by Amitav Ghosh
Then the old Malik died and Musa died, and one day the Mawali found themselves not quite as welcome in the Fort as they had been in the past. So they moved, not into the town, because the townspeople still looked on them with suspicion as strangers of uncertain provenance, but into an empty sandflat which people called the Severed Head. They built themselves barasti huts, spacious airy dwellings, built with palm fronds and wooden stakes, and they installed their looms and lived and worked in proud penury.
It was Hajj Fahmy who changed all that. He saw the first oilmen coming into al-Ghazira, and he knew at once that the Mawali could profit from the future. Against all his instincts, he stopped teaching his craft to his sons and his kinsmen, and told them to be ready to learn other trades. When the oil began to gush, Hajj Fahmy was the only man in al-Ghazira who was ready for it. Within a few years one of his sons was in the construction business and making more money than he could count; another had three Datsun trucks which were never short of work (it was he who died when he drove one of his trucks off the embankment); a third had filled every Mawali with pride by going to Alexandria to study medicine.
But Isma’il, Hajj Fahmy’s fourth son, did nothing at all. He had no skill at weaving, and though he talked occasionally of learning plumbing no one took him seriously. He was known to be unusually dim-witted, more or less an idiot. He spent his days wandering about the Ras, talking to people and wandering into whichever shack took his fancy for his meals. Yet, of all his sons, Isma’il was the dearest to Hajj Fahmy. He wouldn’t hear of his wife’s plans to push him into a trade. We have enough, he said. Isma’il helps us live with it in peace.
Soon after Hajj Fahmy and the other Mawali families began to make money, they tore down their barasti huts and built themselves large, strong houses of brick and cement. At the time, some of the Mawali had said to Hajj Fahmy: Why don’t we leave the Ras and its stinking beaches, and go into the city?
Never, Hajj Fahmy had answered. In al-Ghazira the Ras is where we belong. Still, some of the Mawali left. But most of them stayed, for they knew instinctively that Hajj Fahmy was right – the Mawali had always kept to themselves in al-Ghazira. Old Musa had fetched wives for his sons from his own village in Egypt. After that the Mawali had always married amongst themselves. They spoke the Arabic of Musa’s village with each other. They even wore its dress – jallabeyyas and woollen caps. Often, the men wore shirts and trousers, but never the flowing robes of the Ghaziris. Why this should be, no one knew. It was just so.
When the Ras began to fill up with shacks and people from all the corners of the world, the Mawali were alarmed. They went to Hajj Fahmy and said: What shall we do now? Soon our houses will be pushed into the sea.
Hajj Fahmy had laughed: How will they push our houses into the sea, when ours are the only solid houses in the Ras? Let them come to the Ras if they keep out of our way. The Ras gave us shelter; let it give them shelter. Besides, think of the business they’ll bring.
One of his cousins opened a grocery-shop at one end of the Ras and within months he was rich. After that the Mawali never again worried about the crowds in the Ras. And the others in the Ras, for their part, left the Mawali alone and never encroached on their houses.
It was only natural that there should be a close link between the Mawali and the inhabitants of the only other permanent house in the Ras – Zindi’s. No one knew how long back the connection stretched, but it was said that when Zindi first came to al-Ghazira from Egypt, as a young and buxom beauty, it was Hajj Fahmy who first found her a place and cared for her, almost as he did for his own wife. Zindi’s house grew and she found other friends, but nothing ever interfered in her friendship with Hajj Fahmy. Zindi and her house kept his interest in the world alive, Hajj Fahmy would say, and he was always one of the first to visit her house when she returned from one of her trips to Egypt or India. It was inevitable that he would meet Alu sooner or later. But, as it happened, when Mariamma arrived the Hajj did not hear of it for a few days. Instead, one evening a young, lumpy-headed man whom he had never seen before was led into the room in which he received guests.
