The Last Rectangle Read online

  Year 1906 - The Bandit

  It would not be long now, the separation in time between the different discoveries of the painting by painters. The interval was getting shorter. In the first instance, 144 years separated the original painter from the foreign artist. Then, the shrieking artist came 89 years after that. Now, 55 years later, or 1906 to be precise, the time was ripe for another bead to fall, a time of lean crops and hard times. The prairies and hills around Tripoli were full of bandits intent on robbing every soul on his way into or out of the town. The townspeople were uneasy. It was a matter of life and death to some who had to venture into the far reaches outside the town for want of better crops or to carry on some trade. For some of them, it was not to be. The tardy or careless traveler often met with his death as bandits pounced on his wagon and robbed him of all he got, often killing him and his entourage for hardly a reason. One bandit was stalking the hills following the slow movement of a wagon going out of town. It was one of those evenings where the moon shone so bright it froze the country side into an iciness that curbed the soul into a solitude far beyond death. The wagon had finally seen it fit to park alongside a convoy of other wagons and await daylight in order to avoid his kind of trouble. He was foolhardy and had not calculated the risk involved in attacking such a well protected group. He approached the wagons, his eyes gleaming in the moonlight from out of his dark features and grayish beard. He thought he was alone in this when out of nowhere, three men jumped on him from behind and braced him down to the ground, his face smack into the dust. They pressed his neck down so hard that he wished he could die. They tied his hands behind his back and rolled him face upwards to look at his face. Something told them to retract. Something they saw made them drop the bandit on the ground. They untied his hands. He stood up with dignity, shaking off the soil that smeared his coat. He was still their captive, but somewhere in his eyes shone a light that made them respect him, capture him with grace. They motioned lightly and he got into one of the wagons. He sat there silently, not really wishing to run away. They got into the wagon and drove away from their convoy. They drove ahead until they found a clearing large enough to make a large round turn and headed back into the town. The bandit stayed in the back with the three men riding in front. The flaps of the wagon covers cracked in and out, often snapping at his face. He had every chance to jump out but did not. He had a foreboding of what was to come. They drove on until they reached the entrance of the town at around the time when daylight was emerging. They parked in front of the west gate of the Madrasa and got him out. The three of them pushed him towards the gate and into the court. He saw the painting and proceeded to move towards it in slow gentle steps. They grabbed one student coming too early to her classes and snatched away her bag full of paint and brushes. They mixed paints for the bandit artist and shoved them into his hands. He took a straight look at the painting and measured off two fingers from each side of the painting, drew his own rectangle within the previous one and set about to paint over the soldier’s painting, in total silence. He finished the painting in no time. Hardly had he had time to stand back to look at it, when the three men jumped on him, grabbed him by his arms and lifted him, his legs kicking in the air. They dumped him in the back of the wagon, this time with his hands tied behind his back and his legs chained together. They drove until they reached the hill where he had tried to rob them. The convoy had left and no one was in sight. They pulled him down from the back of the wagon and in full daylight, dragged him up the hill, slit his throat and threw him into a deep ravine.

  Year 1940 - The Couple

  In 1940, World War II raged in Europe. Marginal countries were inactive waiting for their roles to be determined. Marginal towns were in a worse state, hardly alive during the day and almost dead during the night except for a few night clubs frequented by the well to do. A couple got out of the door on the second floor of their large house. She had on a simple but elegant long white dress. She wore a light but warm fur coat. She had no make up on her face, her hair short and combed back on both sides. He was immaculately dressed in a thick black coat and a fluffy white scarf around his neck. They descended the stairs in silence. As the driver readied the horses and moved hurriedly around the carriage, they climbed into their seats. The darkness was broken by the candle in the lantern on the side of the driver’s seat. The carriage moved out of the garden with a deliberate pace. There was a sullen harmony that came out of the compound sound made by the pebbles being crushed. The carriage wheels gave out a continuous grinding sound which was superimposed on the disjointed sound made by the hoofs of the trotting horses. In the back seat, the coupled gently leaned towards one another. When the carriage was out on the open street, they covered themselves with a thick quilt and tugged on it till it came up to their chins.

  The driver loomed high above them as they drove through the quiet town. They reached the club at 11. They handed in their coats at the entrance, greeted the head waiter and sat at their usual table. She tossed her hand bag on the next chair and sat down without waiting for her husband to pull out her chair for her. He sat down at his own pace and started looking around while uncorking the champagne that the waiter had brought to their table. Soon the show would start: acrobats, dancers, magicians, comedians, who toured the country staying no more than one week in each club. By 3:30 in the morning, they decided to leave and as they shook hands with the owner, he told them that another rectangle had been painted and that no one knew who the painter was. They walked to the outside where they expected to see their carriage waiting for them. It was not in front of the gate of the club but was parked in the lot next to the opposite house with the driver in a deep sleep on the back seat.

