The Silk Road Letters

The letter arrived in Tabriz on the back of a camel that had crossed three deserts to deliver it. Nasir al-Din unrolled the silk-thin paper with the care of a man handling something more fragile than it appeared, and read the opening line in the lamplight of his workshop, surrounded by half-finished maps that charted territories he would never visit. The script was Chinese, rendered in the careful hand of someone for whom each character was a small act of devotion, and it began as all of Wei Jun's letters began: Honoured friend, the road between us grows longer, but my regard does not diminish with the distance.

They had met once, seven years ago, in the great market at Samarkand, where Nasir had gone to correct his maps and Wei Jun had gone to sell bolts of silk the colour of new leaves. The meeting lasted three days. They argued about the shape of the world — Nasir insisted the earth was a sphere, Wei Jun maintained a polite and immovable skepticism — and on the final evening, over cups of fermented mare's milk that neither of them enjoyed, they agreed to continue the argument by letter, each sending his correspondence with the next caravan heading in the appropriate direction.

Now Nasir traced the characters with his finger, translating slowly. Wei Jun wrote of upheaval in the southern provinces, of a new tax on silk that threatened to destroy the smaller merchants, of hisdaughter's marriage to a man he did not trust. Between the lines of commerce and family, as always, were the questions that kept their correspondence alive: Have you corrected the position of the Caspian Sea? I have spoken to a sailor who claims the eastern ocean is far wider than either of us believed.