He had heard, Hajj Fahmy said, that we have a loom in the house. Of course no one uses it now but me, and that rarely. When I do I think myself a fool, because in the past I wove because I needed the money, and now I weave because I have nothing else to do. Anyway I showed it to him. He walked around it, looking at it carefully, but he didn’t touch it. He was thinking. Who knows what he was thinking? We couldn’t ask him because then he didn’t know any Arabic, and all we had to talk in was signs. Next day he was back, with yarn. He set about warping the loom and a week later he was weaving. He was a little clumsy in the beginning. He said the loom wasn’t like those he knew. But after a few days his hands were flying over it, and everyone in the house used to gather around to marvel at his skill. After that he used to come in the evenings, when he had finished the day’s work with Abu Fahl and the others. He said it made him feel well again after a day of painting walls. He wove cloth for the whole house – soft, fine cloth (of course, we gave him a little money) – cloth of that kind is beyond my skill, Zindi, really. To tell you the truth, I often thought to myself: Why, I could start a business with the cloth this boy makes. If he could work on that loom all day long, instead of painting houses, Allahu yia’alam, God knows how much money he could make. I tell you, I often thought of setting up a business with that boy, often … Anyway, my heart was glad to see that loom being used at last, and my father would have been glad, too. And once Alu began to talk Arabic like any of us everyone in the house came to love him, though he wasn’t a Muslim. I myself, I loved him like a grandson. Yesterday, when we heard about the collapse, my house wept. I wept. Then today we heard rumour after rumour. Of course, the women in the house started talking about the Sheikh …
What sheikh? Zindi broke in.
Oh, no one – an odd idea some of the Mawali women have. Anyway, as soon as I heard the rumours I sent Isma’il to your house to find out. He didn’t come back, and only our Lord knows where he is. So then I set out myself. I said: I must find out from Zindi herself what’s become of Alu.
Zindi stiffened suddenly, alerted by a noise in the lane outside. She was at the door before the first knock. She flung the door open, throwing her tarha askew in her haste. There were half a dozen men outside, some of them Mawali, some Indian and some Egyptian. Forid Mian was not among them.
Zindi, tell us the truth, one of them said. What’s happened to Alu?
I don’t know, Zindi said abruptly. Abu Fahl has gone to find out.
What about some tea, then, Zindi? someone else called out.
Reluctantly Zindi let them in. For many years the men of the Ras had gathered at Zindi’s house in the evenings to talk and drink tea. There were no cafés or tea-shops in the Ras or even near it, so Zindi’s house had become a surrogate. Zindi usually made a fair profit, for she charged much more for tobacco and tea than any café would have dared. People complained, but not much. They knew no café could match the stories and the tea that were to be had at Zindi’s. It was said that a man learnt more about the Ras and al-Ghazira and even the world in one evening at Zindi’s than from a month’s television.
As the evening wore on, the knocks on the door grew increasingly frequent. Every time she heard a knock Zindi jumped, with the surprising agility she could sometimes command, to open the door. Each time she was disappointed. As the news of Abu Fahl and Rakesh’s expedition spread around the Ras, the curious crowd in Zindi’s house grew. But of Forid Mian there was no sign.
Slowly, as the rooms filled, the heat and tension grew. Zindi had to open the windows, much as she disliked it, for the room had become a steaming oven, and everybody was drenched in sweat. The whole of Zindi’s attention was concentrated on the door and Forid Mian. Her hands began to shake and she could no longer bring herself to make tea, so Zaghloul had to do it, while she stared out into the lane.
Soon conversation in the room faltered and d
ied away. Two men began to argue about a narjila. The argument grew into a quarrel, and suddenly the room was divided. Zaghloul nudged Zindi. She took one look and she was worried – usually Abu Fahl handled these situations. One of the men reached for the neck of the other man’s jallabeyya, and at that moment Isma’il burst into the room, his jallabeyya torn, his plump, pink cheeks and light brown hair smudged with dust.
Where have you been, Isma’in? his father said gravely.
Isma’il smiled happily and his blue-grey eyes shone as he went around the room shaking hands. I was with Abu Fahl and Rakesh, he said. We went to the Star.