  Year 1961 - The Black Haired Lady

  The layered stories of how the painting came to be were now being circulated and passed on from one generation to the other in a manner that diffused their edges and reduced their clarity. People mixed between the bandit who jumped and the foreigner who was the original painter. The intervals were getting short enough for some people to have a direct memory of more than one artist in a single lifetime. In 1961, 21 years after the couple spent the night in the cabaret, a group of travelers from Syria were passing through Tripoli and saw it fit to spend a few days there, especially as they had heard about the Madrasa which specialized in the teaching of art and literature and which was a work of art in itself. They were made up of several related families. Amongst them was a young woman whose husband had died a few months earlier. She still mourned him, her mourning bringing out in her a radiant but sober beauty often found in bereaved women. She had black hair which she always pulled back. In its tight mass shone a few white strands. She had gray eyes that looked nowhere and saw everything. She prowled the night when everyone slept, the black pearl on her ring emitting flashes as she trotted the alleys like an untamed mare.

  One day the group entered a small tavern not far from the Madrasa. She saw its south west corner in the distance. In the darkness, the top two floors seemed to float like a castle in the night. Also out in the distance, a group of students and teachers were leaving the Madrasa, swirling around, often stopping, arguing and then moving on. They swarmed into the tavern and sat down at a long table next to the Syrian group. Soon the two tables started exchanging talk and a few turned their chairs around while others moved from one table to the next. The widow moved around the hall with ease and when everyone was overtly drunk, she fixed one of the teachers with a determined look and left the tavern with him.

  Up in his room on the third floor of the Madrasa, she asked him to devise a dancing ritual that he could enact in front of her. He twirled around the floor, she turned around him executing the opposite of his movements like two cats in heat. She then stepped aside and asked him to sit on his bed, his back to the headrest. She danced for him swinging her arms like snakes, twisting her hands around her wrists in a manner only easterners know. She undressed while in motion and still radiating her arm
s over her moving breasts, she put on his long gray Abaya7. She wrapped a wide scarf around her head and pulled it over her head so far to the front that he could barely see her gray eyes which reflected the emissions of the ring on her hand. She left his room taking with her some black and white paint and brushes. She descended the stairs in the night and found her way to the painting. She measured off an inner rectangle with her two slender fingers opening them up a little to preserve the same offset observed before. She completed her black and white painting before dawn came up. She left the Madrasa in a quick walk, the tails of her long Abaya flicking at her heels. She moved the hood back and let it fall on her neck. She placed her hands on the sides of her chest, pressed her breasts inwards one or two times and started searching for the group who had probably never missed her in the tavern.

  Year 1974 - The Drummer

  Thirteen years had passed and it was 1974. The Madrasa had one of its regular end of year festivals. A band was placed next to the painting and it had a weird drummer who shook all over as he plucked the most pointed sounds from his set. Two students arrived with a piece of plywood. They fixed it on top of the painting as if to protect it. In the middle a rectangular hole was cut out. An area of the painting that was two fingers smaller than the most recently drawn rectangle was exposed. They opened jars of paints of various colors. As the drummer drummed, they selected one jar at a time and poured out some paint on the snare drum. Dots were being flung at the exposed part of the painting. The festivities went on until the early morning light came out. When everyone left, they cleaned up the mess made by the scattered paint. They lifted the rectangular piece of plywood and left the courtyard.

  Year 1982 - The Dancers

  Eight years later, in 1982, the painting still stood in the archway. Two dancers split from a ballet troupe and rushed to the Madrasa. They dressed up in twin fashion and circled around the archway. They picked up brushes and paint from students who gathered to watch the performance and jointly measured out another smaller rectangle. They painted with rhythm, alternating their brush strokes to complete their rectangle.

  Years 1987, 1990, 1992 and 1993

  Painters came in 1987, 1990, 1992 and 1993. The rectangles were getting more and more elongated, but more significantly, smaller and smaller. By the time the 1993 rectangle was painted, it was realized that there can be place for only one more rectangle, the last rectangle. Architects and painters had already betrayed Phidias and now here was Fibonacci betraying him too. He was a mathematician who lived in the 13th century, in Pisa, out of all places. He was totally unaware of Phidias in next door Greece, but knew Arabic arithmetic so well that he wrote a book called Liber Abaci changing the face of arithmetic by teaching the Europeans to consider Zero as a number and showing them how to use it in computations. Later on, Fibonacci became better known for a number series that started with 0 and 1:

  0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, 233, 377, 610,...

