The Islam Quintet

by Tariq Ali

  ‘Excuse me, Madame Auratpasand, but would you mind sharing with us which of Diderot’s works gave you such joy?’

  Poor Naughty was flummoxed, on the edge of panic. She wiped some sweat off her face and sipped some water. Bertrand stepped in adroitly.

  ‘You told me before that it was the Story of the Nun.’

  ‘Yes, yes’, said a grateful Naughty, ‘that’s the one. Brilliant, brilliant, very brilliant.’

  Yusufa persisted. ‘I like it, too. Which character did you most identify with?’

  This time Bertrand was prepared. ‘We can discuss Diderot another time. Now I want to ask, Madame Auratpasand, whether you have ever worn the burqa.’

  She nodded, as a sad look came over her face. Zaynab hoped a few tears might follow, but they were held in check, though her eyelashes flickered in an attempt to squeeze something out.

  ‘I was forced to wear it by my father when I went to school. I felt badly constricted. It was as if my brain was being compressed. After I was married my husband did not insist on it, except when other men, strangers, came to our house, but not when I went shopping.’

  Bertrand turned to Yusufa.

  ‘I started wearing a hijab only when it was prohibited in French schools and some municipalities threatened to make it illegal in public spaces. Now I quite like it as a gesture of defiance, or should I say freedom?’

  ‘Oh’, said Naughty, who had clearly not understood the reference, ‘I am sorry that you are compelled to wear it. Don’t you feel its oppressive weight on your mind? Stifling, crushing your thoughts?’

  In response, Yusufa recited a verse whose effect was so hypnotic that it even silenced Bertrand for a few seconds:

  I said to my rose-cheeked lovely, ‘O you with bud-like mouth,

  why keep your face hidden like a flirtatious girl?’

  She laughed and replied, ‘Unlike the beauties of your world,

  In the curtain I’m seen, but without it I’m hidden.’

  Your cheek can’t be seen without a mask,

  Your eyes can’t be seen without a veil.

  As long as the sun’s fully shining,

  Its face will never be seen.

  When the sun strikes our sphere with its banner of light,

  It dazzles the sight from afar.

  When it shines behind a curtain of clouds,

  The gazer can see it without lowering his eyes.

  Naughty was moved, even though she was not meant to be. Her unscripted remarks might have destroyed her.

  ‘So beautiful, Yusufa. So beautiful. Did you write the poem?’

  ‘No, no, it’s Jami.’

  ‘Ah, Jami,’ said Bertrand. ‘The Arabs used to produce such good poetry.’

  Yusufa corrected him. ‘He was Persian, and died in 1492, not long after the fall of Granada.’

  As far as Zaynab and I were concerned the young Frenchwoman had knocked out both Naughty and the referee. The rest of the interview was composed of set pieces, but Yusufa’s spirit shone through and Bertrand was discomfited and clearly annoyed with himself. The researcher who had found Yusufa was bound to suffer his wrath.

  As we went down to eat, Zaynab pointed out another triumph. Henri de M. had been defeated. The eatery had reinvented itself as Eugénie Grandet’s, and as we entered I saw that the portrait of Balzac was back on the wall, together with framed covers from many of his works. And the menu was once again emblazoned with a quotation.

  Zaynab now confessed that Henri had asked her to write a short book on Naughty’s rise in the world for his small but select publishing house. She had agreed. And she had met Naughty.

  ‘How did you manage that?’

  ‘I wrote a fan letter stressing our affinities and she wrote back suggesting we meet.’

  ‘Deception.’

  ‘Pure and simple.’

  ‘The results?’

  ‘I have the whole story, but Henri is joining us soon, so you’ll have to wait. It will be boring for you to hear it repeated.’

  I did not have to wait too long. Henri walked in and laughed as he saw how the place had been transformed. ‘This one you have won,’ he acknowledged.

