The Alchemist - Paulo Coelho

[Islamic Revival]

As-salam alaikum,

I've just finished reading The Alchemist. Has anyone else read it? I found it very interesting as it is set in Spain and then in Northern Africa within Muslim culture. There are many references to Allah (swt) and the Quran, and there are many words of wisdom which indeed are from Islam.

[Islamic Revival]

Here is an excerpt from The Alchemist:

A certain shopkeeper sent his son to learn about the secret of happiness from the wisest man in the world. The lad wandered through the desert for forty days, and finally came upon a beautiful castle, high atop a mountain. It was there that the wise man lived.

Rather than finding a saintly man, though, our hero, on entering the main room of the castle, saw a hive of activity: tradesman came and went, people were conversing in the corners, a small orchestra was playing soft music, and there was a table covered with platters of the most delicious food in that part of the world. The wise man conversed with every one, and the boy had to wait for two hours before it was his turn to be given the man's attention.

The wise man listened attentively to the boy's explanation of why he had come, but told him that he didn't have time just then to explain the secret of happiness. He suggested that the boy look around the palace and return in two hours. "Meanwhile I want to ask you to do something", said the wise man, handing the boy a teaspoon that held two drops of oil. "As you wander around, carry this spoon with you without allowing the oil to spill."

The boy began climbing and descending the many stairways of the palace, keeping his eyes fixed on the spoon. After two hours, he returned to the room where the wise man was.

"Well" asked the wise man, "did you see the Persian tapestries that are hanging in my dinning hall? Did you see the garden that took the master gardener ten years to create? Did you notice the beautiful parchments in my library?"

"The boy was embarrassed and confessed that he had observed nothing. His only concern was not to spill the oil that the old man had entrusted to him.

"Then go back and observe the marvels of my world", said the wise man. "You cannot trust a man if you don't know his house."

Relieved, the boy picked up his spoon and returned to his exploration of the palace, this time observing all the works of art on the ceilings and the walls. He saw the gardens, the mountains all around him, the beauty of the flowers, and the taste with which everything had been selected. Upon returning to the wise man, he related in detail everything he had seen.

"But where are the drops of oil I entrusted to you?" asked the wise man.

Looking down at the spoon he held, the boy saw that the oil was gone. "Well there is only one piece of advice I can give you", said the wisest of wise men. "The secret of happiness is to see all the marvels of the world, and never to forget the drops of oil on the spoon."



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A excerpt from "The Alchemist".

[Incomplete Perfect]

Assalam-u-Alaikum
I also read this book few months ago and it become one of my most favorite books I have ever read. as to view by the eyes of a common reader then it has the attraction of combinition of a Traveler's Story, Philosophy & Love Story and by the eyes of any person inspired with the words of wisdom the whole book is full of wisdom and by the eyes of a Muslim even the writer is Christian but the concept is totally Islamic. I like to share my feelings about this book here.
1. First thing I found in this book is that when you limit yourself in a little world your thoughts your aims your happiness and sadness also become limited. In other worlds your vision become limited. But when you come out of your limited world you see the world practically then your vision become broad and you see the world in completely different manner. and every practical experience makes you wiser and wiser then before.
The difference is clear between the time when the boy was with sheep and when he was travelling.
2. The second thing I found in this book is that never make short term limited goals the goals of your life. Make a broad goal of your life and divide it into short term goals. In this way you will achieve more and you always have meanings of your life that will encourage you in your whole life to do something. This is clear from the goals of ShopKeeper and the goals of that boy. and also the person searching for Alchemist and the boy.
3. The third thing I found is that books do give you knowledge and wisdom but way less then the knowledge and wisdom you can get from nature. here is again the example of the person searching for Alchemist and the boy.
4. Fourth and the most inspiring thing I found in the book that God creat this whole Universe for our benifit. The Deserts, The Wind, The Mountains, The Birds, Every thing around us are only for our benefit. Every thing around us every incident happen around us is the symbol for us for something 100% related to just our lives. God talk with us with the Universal Language of the World. This is the Feeling that brought you to the peak of bliss that you can talk with God. Every where around us every event happen around us are the words of God. He speaks with us He tells us the right path and He loves us Alot.
5: The Fifth thing I found in this book was that if you make a good Goal for you life God order the forces of nature to help you and send His men to every turning point of your life. Who leads you to the right path to the right way.

These are just a few of the things I found from this book. But this book contain a lot more that i can't describe in words.

Assalam-u-Alaikum

[tas]

sorry to say but this is not a islamic book....

[b chandrasekhar]

Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist
An Orientalist Liquid Modern Fable
B. C H A N D R A S E K H A R
Paulo Coelho’s best seller The Alchemist is a sensation in the literary world. It was first published in 1988 in Portuguese and the response was not promising, but its English version (1993) was soon listed in the best seller inventory in USA. Afterward, it had been translated into about 66 languages and found 100 million consumers that ushered it into the Guinness Book of World Records.

Paulo Coelho (pronounced Paw-lu Co-el-o) is a Brazilian Roman Catholic Christian. His novel pampers Christianity. In its Orientalist perspective lurks an element of degrading and subjugating stance towards Muslims. It articulates a penchant for individualism, and discards community bonds in favour of self aggrandisement that has been brought in by Modernity. It adores, to use the phrase of the scintillating sociologist Zygmunt Bauman, Liquid Modernity. In the backdrop of anachronistic pre-Modern setting and in the guise of incongruent pseudo philosophical sayings, the novel deploys an army of letters in the service of the yellow devil. He was honoured by the highest bodies of Christianity and capitalism.

I
There have been tensions between them (West and Islam) since the seventh century—that is, since Islam emerged as a political and ideological power able to challenge Christendom.
Rana Kabbani, A letter to Christendom

Santiago, the hero of The Alchemist, was named after one of the disciples of Jesus namely, Apostle James known as Saint Santiago Matamoras. The Saint proselytized people in the northwestern Spain and was killed in AD 44 by a Judaist Palestinian king. Christians believe that a few years earlier Magdalena appeared to him at a place in the northwestern Spain. The place was later to become Santiago de Compostela, one of the sanctimonious pilgrimage centres. It has received, by a Papal ordinance long ago, the religious significance that is held by Vatican and Jerusalem. In an interview to www.lifepositive.com Coelho said, ‘My turning point was my pilgrimage (500 miles on foot) to Santiago de Compostela’. After that he could realise his long cherished dream of writing the best-seller by publishing The Alchemist. Earlier his life trajectory was quite different: consigned to mental asylum in his teens by his parents, from where he escaped to become a hippie and propagated free sex; addicted to drugs and thereafter found himself attracted to black magic. And of course, there was some period in between when he worked as a lyricist in a rock n’ roll band.

What kind of inspirational kick does the name Santiago offer? Saint Santiago was not just a proselytizer. He was a warrior with undaunted courage and was accredited with the honour of fighting beside the King Romero-I in decisive battles against the Moors. Thus, he is celebrated as Saint Santiago-the Moor-Slayer.

People of Morocco and Algeria are called Moors in the West from times immemorial. Moors were North African tribes of Berber and of Arab descent. They invaded Iberian Peninsula (Spain, Portugal) and christened it as Al Andalus and ruled it entirely or in part between 8 AD and 15 AD. After the invasion of Christian kings from the North, the down fall of Moor Caliphate in the region dawned slowly. It was total with the loss of Granada province in Spain in 1492.

Saint Santiago – the Moor Slayer had been the inspirational figure in all the blood spilling and spine chilling battles against Moors. His ferocious image of killing the Moors riding on his white horse aroused Christian armies to kill enemies. Though, by the time of Saint Santiago Muslim religion was yet to come into being, in the later period as the Moors embraced Muslim religion, he had become a metaphor for slaying Muslims. Not just that. In 17th century the Spaniards successfully frustrated Papal endeavor to bestow sainthood on Sister Teresa, who proselytised people in the same region. Spaniards felt that only Santiago should be their saint. Thus, the Moor slayer has been associated with the Modern Spanish identity with all intensity.

