Incendiary Circumstances

by Amitav Ghosh

  "Ya rumman, ya rumman!" The beat was growing faster; the spoons were drumming out a crescendo on the washbasins. Glancing out of the window, I saw three young men walking down the lane. They had all recently returned from Iraq. Abu-Ali's youngest son was among them. The girls stole looks at them as they walked past, singing at the tops of their voices. They were hoping perhaps that they'd stop and join in the singing and dancing, as young men used to. But these three youths walked straight past them. They had small, derisory smiles under their clipped mustaches. They were embarrassed at the sight of their sisters and cousins drumming out a beat on washbasins while waiting for a groom who was going to arrive in a pickup truck. They had grown accustomed to seeing weddings with big bands and hired BMWs. They were savvy, street-smart in some ways—some of them could recite the prices of the best brand-name goods as though they'd memorized a catalogue. They could tell you what counted as a good price for anything ranging from a pair of Nike shoes to a video camera. If you'd paid a piaster more, you'd been had, someone had "laughed at you." The girls were going to be disappointed. These young men were not going to tie up their jallabeyyas and dance to the rhythm of dented washbasins.

  "Why'd you think the Americans and the British have always supported those son-of-a-bitch sheiks?" my friend the schoolteacher said. "Why do you think? Because it was the easiest way to get back all the money they spent on oil—it all went straight back to their casinos and hotels. And they knew someday they would be able to get back here through those sheiks, the sons of bitches."

  The girls were beginning to irritate Abu-Ali. He shuffled up to the window and yelled, "Will you stop that noise? Can't you see we're trying to listen to the news on the radio?"

  His voice was legendary: it shook the mud floor. The girls stopped their singing for a moment, taken by surprise. But soon they started again, softly at first and then louder, gradually. The wedding had been planned a year ago, long before the invasion. They'd been looking forward to it for a long time; they had no wish whatever to forgo one of their few diversions.

  "Didn't I tell you to stop that noise?" Abu-Ali ran out of breath, mopped his forehead.

  "He's been like this ever since the invasion," the schoolteacher whispered to me. "Taken it personally."

  In fact Abu-Ali had been lucky. His three sons, who'd all spent long periods of time in Iraq, were back in Egypt now. The youngest had returned just a month before the invasion. "People say that God was watching over him," his mother had said to me when I went into the house to see her. "They say, 'You should praise God for bringing him back in time'—as though I didn't know it."

  Abu-Ali had bought a Datsun pickup truck with his sons' earnings. It was making good money now, ferrying goods between the nearby towns and villages. He had also built apartments for his sons, all of them expensively furnished with the heavy, gilded furniture that was favored in rural Egypt. Still, there was one more thing he wanted: a car. He had been just about ready to send two of his sons back to Iraq when the war broke out. He'd even bought the tickets.

  "That Saddam Hussein," he said. "How could anyone know he'd do this?"

  I could have told him of a conversation I'd recorded in my diary on September 30, 1980, when I was living down the road in Nashawy. It was a conversation with one of Nabeel's cousins, a bright young medical student, about the Iran-Iraq war:

  I asked him whether he thought that after the war Saddam Hussein was going to emerge as the strong man of the Middle East. He said no, he never would, because Egypt's army was the strongest in the Middle East, and perhaps in the world; because Egypt's soldiers were the best in the world!

  I could still remember thinking about that exclamation mark.

  "That Saddam Hussein," snarled Abu-Ali. "I want to kill him."

  His youngest son came into the room and was amazed to see me. After the greetings were over, he said, "Do you know, I used to work for Indians in Iraq? But they were a different kind of Indian—Shia Muslims, Bohras. I used to work in a hotel they ran in Karbala. It's a great pilgrimage center, you know."

  I was startled: I had only very recently met a group of Bohra Muslims. On my way to Cairo from Calcutta, I'd had to stop at Amman airport to catch a connecting flight. I'd met them at the airport. They'd been stranded in Karbala for several days after the invasion. They'd been very worried, because some members of their party had American and British passports. But when they got to the border, it had been all right; the guards had let them through without a word. "We're Muslims," they said, "so it didn't matter." In Karbala they'd stayed in a Bohra hotel, they'd said—very well run, clean, comfortable. It was an odd coincidence.