Then Rakesh and Abu Fahl came into the room, their clothes ragged and dishevelled, their faces ghostly, pale with dust. They sank into a corner, and Abu Fahl ran his glazed eyes over the room. Everyone was leaning forward, staring intently at the two men.
What happened? Hajj Fahmy asked.
Abu Fahl mumbled: Wait. Some tea first. His head dropped and he ran his hands over his face. Suddenly he hugged himself and shuddered. As though in response, an involuntary shiver rippled around the room. Abu Fahl smiled.
Soon after we left the house, Abu Fahl said, we met Isma’il. He followed us, asking question after question – What’s happened to Alu? Where are you going? We answered him, but at the embankment I waved him away and told him to go home or his mother would worry. Yet when we were halfway down the Corniche he was still behind us. I shouted and showed him my fist. He stopped then, and we went on.
We must have been walking faster than we knew, for we turned a bend and there was the Star, before us. It was only an outline, black against the purple sky. I stopped Rakesh and went ahead alone, trying to keep to the shadows of the rocks beside the road. There were no policemen, not one.
When Rakesh came up beside me he stopped and stared, as I was staring. It looks bigger than it did, he said to me, and I saw him shiver a little. So I said loudly: Things change when you see them from different places. And sometimes the light plays tricks.
It was twilight, the last red light before darkness, and even your own face looks different then. But still it was a strange thing, for the Star did look bigger, much bigger. Those concrete pillars and steel girders reached above us like eucalyptus trees; we could hardly see where they ended. There seemed to be no end to the rubble and the wreckage. It towered above us. It was like the pyramids at Giza; small mountains with jagged edges and dust blowing into spirals off the sides. We heard the muezzins calling, somewhere far away in the city, but then the crashing of the waves killed the cry and we were as alone as two men on a rock in the sea.
I said to myself as we walked closer: Why, we were working here only yesterday, and when we’re closer it’ll seem all right. But even when we were standing at the foot of the first slope of rubble it seemed no smaller. And then we heard it whining, eerily, in a strange whistle. It rose and died away and rose again, blowing straight out of the centre of the ruins.
I caught Rakesh by the hand, for I know what he is. And if I’d left it a moment later, for all that it was he who took me there, I know he’d have turned and bolted like a rabbit, for the hairs were standing all along his arm. So to give him strength I shouted: It’s only the wind whistling. Come on, be a man. At that he took heart, and even tried to smile.
But that smile never stretched very far, for the very next moment there was a flash of white beside him as someone pushed past him and sprang on to the rubble. Rakesh had turned to stone, his mouth open, as he gazed at that figure, waving at us. I shook him hard and shouted into his ear until he heard: It’s only Isma’il. He must have followed us. Nothing to worry about.
So we went on again, following Isma’il. Right before us was a gentle slope of rubble, about ten feet high. We climbed it, but very slowly, for there was broken glass and bits of torn steel, like razor blades, lying everywhere.
At the top it was I who lost heart, for everywhere, all around us, as far as we could see, there were hills of shattered concrete. The slopes and tips were just visible in the last light, and the black darkness was climbing fast. Isma’il had disappeared.
I could see no sign of him, so I gave up looking and hit my head with my hands. There was a lavatory bowl behind me, protruding through the rubble; a very beautiful thing, gleaming new, painted all over with flowers. I sat down on it, for I saw no hope in going on. Rakesh sat down, too, leaning against a slab of wall. I said to him: Let’s go back. We’ll never find him. There could be a fleet of trucks in here and we wouldn’t see it for days.
Then it was Rakesh who gave me courage. A little before the Star collapsed Rakesh and some of the others were working with Alu in the basement, directly in the centre of the building. That part of the building was, in a way, hollow, for above it there was only an empty space topped by a glass dome. That space was a five-storey greenhouse, for inside it thousands of plants grew in pots hanging on chains. The contractor said that people would flock to the Star simply to marvel at the hanging plants. Because that part was hollow, when the Star fell and its five pointed arms became towering mounds of rubble, its centre settled into a low valley. Rakesh had been there soon after the collapse. So at that moment, when I had lost hope and wanted to turn back, he pointed to a distant dip in the rubble and said: That’s where we have to go, I think, though it’s difficult to tell in the darkness.