The racist term ‘Moor’ was employed many a time in the novel to describe the Arabs. Though the expression was initially applied to African Arabs by Europeans, by the Middle ages it evolved as a synonym to all black (African) Muslims, and later, to all Muslims. It was continued to be used pejoratively ever since. Even in Portuguese, the mother tongue of Coelho in which the novel was penned, Moor means tanned. It is synonymous with black person in all Spanish speaking countries.

The hero of the novel hails from Andalusia, the hot-bed of battles between Christians and Moors. It is the earliest place conquered by the Arabs [Moors] in 710. After crossing Gibraltar Strait from North Africa, one has to step into that region to enter into Iberian Peninsula. The hero crosses the Strait, in a reverse order, at the Andalusian port city of Tarifa to enter into Moroccan city of Tangier. At Tarifa, he remembers the invasion of Arabs: ‘As he walked past the city’s castle, he interrupted his return, and climbed the stone ramp that led to the top of the wall. From there, he could see Africa in the distance. Someone had once told him that it was from there that the Moors had come to occupy all of Spain’’ [p.25 – all page numbers as per HarperCollins’ forty eighth impression of 2010].

After his hero entered Tangier, Paulo Coelho could no longer conceal his intolerance towards Muslims. It is writ large in the reaction of the hero on seeing the religious practices of the Muslims. In a busy street in the city ‘In just a few hours he had seen men walking hand in hand, women with their faces covered, and priests that climbed to the tops of towers and chanted—as every one about him went to their knees and placed their foreheads on the ground. ‘“A practice of infidels,” he said to himself’’ [p.32]. Here the word ‘infidel’ has no pliable sense—person of a religion other than one’s own, but it was used in the pejorative sense-- religious renegades, those who breached religious trust. The term literally means one without faith and ‘it was used by Christians to describe those who are perceived as enemies of Christianity, especially Muslims’ [The Free Encyclopedia, Wikipedia]. With all scorn in his mind the hero thought of the ‘infidels’ for they were immersed in praying their God.

The rancour is more palpable afterwards. After saying to himself ‘a practice of infidels’ Santiago remembers Saint Santiago—not as a disciple of Jesus, nor as a pacific Apostle or non-violent proselytizer: ‘As a child in church, he had always looked at the image of Saint Santiago Matamoras on his white horse, his sword unsheathed, and figures such as these kneeling at his feet’ [p.32]. The novelist was comparing the Muslims who knelt down in religious devotion with their fear-struck ancestors who stooped down before the Moor Slayer of utmost religious importance. The author has deployed a metaphorical language under the pretext of venting the memories of the hero. That is not all. ‘The boy felt ill and terribly alone. The infidels had an evil look about them’ [p.32]. How come the hero found evil look in the Muslims who were immersed in religious devotion? The author has the temerity of a hate preacher. To cull out the author’s lurking self I am tempted to risk a reference to St. Martin Luther: ‘Who fights against the Turks [Muslims]…should consider that he is fighting an enemy of God and a blasphemer of Christ, indeed, the devil himself….’ (E. Grislis, ‘Luther and the Turks’, The Muslim World, Vol.LXIV, No.3 –July 1974).

The novel exhibits racist tendencies towards even Gypsies. The hero gets frightened on seeing the Gypsy women, a fortune-teller. ‘People said gypsies spent their lives tricking others. It was also said that they had a pact with the devil, and that they kidnapped children and, taking them away to their mysterious camps, made them their slaves. As a child, the boy had always been frightened to death that he would be captured by Gypsies, and this childhood fear returned when the old woman took his hands in hers’ [P.11]. [Here, ‘people’ and his informants are his own people –‘The We’, and on the other hand Gypsies, a la Muslims, are the Other, who ‘had no flocks of sheep’ but indulge in travel. They do not have fixed assets and defy sovereignties and travel across countries and hence in the European psyche they have always been suspect, says Zygmunt Bauman elsewhere]. What did the hero do? Rather what was the course offered to him by the novelist to come out of the nervousness? Santiago did what he would be later doing when he got ill and terribly alone on seeing the Muslims offering prayer: ‘But, she has the Sacred Heart of Jesus there, he thought, trying to reassure himself. He didn’t want his hand to begin trembling, showing the old women that he was fearful. He recited an Our Father silently’ [p.11]. Either it was fear of Muslims or Gypsies the hero tries to get rid of it by invoking Christianity.

The hero even shows linguistic bigotry. After finding evil look in the Muslims the novel reads thus: ‘Besides this, in the rush of his travels he had forgotten a detail, which could keep him from his treasure for a long time: only Arabic was spoken in this country’ [p.32]. Of late several European juridical forums have been expressing similar irritation towards non-European languages by holding that they are non-tariff barriers on the free flow of capital and goods and thus to economic integration and globalization. Paulo Coelho nurtures the linguacidal view point of the Empire as his hero’s worry of Arabic is rooted in his treasure hunt.

The Alchemist is an example of the Orientalism which is an attitude of the West (Occident) towards the East (Orient) expressed in looking down upon it, and to reform and finally subjugate by overwhelming it. For Edward Said raison d’etre of European novel is the Empire: ‘The values that enabled empire and imperial exploitation also shaped not just the fiction writers like Kipling, Foster and Conrad but the novels of even those figures we rarely associate with imperialism, such as Austin, ****ens, Hardy and Henry James’. He proved in his magnum opus Orientalism that there would be no European novel had there been no imperialism.

The Alchemist is no exception since Paulo Coelho has internalized the values and the culture of the Empire. The language, time and setting of the novel and the subject-matter and its outlook are in accord with it. He has made the colonial parlance his mother tongue. He has grudge against Arabs but no grievance against Portugal for occupying Brazil and mutilating its indigenous culture, and wiping out their languages and gods. With Papal blessings the 1494 Treaty of Tordesilas pacified Spain and Portugal, the rival colonial claimants contending for the world domination, by vertically dividing southern part of Americas and confirming right to occupy the eastern part to Portugal and the western to Spain. The consequence was the invasion of the eastern part of South Americas by Portugal and christening it as Brazil. These had been the ruthless consequences that followed the discovery of American continents by the Spanish sailor Columbus in 1492.

Orientalism sees its Other as culturally inferior, uncivilized, ignorant and in the dark. More particularly it is suffocating in community bonds. The West is its opposite --culturally superior and civilized. It meant knowledge and light. It is the saviour of the Orient. These ideas convey hatred towards the African, South American and Eastern peoples in general and especially Muslims in the present global scenario. The hullabaloo of Samuel Huntington’s Clash of Civilisations is all about precisely that.

This trend has grown in the movies of the Hollywood with Delta Force, Indiana Jones series and in myriad TV serials this tendency has continued this trend with much vigour. True Lies is an irrefutable instance of this. All these depict Muslims as heinous evil doers prone to violence and this precisely, earns for them their ability to be exterminated. Black-headed Orientals (especially Muslims) and white heroes (especially Americans) fighting against them is the usual trait of these ill movies with a climactic brutal slaying of the Orientals. Coelho’s novel is no exception. But, the white hero of European origin fights no battles but subjugates the Orientals under his spell and continues his treasure hunt. Of course, his mission is also a civilisational one.

The Satanic Verses of Salmon Rushdie in 1988 heralded new wave of anti-Muslim sentiment in fiction writing, says Ismail Isa Patel. Though The Alchemist was published in the same year it gained currency in the years to come coinciding with the triumph of globalization and the military subjugation of the Muslim world by the Empire. It did the job of Salmon Rushdie quietly as well as rudely.

Modernity is the mother of racism of the Orientalist genre. White racism that was very elementary at the time of Renaissance has grown up with the rise of colonialism and spread its tentacles to the four corners of the globe. While attributing cultural inferiority to the Muslims Orientalism never keeps in mind their attainments -- the knowledge gained by them in astronomy and logic, their intellectual contribution in developing medicine as a science and their inputs in algebra. Orientalism is pure hatred. It portrays Arabs (for that matter all the eastern peoples) as slothful and inert who spend their time in the same place, incapacitated to develop and ahistorical and hence poised to be uplifted by the West. Their role in the making of history is negative. A la Santiago, the Orientalist Whites are quite aware of their potentialities. They are optimists. They feel, says Said, that they are always capable of defining their supremacy and the inferiority of the Arabs. Orientalism has grown in the hatred toward those who are outside to/ opposed the Modernity. The hero compares his parents with sheep, and in the Arab world-- ‘In that strange land, he was applying the same lessons he had learned with his sheep’ (p.42). Orientalism is not just the theoretical expression of the unequal power relationship in between the Orient and the Occident, it is its very originator.