  He, too, had seen the Arte interview and expressed his delight at Yusufa’s performance. He would try to contact her, to judge whether or not she had a book in her, but in the meantime he was banking on Zaynab to lift the veil on Madame Auratpasand. ‘Her response to the Sufi poem must have worried her minders.’

  I pointed out that it was a tiny lapse and they would soon correct it. If anything it had humanized Naughty a little. They could use that to their advantage. Henri took out that day’s Herald Tribune and put it on the table. There on the front page was Naughty, flanked by Bertrand and some of the pioneers in her own field, who included an uncongenial and bloated novelist, permanently high on his own fame or shame, whichever way one looks at it, who wore a crooked smile for the cameras while his beady eyes were unashamedly turned in the direction of the well-stroked Naughty mammaries (or mammas, as they are affectionately known in Punjabi, and immortalized as such, at least for his friends, by Plato’s song line in their honour).

  ‘She’s on course for two or three prizes this year,’ said Henri, with a maniacal laugh. ‘What will be the contents of your book, Zaynab? And when can I expect a finished manuscript?’

  ‘The contents are obvious. It’s her story as she told it to me. In her own words, but with explanations by me where necessary. In a phrase, the unvarnished truth.’

  Had Zaynab actually taped the conversation?

  ‘Yes, and with her knowledge.’

  I was astonished. ‘She trusted you completely?’

  ‘By the end she did. And we were wrong. She’s not a monster. Could have become one, but held back.’

  Henri, ever sceptical, inquired whether Naughty was aware that this material she had provided might be published.

  ‘As you will see in the transcripts, I informed her of this possibility and she agreed with a nervous laugh. Her only stipulation, also on tape, was that I warn her well in advance. She’s entranced with her new landscape, but has few illusions. I have to confess that I liked her. She hasn’t an ideological bone in her body and knows only too well that she’s being used, as she has been all her life. She wants the truth for her children, who will not speak to her at the moment. Bertrand wanted her to go big on this aspect of the operation: her courage is measured by the disaffection of her children, whom she has had to discard. Diderot and Medea in one. She refused. If her children were mentioned in any newspaper, the whole deal was off.’

  ‘This is remarkable,’ said Henri, after he had digested the information. ‘We’d better make copies of everything, and I will consult our lawyer when we’re ready. This could be explosive.’

  Zaynab handed him three copies of the transcript and three CDs.

  ‘You are a real professional, Madame Koran.’

  As I read the transcripts the next morning I, too, thought that Henri de M. had an excellent book on his hands. Naughty’s stories about everyday life with her husband and the generals, an unremitting account of moral, political and financial corruption, was of much greater interest to us than to Western readers, but her account of how she had been head-hunted by French Intelligence and seduced into her new role was a fascinating insight into the murky world of modern war propaganda. It had always been the same game, but new conditions and new enemies required new methods, and the land where the Enlightenment was born was perfectly situated to carry them out, much more subtle at it than the wooden-headed Dutch and Danes, who were rash and crude in their methods.

  Naughty had given Zaynab a detailed version of exactly what had happened to her. She had named names. The name of the charming young Frenchman, fluent in Urdu, Pashto and Persian, who had first established contact with her after General Rafiq was killed; the names of his colleagues at the embassies in Kabul and Isloo, who had informed her that her life was no longer safe. They had intercepted secret messages and
the terrorists had even hired a hit man to kill her. Later she thought this couldn’t be true, since she had, unwittingly, done the insurgents a favour. They had hated Rafiq. But by then it was too late: she was already settled in a hideout near Rambouillet, receiving crash courses in French and elocution lessons to improve her English. At least she would never regret that side of the operation.

  Then M. Bertrand entered the transcripts in the guise of her creepy television tutor. He taught her the tricks of his trade and while doing so made a sudden pre-emptive strike on the poor mammaries. She fended him off, but he never apologized, just shrugged as if to say, I’m a Frenchman and you know we all love women. She wasn’t unused to behaviour of this sort in Fatherland, but the comparison between her favourite military lover and Bertrand would certainly not enhance the latter’s reputation.