  "Why did you come through Jordan at a time like this?" he asked. I explained that the trip had been arranged a long time back.

  "I traveled through Jordan too once," he said. "It was a nice place then. But look at it now. Have you seen the pictures on the TV news? They're frightening. That man..."

  "I want to kill that Saddam Hussein," bellowed his father. "He's spoiled everything." The thought of that lost car was sawing into his flesh.

  "This war's going to be a disaster," said his son, shaking his head. But he had a look of relief on his face: at least his father wouldn't be able to send him back there now.

  "Did you ever come across Nabeel in Iraq?" I asked.

  "Nabeel?" he repeated after me. "Nabeel who?"

  "Nabeel Idris Mustafa Badawy," I said. "From Nashawy."

  He thought for a moment and shook his head. "No. I didn't even know he was there. It's a big country, and there are so many Egyptians there..."

  A pickup truck drew up outside in a flurry of horns. The washbasins began to crash together, the women began to ululate. The groom had arrived. Abu-Ali paid no notice. He was shouting: "...he doesn't know how much harm he's doing to his country..."

  Many of the men in the room went rushing out to receive the groom. I slipped out with them, unnoticed. Abu-Ali was still shouting: "He has to be killed, as soon as possible."

  Everywhere in Egypt people seemed to be talking of killing. In the taxi out from Cairo, the six passengers had all agreed that Saddam had to be killed. But then somebody had added, "And what about the Man here? Hasn't he got to go first?" This met with a chorus of approval: "He's going to die, the Man"; "...and if someone wants to kill him, he can count on me for help."

  Never before in Egypt had I heard ordinary people so much as criticize their president in public, among strangers, far less talk of killing him, even if only metaphorically. I looked out the window, half expecting the driver to stop the taxi. But soon enough he too was talking of killing—the Iraqis, the Americans, Palestinians, Israelis, Saudis...

  It was as though the whole country had been startled suddenly out of sleep and fallen out of bed, fists clenched, swinging wildly at everything in sight.

  The fact is that it has been a long sleep, and on the whole the dreams have been good. So good that in the dreamtime Egypt has floated away from earth into the upper atmosphere.

  For the past few years the principal sources of Egypt's national income have been these: the repatriated earnings of its workers abroad, Western aid, and tourism. Oil and fees from the Suez Canal follow, but not close behind. Life aboveground—where most countries have their economies—has contributed increasingly little. A few decades ago Egypt used to grow enough food to feed itself and export some too. Since then, in exactly the period in which India and China have gone from dependency to self-sufficiency in food, Egypt has reached a point where it has to import as much as 70 percent of its grain. To pay for its food, it needs foreign exchange. And so tourism has become a desperately serious business, a matter of economic survival.

  Minds are hard at work thinking of ways to make Egypt ever more attractive to tourists, ever more fantastic. A year or so ago they hit upon the idea of turning a town into an opera set. Luxor, they decided—the ancient Thebes—would be just the right setting for Verdi's Aïda. It needed a fair bit of work to turn a real town
and some real ancient Egyptian ruins into an Italian's fantasy of ancient Egypt, but they did a thorough job. Luxor got new roads, new hotels, and miles of brand-new wharfs along the east bank of the Nile. The wharfs are now lined with steamers, often two or three deep: great floating hotels, several stories high, with many decks of cabins as well as restaurants, bars, saunas, gyms, swimming pools. They bring ever-increasing numbers of tourists to Luxor. Last year Egypt had about two million tourists. Almost every single one of them passed through Luxor.

  A very large proportion of the tourists come in the steamers. They are taken to the ruins and back again in air-conditioned coaches. The adventurous few take horse-drawn carriages. All the petty difficulties and irritations of traveling in Egypt have been done away with; the only Egyptians the tourists ever encounter are tour guides and waiters (the number is not negligible).

