The Laughing Maus

By: Paul Torday
Phoenix paperback 2007
321 pages

Dr. Alfred Jones, a fishery scientist has spent most of his professional life studying the life cycle of caddisflies as they pertain to salmon until the day an email arrived announcing

“We have been referred to you by Peter Sullivan at the Foreign & Commonwealth Office (Directorate for Middle East and North Africa). We act on behalf of a client with access to very substantial funds, who has indicated his wish to sponsor a projet to introduce salmon, and the sport of salmon fishing, into the Yemen.”

A project which he immediately refuses as “unfeasible on a number of fundamental grounds.”

Oh but – let feasibility interest scientists, doctors and programmers all it likes, it leaves politicians and men of faith unfazed. Poor Dr. Jones is about to learn that there are not enough words in the dictionary to sway these men from their course. He explains patiently: not enough water, too hot, wrong food and offers a few prohibitively expensive solutions and trusts that his logic and values are scientific – thus universal and that the forces behind the idea (the Sheik) will see the error of his ways and cancel all further plans. This is a common (albeit false) assumption that science makes about the rest of humanity.

In fact, the Sheik is so impressed by Dr. Jones’ reasoning, that he wishes to meet him immediately. Dr. Jones is about to learn that feasibility is a fertile playground for speculators but nothing more.

Thus begins the delightful journey from page thirteen where Dr. Jones writes:

“Last week I gave the third in a series of talks ‘Why God cannot exist’, and I like to think that these talks in some way provoke the audience to question the superstitions of earlier eras which still linger on in the religious teachings that regrettably persist in some of our schools”

to page three hundred fourteen where he writes in his diary:

“Others aver that what Tertullian wrote was not ‘Certum, impossibile est’ but ‘Credo, quia impossibile est.’ I believe in it, because it is impossible.’

I like that. Don’t you?

I believe in it, because it is impossible."

I recently re-read the book Ecstasy – Understanding the Psychology of Joy by Robert A. Johnson. He puts forth the idea that ecstasy, in it’s most highest form is most easily found in absorption. Have you ever experienced the absorption of fishing a running river? This utter and complete loss of self and time while cold water flows over your waders and the sun shifts in the sky; while you you flick and cast, your eyes scanning the water, fingers holding the line gently, and you let go of everything but the rhythm of water, and cast, and float, and you disappear in the dappled light; then it’s gone and you pack your rod and go home.

If you have never experienced this then maybe you would have trouble understanding Sheik Muhammad’s point of view when he says:

“If God wills it, the summer rains will fill the wadis, and we will pump out water from the aquifer, and the salmon will run the river. And then my countrymen — sayyid, nuqqa, and jazhr and all classes and manner of men — will stand on the banks side by side and fish for the salmon. And their natures too will be changed. They will feel the enchantment of this silver fish, and the overwhelming love that you know, and I know, Dr. Alfred, for the fish and the river it swims in. And then when talk turns to what this tribe said or what that tribe did, or what to do with the Israelis or the Americans, and voices grow heated, then someone will say, ‘Let us arise , and go fishing.’ "

Maybe you even have trouble believing that fishing can change the natures of men. I don’t. I don’t doubt it for a moment.