The Alchemist runs a parallel world to Samuel Huntington’s as the Spain-born hero passes through the North Africa in search of treasure. One is Occident and the other Orient. Here Occident is the European Spain. Orient is African Morocco and Egypt. One is Western, Christian, white world (white is Coelho’s favourite colour and he started writing the novel after he found a white feather in a shop), and the other is the Muslim world, ‘Moorish’ (black) world. The first one, Andalusia (Spain) is green rich. There are no troublesome people in the region except the Gypsy woman. The Second one (Morocco, Egypt) is a sand stricken desert inhabited by ‘infidels’ who, to the chagrin of the hero, speak only Arabic. They are tribes who fight primordial battles without reason. Some of them are thieves and tricksters. All are community-bound, and rotten with ignorance and are to be uplifted by the white-skinned hero.

Santiago is the enlightener of the unenthusiastic crystal merchant who lives in the same place and experiences the same days. He shows path of development to the merchant. He is the one who whips up money-making spree and develops his shop. He teaches him how to live. With all gratitude the Muslim merchant says to the hero: ‘I’ll have to change my way of life’ …… “You have been a real blessing to me” [p.55]. Later, the hero remembers his accomplishment while leaving Tangier, and ‘he felt that, just as he had conquered this place, he could conquer the world’ [p.59]. In the next page he once again reminds his achievement: ‘He was more confident in himself, though, and felt as though he could conquer the world’ [p.60]. Later, he could perform miracles in the desert and astounds the Arabs under his magic spell. ‘For generations thereafter, the Arabs recounted the legend of the boy who had turned himself into the wind, almost destroying a military camp, in defiance of the most powerful chief in the desert’ [pp.145-146]. At an oasis camp he warns the Arabs of a impending danger and earns riches. His is a cosmetic cant of mission civilisatrice and suits Rana Kabbani’s remark in another context: ‘The image of the European colonizer had to remain an honourable one: he did not come as exploiter, but as enlightener.’ (Imperial Fiction: Europe’s Myths of the Orient).

Fatima is the only named female character in the novel. In Arabic it means ‘the one that is shining’. She was the daughter of Prophet Mohammed. Muslims believe that she is the mother of their Prophet and Imams. Muslim cosmology portrays her as personification of moon goddess and epitome of piousness. She is the counterpart of Jesus’ mother Mary in the Muslim world. What is the significance of Santiago’s love affair with Fatima? Is it not allegory of the dominance of the Western masculinity over the Muslim femininity? If feminine is considered as embodiment of nature, the novel ends up with the Western opulence subjugating it. Fatima assumes she was part of Santiago. “You taught me something of the universal language and the Soul of the World. Because of that, I have become part of you” says Fatima to him [p.92] and adds, “And I am part of your dream, and part of your destiny, as you call it” [p.93].

With all cleverness the novel brings in biblical characters. Through Melchizedek, the Biblical King of Salem (Jerusalem), the novelist preaches the hero of the philosophy required for treasure hunt. He presents him with two precious stones –Urim, Thummim who, according to Bible, express the will of God Jehovah. By introducing the king of Salem and the Biblical stones and Fatima (also a Christian pilgrimage city in Portugal) and of course by the Orientalist anti-Muslim stance Coelho has sent enough feelers to the Christian world for their owning up the novel.

The Alchemist has had its own impact on the sales of the novel in the Christian world. It evolved as an indispensable gift not only during Christmas but also on every festive occasion in Europe and USA. Paulo Coelho received special Papal honour in Vatican in 1998.

II

The sale of the sheep had left him with enough money in his pouch, and the boy knew that in money there was magic; whoever has money is never really alone. (p.33)
The Alchemist
This reflects the kernel of the novel and the philosophical foundation of its hero’s gold rush. Novel itself is his treasure huntsman’s travelogue. Though the theme is set in per-Modern era, evidently it celebrates the modern and liquid modern values. The popularity of the novel is a testimony to the blatant manifestation of the liquid times. Liquid modernity is the term coined by Zygmunt Bauman to portray the phase of Modernity of the globalisation era in contrast to the solid modernity of the earlier version symbolized in his view by steel and concrete where as the liquid modern metaphor is cyber space. Unlike in solid modernity mobility becomes the hallmark of life in the liquid modernity. Like Alice in the Wonderland if you want to be in the same place you have to run and to move forward you have to run twice faster than you are. Uncertainty rules the roost and loneliness and insecurity is all pervading. Life is liquid and it flows, melting all that is solid. ‘Like all liquids they do not keep their shape for long’. It assumes any form but can not hold it any longer. The liquid modern individual is confined and prefers to remain in his/her shell [self] after getting out of the communitarian bond.
In tune with the globalization, postmodernism declared the death of all meta-narratives. Of course, there are two exceptions -- globalization, postmodernism. The hero of The Alchemist has no illustrious goals. He just dreams of a hidden treasure and never cherishes any transformation of conditions of the world nor brings in any revolution of any kind to ameliorate the mundane suffering. We may be wrong in finding fault with the hero or his progenitor, but, we are at loss to understand how the progeny of this acclaimed philosophical novel does not even think of helping even a leper dog before or after finding the treasure. His hero is the one who has undertaken a selfish exasperating journey. He is an atomistic individual who defines the world for his own sake. Exalted in the novel is his expedition to become affluent by appropriating the hidden chest of gold and jewels. It is the readers’ turn to get beguiled by the dexterity of the author in mixing up this fable with sham philosophical aphorisms. ‘When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it’ (P.21). But, the one aspired by you should be the aim of your life. You should move towards the destiny following your dream with all fervor and should never give up the hope. Paulo Coelho mentioned this many a time as the leitmotif of the novel.
In the novel the author never says that the aspiration is a qualified one to be successful. It need not be a noble, respectable or upright one. No moral tags or normative taboos are attached. Melchizedek preaches to the hero that if the aim is yours—the one chosen for you by the universe, the soul of the universe conspires to make it happen. Don’t ask what is this soul of the universe and why is its intention a conspiracy. The king of Salem tells Santiago: “Whoever you are, or whatever it is that you do, when you really want something, it is because that desire originated in the soul of the universe. It’s your mission on earth.” The docile hero has an innocent query: “Even when all you want to do is travel? Or marry the daughter of a textile merchant?” The mythical king’s response is thus: “yes, or even search for treasure. The Soul of the World is nourished by people’s happiness. And also by unhappiness, envy, and jealousy. To realize one’s destiny is a person’s only obligation. All things are one …..And, when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it” (p.21).
Whether you are an atom-bomber in the World War flying in the high skies over Japan or an Al Qaeda militant hijacking an aircraft to attack Twin Towers or torturer in Guantanomo Bay or a NATO bomber in Afghanistan it is immaterial for the universal soul. It ‘conspires’ to see that your mission is accomplished. It cooperates with you in achieving your goal even if it were a wicked one. If you vie on dollar currency and turn out to be a coolie in the Cyber Valley leaving your motherland and parents, it is quite unobjectionable for the soul to cooperate. You are certainly a perfect match of the novel hero. The grate great soul will be behind you. You need not think about the economic crises. You are the sole monarch of your destiny in the company of the conspiring universal soul. What is to be done by you is very simple. You should not distract from your goal. Universal self is your insurer. You would soak in the dollar rain. If failure slaps, you must realize that you had not pursued the aim chosen for you by it. Believe! You haven’t dreamt your own dream. It is your personal failure. Failures are individuated and the success is universalised in the novelist’s philosophy.
What would be the course offered by this perception if two contrary aims are juxtaposed? Would the universal self conspire to get the opposing duo come out with success? Paulo Coelho has no answer. If we search a way out in the words of the leader of the caravan the whole basis of the novel would get deconstructed. To a query as to when the tribe wars in the desert would come to an end he replies that as Allah was on both sides the war might last longer. If the universal self conspires to realize the opposing aims what would happen? The author has not recognized this short coming in his ‘philosophy’.
The novel gives enough kick to those on either side of the Atlantic, the one in the race of Modern life and yearning to reach the shore of the Atlantic, and craves to be swept away in the dollar current. The selling of the novel rose with the raise of the globalization ideology. It preaches that one should be ready to change him/her self and reorient the self in the process of searching for riches.
There is uninterrupted mobility in the novel. It starts with the mobile hero driving his sheep in the Andalucian country side and ends up in his rushing towards his beloved after finding the treasure chest at the same place from where he started. In between he encounters several surprises. Being mobile is a trait of the liquid modern life. ‘Interruption, incoherence, surprise are the ordinary conditions of our life. They have become real needs for many people, whose minds are no longer fed by anything but sudden changes and constantly renewed stimuli. We can no longer bear anything that lasts. We no longer know how to make boredom bear fruit,’ says Paul Valery. The novel depicts this ideology.
The hero is ahistorical. He never feels affection for his native culture. Even if a little bit of it is there, he needs to distance with it to pursue his goal. He is an atom cut off from his past like his peers --modern individuals were born during the Industrial Revolution. For them past is a nightmare, a frightening bond. Freedom precisely begins when you chuck out of it. Father, mother, native village and its culture and nature --- all are a liability and jinxed. The more you are away from the past, the more modern you are. And of course you may employ the past occasionally to serve your modern objectives. Modernity has no past. Its very foundation is the destruction of the past. Mobility makes one move out of the past and adapt to modernity. The hero many a time derides village life. He comes out of his village with the initial aim to travel for the sake of seeing various places. But, soon it is modified into an expedition for treasure. He is mobile for yellow metal. To become rich is the avowed object of his devout long march.
Santiago has no good memories of his childhood. He never feels sorry for leaving parents and his village milieu. He thinks of his parents only in the context of what he calls monotonous life in villages where all days are spent in the same way. ‘His parents had wanted him to become a priest, and there by a source of pride for a simple farm family’ (p.8). But, he refuses to be so and opts out to travel across the country. His father says that foe the poor Shepherd is the only means to enable travel. He purchases sheep with the money [some coins] given by his father, and assumes mobility, leaving his parents, village and later even his country. He gets freedom from the community in which he was part of. Freedom presupposes the question where from, says Bauman. For the hero, it is from community and consanguine bonds. Afterward, everything is individuated and throughout the novel he has never been part of any community.