  If her account wasn’t simply a set of prudent falsehoods, then the principle reason why she agreed to the entire operation was financial. She had already netted a million dollars for the book and hadn’t had to write a single word except for her signature on the contract drawn up by her agent. The book was the result of a collaboration between a well-known Fatherland journalist and her French counterpart. They were paid for that only, but with the collateral money she had coming, Naughty confided to Zaynab, by the end of the year she expected to net a cool two million euros. This would enable her to live independently wherever she chose and perhaps even create the basis for a reconciliation with her sons, whom she now wanted to educate abroad.

  It was a situation in which morality had played no part on any side. Personally, I doubted whether it would be possible for Naughty to live in Fatherland again after all the publicity, but stranger things happen all the time and, who knew, perhaps Zaynab’s interview might help, but only if the new book caused the scandal we hoped for.

  Many people today know all about these goings-on, yet literary and other hacks fall into line without a word of protest, concealing reality under a veneer of fine words like ‘civilization’, ‘freedom of speech’, etc. Of those who are willing to write the truth, most reveal only a very small part of it, masking their revelations with such obscure metaphors and ambiguous language that the end result is tedious to decipher even for those of us who know; for others, it is simply unreadable. There is more than one deadly plague raging in the world today, but few can call the ills that beset us by their right names.

  Zaynab was working on her manuscript, and I was getting restless. She had some way to go. The interview had been conducted in a mixture of Urdu and English, and now had to be cleaned up and translated into French, after which Henri would read it and decide its fate. Meanwhile Zahid had e-mailed me saying he was back and wondering whether we might meet up one of these weeks. The present seemed as good a time as any. Zaynab protested feebly, then agreed, insisting only that she wanted me present when Naughty came for a meal next weekend, after returning from her triumphal tour of that Mother of all Fatherlands that is the United States of America. I promised not to miss this key G2 summit, the conference of two new authors. She hurled a sandal in my direction.

  The next day I went to see Zahid and met Neelam, who had arrived for a short stay with her children. She looked at me curiously, but was perfectly pleasant. I made my condolences. The children said salaams. The mouthwatering scents emanating from the kitchen were from the meal she was preparing for all of us. Zahid and I went for a walk in Richmond Park.

  On Confucius there was still no positive news. He remained in a confused state. Zahid had left China soon after seeing Suleiman in Kunming. His son was thriving and showed little interest in returning to the world of finance, which had already provided him with sufficient wealth to live without lifting a finger for the next twenty years. He was deeply immersed in history and was studying various phases of the Chinese Empire after the sixteenth century. Jindié was in Beijing for the duration. She couldn’t leave her brother, and Confucius had a large apartment where both he and his wife had made Jindié very welcome. It was obvious that Zahid, a provincial Punjabi to the core, did not really wish to discuss China. He was worried about Fatherland.

  ‘But we’re always worried about Fatherland. Has there ever been a time when we were not?’

  He insisted that in our youth we had had high hopes and that in retrospect all those summers in Nathiagali during the Fifties and Sixties didn’t seem so bad. I reminded him that while we were mooning after girls in the mountains, radical students we knew were having icicles shoved up their backsides, political leaders and poets were in prison and the debacle of East Fatherland was hovering in the background.

  He agreed. ‘But compared to later ...’

  ‘If we get into relative values, old friend, we’re sunk. I mean you and me. The country’s already down there.’

  ‘You heard about Jamshed?’

  I nodded. Our quondam friend had bought his way to high office and then been gunned down by a gang hired by the father of a young woman that both he and his son had raped. Jamshed was dead. The son was holed up in Dubai. Some newspapers maintained it was the terrorists, but nobody believed them.

  ‘Did you feel anything? Be honest.’

  I shook my head. ‘Nothing at all. I was indifferent. Compared with Plato he was worth less than a pigeon dropping.’

  ‘Same here. And yet, this was a guy who was constantly in our company, Dara.’

  ‘Half a century ago and in another country.’

  ‘Old friendships die, but some can be revived.’