  Each number in the series, excluding the first two, is the sum of the 2 numbers preceding it:

  and so on with the larger numbers in the series.

  The painting started in a year that looked like the golden ratio: 1618. The foreign painter came 144 years later, in 1762. The bouncing soldier came 89 years after that and so on following the Fibonacci series backwards:

  After the painter of 1993, something was bound to happen in 1994. I also knew that 1994 was at the heart of the betrayal when I found out how Fibonacci was betraying Phidias. Dividing each Fibonacci number by its successor, gave the golden number 1.618.

  As we move away from the year 1618 and approach 1994, the quotient oscillates wildly, sometimes above and sometimes below 1.618, eventually reaching infinity, or division by zero, in 1994.

  And this is what it looks like:

  Year 1994 - The Selected Artist and the Last Rectangle

  I circulated a rumor that the last artist was to come in the following year, 1994. The resulting hubbub was massive. Studies were being issued at an unprecedented rate. The painting stood in the archway, resolute and defiant as ever. You could see fault lines all along each superposed rectangle. It was getting photographed by tourists, students and aging professors on their third Ph.D. Committees were set up. Trusts, funds and estates were quibbling. The main worry of everyone was that the painter of the last rectangle should not surprise us like the previous artists did and complete the painting without the fanfare and panache everyone wanted for this very special occasion. This issue was resolved when it was agreed amongst many that a special evening should be set aside for the Last Rectangle. An artist would be selected to complete the painting and close the decremented rectangles. The selection process was as difficult as that of selecting the first man on the moon, but open to everyone. As the lists became shorter, fevers ran high until one artist was selected. A date was set for sometime in mid May as a tribute to that afternoon when the first artist sketched the first lines in the archway and I started this story.

  All along the archway, tables were set where guests would be seated. A special set of six tables on the left side of the painting were reserved for the earliest 6 artists including the teacher himself. On the other side, 6 other tables were placed for the most recent artists. One per table, the artists sat with their backs to the archway wall. The guests streamed past and watched the 12 artists and the painting on exhibit. Each artist was looking in a different direction, head hardly moving but mostly in the direction of the painting. The selected painter was brought in amidst tumultuous applause. When all quieted down, he drew in the last rectangle and completed the painting in around one hour with the 12 artists watching from both sides. No sound was heard. He descended the steps into the court. He turned around and looked back towards the artists. He bowed in deference to his predecessors. I was working over my computations. I stood up, pulled out a small sharp knife from my pocket, raised it high with its blade pointing to the sky as if I were about to lance it into the artist’s heart and, to his relief, walked past him and up to the painting. The beginning of the Fibonacci series was not 1, it was zero. This meant that in 1994, two events will have to take place: 1994 + 0 = 1994.

  One more rectangle was due.

  There was place for it. I measured 2 fingers from each vertical side. I knew that the two sides of the last rectangle would overlap into one line, a rectangle with zero width. A clean incision with the knife gave me the last rectangle. As I slit the 12 layers of paint underneath my cut, I felt a tingle run through my back. I pulled out the knife and stepped back.

  Did you expect me to flavor the story with a metaphor of blood dripping out of a wound? Or drops of sweat of perspiring artists? I leave that to poets. I am only a story teller trying hard to see the faults from the works.

  Meet the Author

  Akram Najjar completed a B. Sc. in physics and mathematics at the American University of Beirut (1966), Lebanon. While completing his requirements, he took all of his electives in literature and philosophy, subjects that never left him.

  He then completed another B. Sc. in electrical and electronic engineering from the Hatfield Polytechnic in England (1969). (Now it is the University of Hertfordshire). As for the Masters, he completed course requirements for a Masters Degree in Systems Engineering at the American University of Beirut (1972).

  1967-1968 and between University terms: he spent 6 months as a trainee with Standard Telephones and Cables (ITT) in England and later in 1968, another 6 months with Standard Elektrik Lorenz in Germany in the Telemetry Design Lab. In 1970, he started a 5 year job with Middle East Airlines as a Senior Systems Analyst in the computer center. During the first 3 years he was in charge of implementing large computer projects. During the last 2 years he was responsible for defining and planning MEA’s future computerization projects.