The affiliation of the hero with the sheep is liquid but not solid one and it is meant for his mobility. So also was his shepherdness. “A shepherd may like to travel, but he should never forget about his sheep’ says the king of Salem to him (p. 31). But, soon after he forgets the sheep and is no more a shepherd. It appears at one point that he had some solid bonding with the herd. He talks to them, he responds to their vows. He reads out books to them. But his loving relationship is akin to that of a modern with consuming goods and means of mobility like cars and motor bikes. He has only a ‘fleeting coalition and floating bond’ with the sheep. He puts them on out-and-out sale for procuring funds to his treasure hunt. His inheritance was initially transformed into a transport-friendly sheep and then into liquid cash. Thus, ceases his fragile corporeal bond with his family and village. It is also the end of his brittle bond with the nature. ‘It was as if some mysterious energy bound his life to that of sheep’ (p.4). And hence he writes away the account.
Having no solid relationship with anyone and ever ready to leave one bond to enter into another gratifying one are the striking feature of the liquid modern world. Whether it is friendship, love or commerce there are only, to use Bauman’s phrase, until further notice-relationships. Not only with the village, parents and the sheep but also with his maiden lover, anonymous daughter of a dry fruit vendor the hero had only such a liquid relationship. He worries that her memory might distract him from his treasure and abandons the route to her place. Earning riches necessitates discarding his lover. He nurtures justifications. ‘Maybe the girl had already forgotten him. Lots of shepherds passed through, selling their wool’. “It doesn’t matter”, he said to his sheep. “I know other girls in other places” (p.6). The author must have felt that deserting lover is a virtuous quality of the liquid modern. The tie-up with Fatima is also not solid than his yearning for money. He leaves Fatima and moves forward in the treasure hunt. By then Arabs had gifted him enough money and he can lead a comfortable life. Still he decides and continues in his dangerous path of treasure hunt. Desert women can wait unendingly for their men with obdurate chastity. Santiago loves it. Her chastity is his property. Nothing is left to remain solid except with the yearning for money. Nothing should be allowed to be a solid relationship causing impediment to mobility. Everything is liquid that flows eluding captivity and changing its form and course. Everyone is a mobile atomistic being.
Village life is anathema to liquid modernity. It is better qualified to be a holiday posture but not inhabitable for long. ‘In the village every day was like all others’ (p.5). For the daughter of the dry fruit merchant ‘every day was the same’ (p.26). While talking to her ‘he recognises that he was feeling something he had never experienced: ‘The desire to live in one place’ (pp.6-7). It is against the desire to be mobile of the liquid moderns. ‘‘His purpose in life was to travel’ (p.7) with preparedness for change (p7), ‘seeking out a new road to travel whenever he could’ (p.9).
There is no communitarian life in modernity. Society in liquid modernity is also a zombie category. The novel symbolises this as the hero is not made part of any community or society. This reminds the famous statement of Mrs. Margaret Thatcher in the British parliament in late 1980s: ‘Show me where is society? There are only individuals’. Society has been degenerated into networking, and human relations are reduced to the status of being in “touch”. Unlike ‘relations’, ‘kinships’, ‘partnerships’ and similar notions that make salient the mutual engagement, in a network, connecting and disconnecting are equally legitimate choices that are exercised by the hero. He has no friends except one with whom he has fleeting relationship that ends up with sale-purchase transaction (Hero keeps his sheep with him and later sells them to him). ‘The boy knew a lot of people in the city [Tarifa]. That was what made traveling appeal to him---he always made new friends, and he didn’t need to spend all of his time with them. When someone sees the same people every day, as had happened with him at the seminary, they wind up becoming a part of that person’s life’ (p.15). It is the contemporary city-style life which denotes the flippancy of human relations. Even in Tangier he has no in-depth relationship with anyone. The novelist designates the Salem king and the Gypsy woman as ‘solitary individuals who no longer believed in things, and didn’t understand that shepherds become attached to their sheep’ [p.25]. But the same is truer in case of the hero. With everyone the hero likes to have the same tangential rapport like the hero in the Kafka’s short story The Metamorphosis has with lodge boys. Having such marginal tie-ups is not a quandary to the hero unlike in Kafka’s story but depth in the relationship is. There cannot be any blending of biographies. This reflects the trajectory of human relations that moved from solid to liquid modernity. Either in Andalusia or in the Tangier with people the hero has only monetary relationship. He is in a cash nexus.
Liquid modern society is more consumption oriented than production oriented. The hero never comes across a farmer in his entire journey across Andalusia. On either side of Gibraltar Strait the scenario is identical. The novel mentions nothing about any production process. Shops, sale transactions, the materialistic hanker of the hero are the regular features the reader encounters in the novel. Buying the sheep and selling its wool to the dry fruit merchant, having contractual relationship with the Gypsy fortune teller, selling the sheep and paying money to the Salem king for his services, purchasing ticket to cross Gibraltar Strait, purchasing drink in the Tangier bar, shops and finding men and women indulged in buying and selling on the busy streets of Tangier, the commerce in the crystal shop, establishing tea kiosk and attracting consumers to the crystal shop---are the conspicuous happenings in the travelogue of the hero. Of course, there are the Arab betrayers, violent clashes and blood flows . All through the hero’s impervious gold rush continues.
The hero utilizes books as pillows and thinks that voluminous ones are better pillows. He learns more from the sheep than books, says the novel, but after he converted the sheep into cash, he has not learnt any thing from the books and if at all, only alchemy that is relevant to his treasure hunt. ‘He had attended a seminary until he was sixteen’ (p.8). Seminary training left no traces on him. His daily itinerary does not include praying the Almighty. He never counted any pious Sunday. He uses Christianity only to get rid of fears of the Other in his journey for riches. These are traits of the liquid moderns.
Being mobile and readiness for change and trekking new paths is the running thread in the novel. Change is not a natural one. It is quite achievable by the self, the individuated ‘I’ that is the driving force of the change. This philosophy is typical of Western individualism. Money earning is the anchor sheet of the preaching of the Salem king. The example given by the king to exemplify the role of determined effort without losing self confidence is also that of a person who goes on mining to get emerald. This parable inspires the hero more determined to pursue his goal which is again treasure hunt.
When his father had given blessing at the time of his departure, ‘the boy could see in his father’s gaze a desire to

