melodic tone. He concentrated on them, trying to understand their meaning. Then they started to make sense. He slowly began to grasp the meaning of each word, its nuances, connotations as well as denotations. In moments, he was fluent in what he felt was a foreign tongue. Harold listened as the voice narrated, and he saw the man writing, telling the story in Harold’s head as the man scratched out the words on the parchment.

I am Akbar al-Hamid, Sultan, ruler of the Bashihin desert. The year is A.H. 323. I am writing with this wonderful instrument that seems to have no end to its supply of black pigment. This wondrous device was a gift from Wazir Quadra Kaheem, my good friend.

Al-Hamid paused his writing and looked up. He sensed that perhaps someone was in his room. Harold stood absolutely still. After a few moments, Al-Hamid shook his head and bent his eyes back onto the parchment upon which he was writing.

Kaheem told me that this device was blessed with remembrance because it will watch what I write and never forget it. And, whoever holds this pen after me will see the pen pour forth my memories. He said he had obtained it from a dealer in antiques in a bazaar in Marmaris, Turkey. It gives me much pleasure just to hold it. Allah be praised.

At my age, I now have time to recall my life and its lessons so that I may pass them on to others. In doing so, I hope the reader of my writings gains some wisdom to apply to their life and, therefore, improve it. With this instrument, I will write my life story from its humble beginnings to the ruling of a sultanate. Allah be praised.

The fog had gathered around Harold again. As it cleared, he found himself standing on hot sand. He could see a caravan passing in the distance. The narration continued.

I was born on a caravan route that went through Qasr al-Farafra. I was told later that my mother had died giving me life. I was raised by a local tribe until the age of ten.

The scene switched again, and Harold was watching a young boy being treated badly by an older man, who looked Arabic by his clothing.

I was then sold into bondage to a wandering merchant who needed someone to tend to his camels and do his bidding. It was a difficult life. The merchant chained me up at night and beat me regularly to ensure I never tried to run. But the beatings created a resolve in me to escape and be free.

All of a sudden, Harold was standing at the edge of a large plaza, at night, looking at several camels, tents, and sleeping people. He could smell the camels, the smoke in the air from the dim fires around the plaza, which glowed in the night. He saw the young boy who had resolved to run away. The narration continued.

Which is what I did when his caravan entered Cairo, late one night in my thirteenth year. It was a moonless night. The merchant had too much to drink, fell asleep after his evening meal, and was softly snoring in his tent. We were bedded down in a small enclave near the main marketplace. The smell of the market was strong, with a mixture of cooking lamb, spices, and camel dung. The stars shone brightly above, and the air was cool. Cooking fires and small torches lit the night here and there, but not too brightly.

My eyes grew heavy and I was starting to drift off to sleep as I lay there on a heap of rags I used for a bed, when I realized the old master had neglected to secure my ankle shackle to the rod that kept me tethered at night. My eyes popped open wide. It was time to run!

Afraid of being caught, I slowly rose on my elbows to look around the camp. No one was awake. I stood up quietly, like a shadow rising up from the ground. I gathered up my courage—and the short chain attached to my shackle—and sneaked away from my master’s tent. Since I tended the camels, they were used to my smell, so I did not disturb them upon passing by. I gathered a bit of bread and a mashq full of water from the master’s supplies and slipped into the night.

I was free.

Harold watched the young boy vanish down some dark alley. Not sure what this was all about, he stood there for a little while, then began to follow down the alley.

The narration stopped and his vision went dark.

In Harold’s study, his head was still on his desk, resting on his folded arms. In the dim light, swirly words emerged from his temple, whirled around his head, and then settled back on the paper they had come from.

5

Miss Priscilla Robertson, Principal Librarian

Harold awoke at his desk, cold and shivering. He had a slight headache and a stiff neck.

What a strange dream, he thought, as he got up from his desk, stretched his arms above his head, rubbed his neck, shuffled off to his bed, and fell into a deep, peaceful sleep.

He dreamt no more.

Harold woke up and went to work the next day, and it was uneventful—a regular, boring day at work.

When he got home that evening, Harold ate a quick, cold supper and went upstairs to his study. He was getting more and more curious about what exactly he had written. He had never seen anything like it before. He picked up the pages with the strange writing on them and stared at them for a long while, turning the papers this way and that in hopes of understanding the writing. He assumed it was a foreign language he was unfamiliar with, maybe from the Middle East, so he decided to find something that could help him translate what he…the pen…had written. He thought he better wait on using the pen again until he understood more about what was going