Like the eager boy that he is, he jumped to his feet and, clear as the light of day, he saw and I saw a dark shape springing up with him, inches from his face. Rakesh would have screamed or shouted if he could, but all he could do was fall sideways, gasping for breath, his eyes starting from his head.
Even before he was down, a chunk of rubble was in my hand, and I threw it with all my strength.
It was just a mirror, but Rakesh was still holding his throat, sobbing and gasping, when it shattered and the glass fell at his feet.
Maybe when the Star still stood that place was a great gilded bathroom, hanging high in the sky, looking out to sea.
When Rakesh had stopped trembling I took my torch from my pocket and we went on. What a journey it was; Sitt Zeynab grant that I never have to do anything like that again. Every yard seemed to take hours. We had to slide our feet forward, picking our way through the glass and steel. Sometimes the rubble would slide away from under our feet. Our legs and feet were cut open so often there must be a trail of blood across those ruins. And again at times the wind would whine within the ruins and rise to a howl, and we would have to stand and wait for it to die away again. All around us shadows leapt behind the light of my torch, flickering this way and that. But of Isma’il there was not the slightest trace.
At last we reached the edges of the mound and the valley was before us. It was like the handiwork of a madman – immense steel girders leaning crazily, whole sections of the glass dome scattered about like eggshells, and all over, everywhere, thousands of decaying plants.
Still, we sighed with relief when we saw that valley at last.
I turned sideways and began edging down the slope, towards the valley. Rakesh was close behind me. Halfway down, my foot caught on something in the rubble. I heard glass cracking, and a moment before it rolled away I saw a television set. As it fell, the rubble began to slide with it, more and more of it, until it was a landslide. We would have been at the bottom of it if Rakesh had not managed to hold on to a girder that was still upright. I caught his leg and somehow we managed to keep ourselves safe as the rubble fell past us.
When the dust and the wreckage settled we heard a noise. It was a voice of some kind – of that there could be no doubt – muffled but steady, somewhere under the rubble. He’s there, Rakesh shouted. He slithered and stumbled down the slope to the spot and began to dig with his hands. Wait, we’re coming! he shouted, but the voice underneath carried on without a break.
We cleared away the rubble until we reached an opening. At once I reached down, for I knew what it was. I found it, groping about, and gave it to Rakesh. It was a transistor. The falling
rubble must have switched it on somehow.
Rakesh would not take it at first. He just stood there and glared. But there were three more, and eventually we tucked them into our trousers and went on.
What wonders there were in that valley! For a long time we stood and marvelled. We found the head of a coconut palm which had snapped off the trunk. It was heavy with fresh, tender coconuts. Right there we broke open six of them with a bit of steel and drank their water. There were roses still blooming, and clouds of wilting magnolias.
But it was when we reached the basement that we stood gaping with astonishment – even Rakesh, who had seen it before. The basement’s ceiling had collapsed as I thought, but miraculously a massive slab of concrete had fallen across the opening, sheltering it from the storm of wreckage that must have come after the collapse. Even more amazing, it had not sealed the basement completely. It lay at a steep angle, held up on one side by a bent girder, so all the wreckage had slid off it, and no rubble blocked the hole in the basement’s ceiling.
Still, it was tricky there, for we were standing on a part of the basement’s ceiling that might collapse at any moment. We lay flat on our stomachs and crawled forward. I looked up, but I had to look quickly away again for there were immense girders and huge slabs of concrete poised over us, hanging, as though they were waiting to fall. Once my elbow broke something, and at once there was a smell, so strong and so sweet, it sent us reeling. I shone my torch down and we saw hundreds of tiny bottles of perfume, strewn all around us. Near the edge of the basement we were hardly breathing, for the slightest slip could have sent us straight into that hole. At the lip we stopped and looked into the still blackness beneath.