[bchandra sekhar]

When his father had given blessing at the time of his departure, ‘the boy could see in his father’s gaze a desire to be able, himself, to travel the world—a desire that was still alive, despite his father’s having had to bury it, over dozens of years, under the burden of struggling for water to drink, food to eat, and the same place to sleep every night of his life’ (p.9). Here, the father works as a metaphor for pre-modernity while the son for Modernity. What the writer wanted to drive at is that the pre-moderns have modern aspirations but they got killed as they could not venture to realize them. Pre-modern people have animal-like craving only for food water and shelter and devoid of any pleasure. ‘They (parents of the hero) worked hard just to have food and water, like the sheep’ (p.8). This looking down attitude towards the villagers is repeated time and again in the novel. ‘In the village each day was like all others’ (p.5). Immediately he says to himself that in villages there was no change and every day is same.
The Modern atomistic individual sees money as compensatory to the loss of community. What the community gave earlier has now been replaced by the market and hence money makes him secure. The hero Santiago abandons his first lover as he felt she was a hurdle to pursue his treasure hunt. ‘The sheep, the merchant’s daughter, and the fields of Andalucia were only steps along the way to his destiny’ (p.27). He converts the sheep into money. Then the novel declares: ‘The boy knew that in money there was magic; whoever has money is never really alone’ (p.33).
The novel reflects anthropocentrism which is one of the greatest tragedies the Modernity had brought in. Essentially it distances humans from nature. The latter is used as a tool to serve human ends. Nature has no other business in the novel except to ‘conspire’ to enable the individuals realised their desires or dreams. Coelho’s novel exposed to the danger in defining the whole universe in terms of humankind. This perspective has enthroned the individual self that is freed from the community in the sovereign epicenter of the universe by dethroning the Natural/ Divine. Here community is not just community of humans but a community in which not only humans but also all animate and inanimate objects – all creatures, all the mountains, rivers and the flora and fauna, and also the mythical figures and the umpteen varieties of memories and instincts converge and co-exist. Bringing out the human from all this cosmic community and projecting man’s self and reason as the grand narrative is the act of Modernity. This has been eulogized as humanism. This phenomenal movement of man from nature to ‘human’ has been celebrated by the novel.
A former president of USA was caught reading the novel. Hollywood actress Julia Roberts extolled the novel. Paulo Coelho wrote about these in the foreword and he knows that the alchemy of the book selling. The Alchemist has become a textbook in several business schools in Europe and USA. Dreams are divine language, longing for money is fine, pursuit of money could be one’s legitimate life goal, and capitalism is quite natural: chief messages of the novel. Coelho is the real alchemist who could convert words into money. He is the invariable special invitee to all the Davos summits of World Economic Forum, the foremost organisation of the world capitalism. It felicitated him with its prestigious Crystal Award in 1999.

[bchandra sekhar]

Hi, friends, please send your comments on my essay posted above to my mail id--- [e-mail]

i am from AP., India. I am a lawyer by profession.

[activeht]

I don't think it really had any Islamic meaning in it, All I see how it distorted it meaning. The comments here are great. Clears it all up. PC presented the image of Arabs as violent, he infact stereotyped them. "They war of tribesman," "Allah is on both side." The war might be a reality but the later isn't. I read where the boy thinks, "There strange prayer" and then Prayers of "Infidels" "They had evil look." And after the chanting of priest they all kneeled down at once in the MARKET then ALL of them rushed away. Really? That doesn't even makes sense. Maybe Paulo should've done some homework on Islam before stating non-sense.

[R]

Nov 25, 2011 2:16:52 GMT -5 b chandrasekhar said:

Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist
An Orientalist Liquid Modern Fable
B. C H A N D R A S E K H A R
Paulo Coelho’s best seller The Alchemist is a sensation in the literary world. It was first published in 1988 in Portuguese and the response was not promising, but its English version (1993) was soon listed in the best seller inventory in USA. Afterward, it had been translated into about 66 languages and found 100 million consumers that ushered it into the Guinness Book of World Records.

Paulo Coelho (pronounced Paw-lu Co-el-o) is a Brazilian Roman Catholic Christian. His novel pampers Christianity. In its Orientalist perspective lurks an element of degrading and subjugating stance towards Muslims. It articulates a penchant for individualism, and discards community bonds in favour of self aggrandisement that has been brought in by Modernity. It adores, to use the phrase of the scintillating sociologist Zygmunt Bauman, Liquid Modernity. In the backdrop of anachronistic pre-Modern setting and in the guise of incongruent pseudo philosophical sayings, the novel deploys an army of letters in the service of the yellow devil. He was honoured by the highest bodies of Christianity and capitalism.

I
There have been tensions between them (West and Islam) since the seventh century—that is, since Islam emerged as a political and ideological power able to challenge Christendom.
Rana Kabbani, A letter to Christendom

Santiago, the hero of The Alchemist, was named after one of the disciples of Jesus namely, Apostle James known as Saint Santiago Matamoras. The Saint proselytized people in the northwestern Spain and was killed in AD 44 by a Judaist Palestinian king. Christians believe that a few years earlier Magdalena appeared to him at a place in the northwestern Spain. The place was later to become Santiago de Compostela, one of the sanctimonious pilgrimage centres. It has received, by a Papal ordinance long ago, the religious significance that is held by Vatican and Jerusalem. In an interview to www.lifepositive.com Coelho said, ‘My turning point was my pilgrimage (500 miles on foot) to Santiago de Compostela’. After that he could realise his long cherished dream of writing the best-seller by publishing The Alchemist. Earlier his life trajectory was quite different: consigned to mental asylum in his teens by his parents, from where he escaped to become a hippie and propagated free sex; addicted to drugs and thereafter found himself attracted to black magic. And of course, there was some period in between when he worked as a lyricist in a rock n’ roll band.

What kind of inspirational kick does the name Santiago offer? Saint Santiago was not just a proselytizer. He was a warrior with undaunted courage and was accredited with the honour of fighting beside the King Romero-I in decisive battles against the Moors. Thus, he is celebrated as Saint Santiago-the Moor-Slayer.

People of Morocco and Algeria are called Moors in the West from times immemorial. Moors were North African tribes of Berber and of Arab descent. They invaded Iberian Peninsula (Spain, Portugal) and christened it as Al Andalus and ruled it entirely or in part between 8 AD and 15 AD. After the invasion of Christian kings from the North, the down fall of Moor Caliphate in the region dawned slowly. It was total with the loss of Granada province in Spain in 1492.

Saint Santiago – the Moor Slayer had been the inspirational figure in all the blood spilling and spine chilling battles against Moors. His ferocious image of killing the Moors riding on his white horse aroused Christian armies to kill enemies. Though, by the time of Saint Santiago Muslim religion was yet to come into being, in the later period as the Moors embraced Muslim religion, he had become a metaphor for slaying Muslims. Not just that. In 17th century the Spaniards successfully frustrated Papal endeavor to bestow sainthood on Sister Teresa, who proselytised people in the same region. Spaniards felt that only Santiago should be their saint. Thus, the Moor slayer has been associated with the Modern Spanish identity with all intensity.

The racist term ‘Moor’ was employed many a time in the novel to describe the Arabs. Though the expression was initially applied to African Arabs by Europeans, by the Middle ages it evolved as a synonym to all black (African) Muslims, and later, to all Muslims. It was continued to be used pejoratively ever since. Even in Portuguese, the mother tongue of Coelho in which the novel was penned, Moor means tanned. It is synonymous with black person in all Spanish speaking countries.