  Outside the temple in Karnak is a large notice, prominently displayed. It catches the eye because it is entirely in Arabic. The notices at the monuments are usually in several languages—Arabic, English, French, and sometimes even German. But in more ways than one, this notice is not like the others. It contains a list of do's and don'ts for Egyptian visitors—don't make a noise, don't climb the monuments. It ends by exhorting them to behave in a manner "appropriate to Egyptian culture." I read it carefully. It makes me think of my aunt in Calcutta, who wanted her money back after visiting the lion sanctuary at the Gir forest in Gujarat. "Why," she yelled at the travel agent, "they were just sleeping, lying in the dust like lizards. Shouldn't someone tell them that they've got to behave like lions?"

  I think of stealing the notice, but the tourist police are watching. It seems to me like an icon of the contemporary Middle East: something inestimably precious is found under the earth, and immediately everybody on top is expected to adjust their behavior accordingly. In this case the pipeline doesn't take anything away—it brings people in and whisks them through, hermetically sealed.

  In the evenings, when the cool breeze blows in from the Nile, the people of Luxor gather on the promenade along the riverfront. The steamers are brilliantly lit. They are a bit like glass cases at an aquarium: they seem to display entire cross-sections of an ecological niche. The strollers lean over the railings and watch: there's a honeymooning couple, peering nervously from behind the curtains of their cabin, people sitting at the bar, a trim old lady pumping away at a cycling machine, the waiters watching television. The best time to watch the steamers is dinnertime. The tourists file up the stairs, out of the bars, and into the dining room. They sit at their tables, and then the lights are dimmed. Suddenly "folkloristic troupes" appear, dressed in embroidered fustans, and break into dance. The tourists put down their silverware and watch the dancers. The strollers lean forward and watch the tourists. Egyptians watching foreigners watching Egyptians dance.

  What if the strollers burst into dance? I ask myself. What then?

  In the meanwhile the steamers help to keep Egypt's economy afloat. But it would take only one well-aimed blow to push it under—something that would at one stroke send large numbers of Egyptian workers back from the Gulf, put a stop to tourism, and halt the flow of ships through the Suez Canal: something just like the invasion of Kuwait, for example.

  Of course, then there would be an increase in Western aid. The $7 billion debt for armaments might be canceled (as it has been). There would be no need for an economy anymore. The fantasies of military strength would become real. The whole country would be a weapon, supported by the world outside. Just like Iraq was, for so many years.

  3

  Fawzia was standing at the door of the new house; she saw me as I turned the corner. "Nabeel's not back yet, ya Amitab," she said the moment she saw me. "He's still over there, in Iraq, and here we are sitting here and waiting."

  "Have you had any news from him? A letter?"

  "No, nothing," she said, leading me into their house. "Nothing at all. The last time we had news of him was when Ismail came back two months ago."

  "Ismail's back?"

  "Praise be to God." She smiled. "He's back in good health and everything."

  "Where is he?" I said, looking around. "Can you send for him?"

  "Of course," she said. "He's just around the corner, sitting at home. He hasn't found a job yet—does odd jobs here and there, but most of the time he has nothing to do. I'll send for him right now."

  I looked around while I waited. Something seemed to have interrupted the work on their house. When I'd last seen it, I had had the impression that it would be completed in a matter of months. But now, a year and a half later, the floor was still just a platform of packed earth and gravel. The tiles had not been laid yet, and nor had the walls been plastered or painted.

  "Hamdulillah al-salama." Ismail was at the door, laughing, his hand extended. "Why didn't you come?" he said as soon as the greetings were over. "You remember that day you telephoned from America? Nabeel telephoned me soon after he'd spoken to you. He just picked up the phone and called me where I was working. He told me that you'd said that you were going to visit us. We expected you for a long time. We made space in our room and thought of all the places we'd show you. But you know, Nabeel's boss, the shop owner? He got really upset—he didn't like it a bit that Nabeel had got a long-distance call from America."

  "Why didn't Nabeel come back with you? What news of him?"