  ‘Like ours. Though had we been friends at the time of your Republican deviation, harsh words might have been exchanged.’

  ‘Had we been in touch and close, that deviation might never have happened. It was herd instinct. Jindié nearly left me over that and the kids became angry and alienated. It was a blip. Nothing serious.’

  ‘And operating on Cheney?’

  ‘Don’t you start ...’

  We started laughing. Then I reverted to the days of our youth and demanded a complete account of life with Jindié. At first he resisted, but the magic of the Punjabi language got to him and he began to talk. Most of it I knew from both of them, but he was frank. The relationship had worked on many levels but never physically. He had no idea why, but he was sure it would have the same with me or anyone else. Women who enjoy sex can enjoy it in different ways with different men. Obviously, he argued, it is more intense with someone you love. The opposite holds true, too. Some women don’t enjoy making love.

  ‘I’m sad to hear that, Ziddi ...’

  ‘It’s the first time you’ve called me that in almost fifty years.’

  ‘Did you ever ask her why?’

  ‘Did you?’

  I was slightly taken aback. ‘How could I?’

  ‘I think you could and should. She might tell you if there’s anything to tell. I had always assumed that all young women are waiting for passionate love, but Jindié wasn’t one of them.’

  ‘Dai-yu,’ I muttered.

  Zahid was familiar with the novel. Jindié had forced him to read it in the early days of their marriage, and he had enjoyed doing so. He still thought of that novel. ‘And please don’t say it’s the only novel I’ve ever read. In case you’re interested, I even read one by you. Even though it was set way back in the past, I thought I recognized some old friends.’

  He agreed that there was a great deal of Dai-yu in Jindié. The swirling of passions but inability to fulfil them. No wonder Bao-yu had gone for the maids in such a big way.

  ‘He never went for anything in a big way. He waited for everything to happen to him.’

  ‘He reminded me in some ways of Anis. Remember him?’

  ‘How could one forget him? I know he was a friend of yours, but he was so affected that I never really liked him. Even the way he walked. As if there were something stuck up his arse. I was polite to him only because I knew your families went back a long way.’

  Poor Anis. Zahid’s view of him was quite common. It was also
unfair.

  ‘Listen to me, Ziddi. It wasn’t his fault his father sent him off to an English public school. Allah knows what happened to him there. There was an incident and he was expelled. He was gay. Had he been born ten years later it would have been fine. His mother was a paranoid lady. Spied on him when he returned. Bought girls for him. It became too much. Unable to face life, he removed himself from the scene in the only way he knew. Suicide.’

  ‘They were pampered kids, Daraji. They had everything. If he wanted men, what was the problem? Is Fatherland short on this front? I didn’t know him as well as you so I can’t say much more. How’s Zaynab?’

  ‘She’s well.’

  ‘Just well? Not thriving, not passionately in love with you, not successfully moving you from London to Paris? She’s just well. I see.’

  He always used to make me laugh. I did so now, but said nothing.

  ‘If you think the news hasn’t spread to Fatherland, you can think again. Everyone knows that you and Zaynab are together. I used to envy the fact that you had done your biological duty and returned to being a bachelor. It seems I was wrong.’

  ‘We live separately, but strike together. And, since you asked, her intelligence matches her beauty.’

  ‘Of course. How could it not? How could you go just for beauty?’

  As luck would have it, at that very moment my phone buzzed with a text message from Zaynab:

  When pleasure has entirely run its course it is clear one sinks back into indifference, but an indifference which is not the same as before. This second state differs from the first in that it appears we are no longer able to take such delight in enjoying the pleasure we have just experienced ... but if in the midst of pleasure we are wrenched away from it, suffering will result.

  I showed it to Zahid, who gave an appreciative whistle.

  ‘You’ve struck gold.’

  ‘She didn’t write that. It’s from Stendhal, whom I know you haven’t read.’

  ‘At least she knew where to look. You seem happy and relaxed. The children well?’

  ‘Yes. And the grandchildren.’