The hero of the novel hails from Andalusia, the hot-bed of battles between Christians and Moors. It is the earliest place conquered by the Arabs [Moors] in 710. After crossing Gibraltar Strait from North Africa, one has to step into that region to enter into Iberian Peninsula. The hero crosses the Strait, in a reverse order, at the Andalusian port city of Tarifa to enter into Moroccan city of Tangier. At Tarifa, he remembers the invasion of Arabs: ‘As he walked past the city’s castle, he interrupted his return, and climbed the stone ramp that led to the top of the wall. From there, he could see Africa in the distance. Someone had once told him that it was from there that the Moors had come to occupy all of Spain’’ [p.25 – all page numbers as per HarperCollins’ forty eighth impression of 2010].

After his hero entered Tangier, Paulo Coelho could no longer conceal his intolerance towards Muslims. It is writ large in the reaction of the hero on seeing the religious practices of the Muslims. In a busy street in the city ‘In just a few hours he had seen men walking hand in hand, women with their faces covered, and priests that climbed to the tops of towers and chanted—as every one about him went to their knees and placed their foreheads on the ground. ‘“A practice of infidels,” he said to himself’’ [p.32]. Here the word ‘infidel’ has no pliable sense—person of a religion other than one’s own, but it was used in the pejorative sense-- religious renegades, those who breached religious trust. The term literally means one without faith and ‘it was used by Christians to describe those who are perceived as enemies of Christianity, especially Muslims’ [The Free Encyclopedia, Wikipedia]. With all scorn in his mind the hero thought of the ‘infidels’ for they were immersed in praying their God.

The rancour is more palpable afterwards. After saying to himself ‘a practice of infidels’ Santiago remembers Saint Santiago—not as a disciple of Jesus, nor as a pacific Apostle or non-violent proselytizer: ‘As a child in church, he had always looked at the image of Saint Santiago Matamoras on his white horse, his sword unsheathed, and figures such as these kneeling at his feet’ [p.32]. The novelist was comparing the Muslims who knelt down in religious devotion with their fear-struck ancestors who stooped down before the Moor Slayer of utmost religious importance. The author has deployed a metaphorical language under the pretext of venting the memories of the hero. That is not all. ‘The boy felt ill and terribly alone. The infidels had an evil look about them’ [p.32]. How come the hero found evil look in the Muslims who were immersed in religious devotion? The author has the temerity of a hate preacher. To cull out the author’s lurking self I am tempted to risk a reference to St. Martin Luther: ‘Who fights against the Turks [Muslims]…should consider that he is fighting an enemy of God and a blasphemer of Christ, indeed, the devil himself….’ (E. Grislis, ‘Luther and the Turks’, The Muslim World, Vol.LXIV, No.3 –July 1974).

The novel exhibits racist tendencies towards even Gypsies. The hero gets frightened on seeing the Gypsy women, a fortune-teller. ‘People said gypsies spent their lives tricking others. It was also said that they had a pact with the devil, and that they kidnapped children and, taking them away to their mysterious camps, made them their slaves. As a child, the boy had always been frightened to death that he would be captured by Gypsies, and this childhood fear returned when the old woman took his hands in hers’ [P.11]. [Here, ‘people’ and his informants are his own people –‘The We’, and on the other hand Gypsies, a la Muslims, are the Other, who ‘had no flocks of sheep’ but indulge in travel. They do not have fixed assets and defy sovereignties and travel across countries and hence in the European psyche they have always been suspect, says Zygmunt Bauman elsewhere]. What did the hero do? Rather what was the course offered to him by the novelist to come out of the nervousness? Santiago did what he would be later doing when he got ill and terribly alone on seeing the Muslims offering prayer: ‘But, she has the Sacred Heart of Jesus there, he thought, trying to reassure himself. He didn’t want his hand to begin trembling, showing the old women that he was fearful. He recited an Our Father silently’ [p.11]. Either it was fear of Muslims or Gypsies the hero tries to get rid of it by invoking Christianity.

The hero even shows linguistic bigotry. After finding evil look in the Muslims the novel reads thus: ‘Besides this, in the rush of his travels he had forgotten a detail, which could keep him from his treasure for a long time: only Arabic was spoken in this country’ [p.32]. Of late several European juridical forums have been expressing similar irritation towards non-European languages by holding that they are non-tariff barriers on the free flow of capital and goods and thus to economic integration and globalization. Paulo Coelho nurtures the linguacidal view point of the Empire as his hero’s worry of Arabic is rooted in his treasure hunt.

The Alchemist is an example of the Orientalism which is an attitude of the West (Occident) towards the East (Orient) expressed in looking down upon it, and to reform and finally subjugate by overwhelming it. For Edward Said raison d’etre of European novel is the Empire: ‘The values that enabled empire and imperial exploitation also shaped not just the fiction writers like Kipling, Foster and Conrad but the novels of even those figures we rarely associate with imperialism, such as Austin, ****ens, Hardy and Henry James’. He proved in his magnum opus Orientalism that there would be no European novel had there been no imperialism.

The Alchemist is no exception since Paulo Coelho has internalized the values and the culture of the Empire. The language, time and setting of the novel and the subject-matter and its outlook are in accord with it. He has made the colonial parlance his mother tongue. He has grudge against Arabs but no grievance against Portugal for occupying Brazil and mutilating its indigenous culture, and wiping out their languages and gods. With Papal blessings the 1494 Treaty of Tordesilas pacified Spain and Portugal, the rival colonial claimants contending for the world domination, by vertically dividing southern part of Americas and confirming right to occupy the eastern part to Portugal and the western to Spain. The consequence was the invasion of the eastern part of South Americas by Portugal and christening it as Brazil. These had been the ruthless consequences that followed the discovery of American continents by the Spanish sailor Columbus in 1492.

Orientalism sees its Other as culturally inferior, uncivilized, ignorant and in the dark. More particularly it is suffocating in community bonds. The West is its opposite --culturally superior and civilized. It meant knowledge and light. It is the saviour of the Orient. These ideas convey hatred towards the African, South American and Eastern peoples in general and especially Muslims in the present global scenario. The hullabaloo of Samuel Huntington’s Clash of Civilisations is all about precisely that.

This trend has grown in the movies of the Hollywood with Delta Force, Indiana Jones series and in myriad TV serials this tendency has continued this trend with much vigour. True Lies is an irrefutable instance of this. All these depict Muslims as heinous evil doers prone to violence and this precisely, earns for them their ability to be exterminated. Black-headed Orientals (especially Muslims) and white heroes (especially Americans) fighting against them is the usual trait of these ill movies with a climactic brutal slaying of the Orientals. Coelho’s novel is no exception. But, the white hero of European origin fights no battles but subjugates the Orientals under his spell and continues his treasure hunt. Of course, his mission is also a civilisational one.

The Satanic Verses of Salmon Rushdie in 1988 heralded new wave of anti-Muslim sentiment in fiction writing, says Ismail Isa Patel. Though The Alchemist was published in the same year it gained currency in the years to come coinciding with the triumph of globalization and the military subjugation of the Muslim world by the Empire. It did the job of Salmon Rushdie quietly as well as rudely.

Modernity is the mother of racism of the Orientalist genre. White racism that was very elementary at the time of Renaissance has grown up with the rise of colonialism and spread its tentacles to the four corners of the globe. While attributing cultural inferiority to the Muslims Orientalism never keeps in mind their attainments -- the knowledge gained by them in astronomy and logic, their intellectual contribution in developing medicine as a science and their inputs in algebra. Orientalism is pure hatred. It portrays Arabs (for that matter all the eastern peoples) as slothful and inert who spend their time in the same place, incapacitated to develop and ahistorical and hence poised to be uplifted by the West. Their role in the making of history is negative. A la Santiago, the Orientalist Whites are quite aware of their potentialities. They are optimists. They feel, says Said, that they are always capable of defining their supremacy and the inferiority of the Arabs. Orientalism has grown in the hatred toward those who are outside to/ opposed the Modernity. The hero compares his parents with sheep, and in the Arab world-- ‘In that strange land, he was applying the same lessons he had learned with his sheep’ (p.42). Orientalism is not just the theoretical expression of the unequal power relationship in between the Orient and the Occident, it is its very originator.