  "He wanted to come back. In fact, he had thought that he would. But then he decided to stay for a few more months, make a little more money, so that they could finish building this house. You see how it's still half finished—all the money was used up. Prices have gone up this last year, everything costs more."

  "And besides," said Fawzia, "what would Nabeel do back here? Look at Ismail—just sitting at home, no job, nothing to do..."

  Ismail shrugged. "But still, he wanted to come back. He's been there three years. It's more than most, and it's aged him. You'd see what I mean if you saw him. He looks much older. Life's not easy out there."

  "What do you mean?"

  "The Iraqis, you know." He pulled a face. "They're wild—all those years of war have made them a little like animals. They come back from the army for a few days at a time, and they go wild, fighting on the streets, drinking. Egyptians never go out on the streets there at night. If some drunken Iraqis came across you, they would kill you, just like that, and nobody would even know, for they'd throw away your papers. It's happened, happens all the time. They blame us, you see. They say, 'You've taken our jobs and our money and grown rich while we're fighting and dying.'"

  "What about Saddam Hussein?"

  "Saddam Hussein!" He rolled his eyes. "You have to be careful when you breathe that name out there—there are spies everywhere, at every corner, listening. One word about Saddam and you're gone, dead. In those ways it's terrible out there, though of course there's the money. But still, you can't live long out there, it's impossible. Did you hear what happened during the World Cup?"

  Earlier in the year Egypt had played a soccer match with Algeria, to decide which team would play in the World Cup. Egypt had won, and Egyptians everywhere had gone wild with joy. In Iraq the hundreds of thousands of Egyptians who lived packed together, all of them young, all of them male, with no families, children, wives, nothing to do but stare at their newly bought television sets—they had exploded out of their rooms and into the streets in a delirium of joy. Their football team had restored to them that self-respect that their cassette recorders and television sets had somehow failed to bring. To the Iraqis, who have never had anything like a normal political life, probably never seen crowds except at pilgrimages, the massed ranks of Egyptians must have seemed like the coming of Armageddon. They responded by attacking them on the streets, often with firearms. Well trained in war, they fell upon the jubilant unarmed crowds of Egyptian workers.

  "You can't imagine what it was like," said Ismail. He had tears in his eyes. "It was then that I decided to leave. Nabeel decided to leave as well, but of
course he always needed to think a long time about everything. At the last minute he thought he'd stay just a little bit longer..."

  A little later we went to his house to watch the news on the color television he had brought back with him. It sat perched on its packing case in the center of the room, gleaming new, with chickens roosting on a nest of straw beside it. Soon the news started and we saw footage from Jordan: thousands and thousands of men, some in trousers, some in jallabeyyas, some carrying their television sets on their backs, some crying out for a drink of water, stretching all the way from the horizon to the Red Sea, standing on the beach as though waiting for the water to part.

  There were more than a dozen of us in the room now. We were crowded around the television set, watching carefully, minutely, looking at every face we could see. But there was nothing to be seen except crowds. Nabeel had vanished into the pages of the epic exodus.

  DANCING IN CAMBODIA 1993

  ON MAY 10, 1906, at two in the afternoon, a French liner called the Amiral-Kersaint set sail from Saigon carrying a troupe of nearly a hundred classical dancers and musicians from the royal palace at Phnom Penh. The ship was bound for Marseille, where the dancers were to perform at a great colonial exhibition. It would be the first time Cambodian classical dance was performed in Europe.

  Also traveling on the Amiral-Kersaint was the sixty-six-year-old ruler of Cambodia, King Sisowath, along with his entourage of several dozen princes, courtiers, and officials. The king, who had been crowned two years before, had often spoken of his desire to visit France, and for him the voyage was the fulfillment of a lifelong dream.

  The Amiral-Kersaint docked in Marseille on the morning of June 11. The port was packed with curious onlookers; the city's trams had been busy since seven, transporting people to the vast, covered quay where the king and his entourage were to be received. Two brigades of gendarmes and a detachment of mounted police were deployed to keep the crowd from bursting in.