The Alchemist runs a parallel world to Samuel Huntington’s as the Spain-born hero passes through the North Africa in search of treasure. One is Occident and the other Orient. Here Occident is the European Spain. Orient is African Morocco and Egypt. One is Western, Christian, white world (white is Coelho’s favourite colour and he started writing the novel after he found a white feather in a shop), and the other is the Muslim world, ‘Moorish’ (black) world. The first one, Andalusia (Spain) is green rich. There are no troublesome people in the region except the Gypsy woman. The Second one (Morocco, Egypt) is a sand stricken desert inhabited by ‘infidels’ who, to the chagrin of the hero, speak only Arabic. They are tribes who fight primordial battles without reason. Some of them are thieves and tricksters. All are community-bound, and rotten with ignorance and are to be uplifted by the white-skinned hero.

Santiago is the enlightener of the unenthusiastic crystal merchant who lives in the same place and experiences the same days. He shows path of development to the merchant. He is the one who whips up money-making spree and develops his shop. He teaches him how to live. With all gratitude the Muslim merchant says to the hero: ‘I’ll have to change my way of life’ …… “You have been a real blessing to me” [p.55]. Later, the hero remembers his accomplishment while leaving Tangier, and ‘he felt that, just as he had conquered this place, he could conquer the world’ [p.59]. In the next page he once again reminds his achievement: ‘He was more confident in himself, though, and felt as though he could conquer the world’ [p.60]. Later, he could perform miracles in the desert and astounds the Arabs under his magic spell. ‘For generations thereafter, the Arabs recounted the legend of the boy who had turned himself into the wind, almost destroying a military camp, in defiance of the most powerful chief in the desert’ [pp.145-146]. At an oasis camp he warns the Arabs of a impending danger and earns riches. His is a cosmetic cant of mission civilisatrice and suits Rana Kabbani’s remark in another context: ‘The image of the European colonizer had to remain an honourable one: he did not come as exploiter, but as enlightener.’ (Imperial Fiction: Europe’s Myths of the Orient).

Fatima is the only named female character in the novel. In Arabic it means ‘the one that is shining’. She was the daughter of Prophet Mohammed. Muslims believe that she is the mother of their Prophet and Imams. Muslim cosmology portrays her as personification of moon goddess and epitome of piousness. She is the counterpart of Jesus’ mother Mary in the Muslim world. What is the significance of Santiago’s love affair with Fatima? Is it not allegory of the dominance of the Western masculinity over the Muslim femininity? If feminine is considered as embodiment of nature, the novel ends up with the Western opulence subjugating it. Fatima assumes she was part of Santiago. “You taught me something of the universal language and the Soul of the World. Because of that, I have become part of you” says Fatima to him [p.92] and adds, “And I am part of your dream, and part of your destiny, as you call it” [p.93].

With all cleverness the novel brings in biblical characters. Through Melchizedek, the Biblical King of Salem (Jerusalem), the novelist preaches the hero of the philosophy required for treasure hunt. He presents him with two precious stones –Urim, Thummim who, according to Bible, express the will of God Jehovah. By introducing the king of Salem and the Biblical stones and Fatima (also a Christian pilgrimage city in Portugal) and of course by the Orientalist anti-Muslim stance Coelho has sent enough feelers to the Christian world for their owning up the novel.

The Alchemist has had its own impact on the sales of the novel in the Christian world. It evolved as an indispensable gift not only during Christmas but also on every festive occasion in Europe and USA. Paulo Coelho received special Papal honour in Vatican in 1998.

II

The sale of the sheep had left him with enough money in his pouch, and the boy knew that in money there was magic; whoever has money is never really alone. (p.33)
The Alchemist
This reflects the kernel of the novel and the philosophical foundation of its hero’s gold rush. Novel itself is his treasure huntsman’s travelogue. Though the theme is set in per-Modern era, evidently it celebrates the modern and liquid modern values. The popularity of the novel is a testimony to the blatant manifestation of the liquid times. Liquid modernity is the term coined by Zygmunt Bauman to portray the phase of Modernity of the globalisation era in contrast to the solid modernity of the earlier version symbolized in his view by steel and concrete where as the liquid modern metaphor is cyber space. Unlike in solid modernity mobility becomes the hallmark of life in the liquid modernity. Like Alice in the Wonderland if you want to be in the same place you have to run and to move forward you have to run twice faster than you are. Uncertainty rules the roost and loneliness and insecurity is all pervading. Life is liquid and it flows, melting all that is solid. ‘Like all liquids they do not keep their shape for long’. It assumes any form but can not hold it any longer. The liquid modern individual is confined and prefers to remain in his/her shell [self] after getting out of the communitarian bond.
In tune with the globalization, postmodernism declared the death of all meta-narratives. Of course, there are two exceptions -- globalization, postmodernism. The hero of The Alchemist has no illustrious goals. He just dreams of a hidden treasure and never cherishes any transformation of conditions of the world nor brings in any revolution of any kind to ameliorate the mundane suffering. We may be wrong in finding fault with the hero or his progenitor, but, we are at loss to understand how the progeny of this acclaimed philosophical novel does not even think of helping even a leper dog before or after finding the treasure. His hero is the one who has undertaken a selfish exasperating journey. He is an atomistic individual who defines the world for his own sake. Exalted in the novel is his expedition to become affluent by appropriating the hidden chest of gold and jewels. It is the readers’ turn to get beguiled by the dexterity of the author in mixing up this fable with sham philosophical aphorisms. ‘When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it’ (P.21). But, the one aspired by you should be the aim of your life. You should move towards the destiny following your dream with all fervor and should never give up the hope. Paulo Coelho mentioned this many a time as the leitmotif of the novel.
In the novel the author never says that the aspiration is a qualified one to be successful. It need not be a noble, respectable or upright one. No moral tags or normative taboos are attached. Melchizedek preaches to the hero that if the aim is yours—the one chosen for you by the universe, the soul of the universe conspires to make it happen. Don’t ask what is this soul of the universe and why is its intention a conspiracy. The king of Salem tells Santiago: “Whoever you are, or whatever it is that you do, when you really want something, it is because that desire originated in the soul of the universe. It’s your mission on earth.” The docile hero has an innocent query: “Even when all you want to do is travel? Or marry the daughter of a textile merchant?” The mythical king’s response is thus: “yes, or even search for treasure. The Soul of the World is nourished by people’s happiness. And also by unhappiness, envy, and jealousy. To realize one’s destiny is a person’s only obligation. All things are one …..And, when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it” (p.21).
Whether you are an atom-bomber in the World War flying in the high skies over Japan or an Al Qaeda militant hijacking an aircraft to attack Twin Towers or torturer in Guantanomo Bay or a NATO bomber in Afghanistan it is immaterial for the universal soul. It ‘conspires’ to see that your mission is accomplished. It cooperates with you in achieving your goal even if it were a wicked one. If you vie on dollar currency and turn out to be a coolie in the Cyber Valley leaving your motherland and parents, it is quite unobjectionable for the soul to cooperate. You are certainly a perfect match of the novel hero. The grate great soul will be behind you. You need not think about the economic crises. You are the sole monarch of your destiny in the company of the conspiring universal soul. What is to be done by you is very simple. You should not distract from your goal. Universal self is your insurer. You would soak in the dollar rain. If failure slaps, you must realize that you had not pursued the aim chosen for you by it. Believe! You haven’t dreamt your own dream. It is your personal failure. Failures are individuated and the success is universalised in the novelist’s philosophy.
What would be the course offered by this perception if two contrary aims are juxtaposed? Would the universal self conspire to get the opposing duo come out with success? Paulo Coelho has no answer. If we search a way out in the words of the leader of the caravan the whole basis of the novel would get deconstructed. To a query as to when the tribe wars in the desert would come to an end he replies that as Allah was on both sides the war might last longer. If the universal self conspires to realize the opposing aims what would happen? The author has not recognized this short coming in his ‘philosophy’.
The novel gives enough kick to those on either side of the Atlantic, the one in the race of Modern life and yearning to reach the shore of the Atlantic, and craves to be swept away in the dollar current. The selling of the novel rose with the raise of the globalization ideology. It preaches that one should be ready to change him/her self and reorient the self in the process of searching for riches.
There is uninterrupted mobility in the novel. It starts with the mobile hero driving his sheep in the Andalucian country side and ends up in his rushing towards his beloved after finding the treasure chest at the same place from where he started. In between he encounters several surprises. Being mobile is a trait of the liquid modern life. ‘Interruption, incoherence, surprise are the ordinary conditions of our life. They have become real needs for many people, whose minds are no longer fed by anything but sudden changes and constantly renewed stimuli. We can no longer bear anything that lasts. We no longer know how to make boredom bear fruit,’ says Paul Valery. The novel depicts this ideology.
The hero is ahistorical. He never feels affection for his native culture. Even if a little bit of it is there, he needs to distance with it to pursue his goal. He is an atom cut off from his past like his peers --modern individuals were born during the Industrial Revolution. For them past is a nightmare, a frightening bond. Freedom precisely begins when you chuck out of it. Father, mother, native village and its culture and nature --- all are a liability and jinxed. The more you are away from the past, the more modern you are. And of course you may employ the past occasionally to serve your modern objectives. Modernity has no past. Its very foundation is the destruction of the past. Mobility makes one move out of the past and adapt to modernity. The hero many a time derides village life. He comes out of his village with the initial aim to travel for the sake of seeing various places. But, soon it is modified into an expedition for treasure. He is mobile for yellow metal. To become rich is the avowed object of his devout long march.
Santiago has no good memories of his childhood. He never feels sorry for leaving parents and his village milieu. He thinks of his parents only in the context of what he calls monotonous life in villages where all days are spent in the same way. ‘His parents had wanted him to become a priest, and there by a source of pride for a simple farm family’ (p.8). But, he refuses to be so and opts out to travel across the country. His father says that foe the poor Shepherd is the only means to enable travel. He purchases sheep with the money [some coins] given by his father, and assumes mobility, leaving his parents, village and later even his country. He gets freedom from the community in which he was part of. Freedom presupposes the question where from, says Bauman. For the hero, it is from community and consanguine bonds. Afterward, everything is individuated and throughout the novel he has never been part of any community.

The affiliation of the hero with the sheep is liquid but not solid one and it is meant for his mobility. So also was his shepherdness. “A shepherd may like to travel, but he should never forget about his sheep’ says the king of Salem to him (p. 31). But, soon after he forgets the sheep and is no more a shepherd. It appears at one point that he had some solid bonding with the herd. He talks to them, he responds to their vows. He reads out books to them. But his loving relationship is akin to that of a modern with consuming goods and means of mobility like cars and motor bikes. He has only a ‘fleeting coalition and floating bond’ with the sheep. He puts them on out-and-out sale for procuring funds to his treasure hunt. His inheritance was initially transformed into a transport-friendly sheep and then into liquid cash. Thus, ceases his fragile corporeal bond with his family and village. It is also the end of his brittle bond with the nature. ‘It was as if some mysterious energy bound his life to that of sheep’ (p.4). And hence he writes away the account.
Having no solid relationship with anyone and ever ready to leave one bond to enter into another gratifying one are the striking feature of the liquid modern world. Whether it is friendship, love or commerce there are only, to use Bauman’s phrase, until further notice-relationships. Not only with the village, parents and the sheep but also with his maiden lover, anonymous daughter of a dry fruit vendor the hero had only such a liquid relationship. He worries that her memory might distract him from his treasure and abandons the route to her place. Earning riches necessitates discarding his lover. He nurtures justifications. ‘Maybe the girl had already forgotten him. Lots of shepherds passed through, selling their wool’. “It doesn’t matter”, he said to his sheep. “I know other girls in other places” (p.6). The author must have felt that deserting lover is a virtuous quality of the liquid modern. The tie-up with Fatima is also not solid than his yearning for money. He leaves Fatima and moves forward in the treasure hunt. By then Arabs had gifted him enough money and he can lead a comfortable life. Still he decides and continues in his dangerous path of treasure hunt. Desert women can wait unendingly for their men with obdurate chastity. Santiago loves it. Her chastity is his property. Nothing is left to remain solid except with the yearning for money. Nothing should be allowed to be a solid relationship causing impediment to mobility. Everything is liquid that flows eluding captivity and changing its form and course. Everyone is a mobile atomistic being.
Village life is anathema to liquid modernity. It is better qualified to be a holiday posture but not inhabitable for long. ‘In the village every day was like all others’ (p.5). For the daughter of the dry fruit merchant ‘every day was the same’ (p.26). While talking to her ‘he recognises that he was feeling something he had never experienced: ‘The desire to live in one place’ (pp.6-7). It is against the desire to be mobile of the liquid moderns. ‘‘His purpose in life was to travel’ (p.7) with preparedness for change (p7), ‘seeking out a new road to travel whenever he could’ (p.9).
There is no communitarian life in modernity. Society in liquid modernity is also a zombie category. The novel symbolises this as the hero is not made part of any community or society. This reminds the famous statement of Mrs. Margaret Thatcher in the British parliament in late 1980s: ‘Show me where is society? There are only individuals’. Society has been degenerated into networking, and human relations are reduced to the status of being in “touch”. Unlike ‘relations’, ‘kinships’, ‘partnerships’ and similar notions that make salient the mutual engagement, in a network, connecting and disconnecting are equally legitimate choices that are exercised by the hero. He has no friends except one with whom he has fleeting relationship that ends up with sale-purchase transaction (Hero keeps his sheep with him and later sells them to him). ‘The boy knew a lot of people in the city [Tarifa]. That was what made traveling appeal to him---he always made new friends, and he didn’t need to spend all of his time with them. When someone sees the same people every day, as had happened with him at the seminary, they wind up becoming a part of that person’s life’ (p.15). It is the contemporary city-style life which denotes the flippancy of human relations. Even in Tangier he has no in-depth relationship with anyone. The novelist designates the Salem king and the Gypsy woman as ‘solitary individuals who no longer believed in things, and didn’t understand that shepherds become attached to their sheep’ [p.25]. But the same is truer in case of the hero. With everyone the hero likes to have the same tangential rapport like the hero in the Kafka’s short story The Metamorphosis has with lodge boys. Having such marginal tie-ups is not a quandary to the hero unlike in Kafka’s story but depth in the relationship is. There cannot be any blending of biographies. This reflects the trajectory of human relations that moved from solid to liquid modernity. Either in Andalusia or in the Tangier with people the hero has only monetary relationship. He is in a cash nexus.
Liquid modern society is more consumption oriented than production oriented. The hero never comes across a farmer in his entire journey across Andalusia. On either side of Gibraltar Strait the scenario is identical. The novel mentions nothing about any production process. Shops, sale transactions, the materialistic hanker of the hero are the regular features the reader encounters in the novel. Buying the sheep and selling its wool to the dry fruit merchant, having contractual relationship with the Gypsy fortune teller, selling the sheep and paying money to the Salem king for his services, purchasing ticket to cross Gibraltar Strait, purchasing drink in the Tangier bar, shops and finding men and women indulged in buying and selling on the busy streets of Tangier, the commerce in the crystal shop, establishing tea kiosk and attracting consumers to the crystal shop---are the conspicuous happenings in the travelogue of the hero. Of course, there are the Arab betrayers, violent clashes and blood flows . All through the hero’s impervious gold rush continues.
The hero utilizes books as pillows and thinks that voluminous ones are better pillows. He learns more from the sheep than books, says the novel, but after he converted the sheep into cash, he has not learnt any thing from the books and if at all, only alchemy that is relevant to his treasure hunt. ‘He had attended a seminary until he was sixteen’ (p.8). Seminary training left no traces on him. His daily itinerary does not include praying the Almighty. He never counted any pious Sunday. He uses Christianity only to get rid of fears of the Other in his journey for riches. These are traits of the liquid moderns.
Being mobile and readiness for change and trekking new paths is the running thread in the novel. Change is not a natural one. It is quite achievable by the self, the individuated ‘I’ that is the driving force of the change. This philosophy is typical of Western individualism. Money earning is the anchor sheet of the preaching of the Salem king. The example given by the king to exemplify the role of determined effort without losing self confidence is also that of a person who goes on mining to get emerald. This parable inspires the hero more determined to pursue his goal which is again treasure hunt.
When his father had given blessing at the time of his departure, ‘the boy could see in his father’s gaze a desire to