The Circle of Reason

by Amitav Ghosh

  What is he doing? someone said. That’s how they dance in those parts, a voice answered. Haven’t you seen them in films?

  Chunni was beside herself. It’s the queues, she shrieked. Stop him, Abu Fahl; something’s gone wrong. He can’t stop; the queues have got him again. But instead everyone backed apprehensively away from the leaping, whirling Professor.

  At last the Professor stopped, winded, and looked around, clutching his waist, at the circle of wide eyes and frozen faces. What’s wrong, Samuel? Chunni asked anxiously. He looked at her for a moment, so sternly that she edged away. Then he doubled up, laughing uncontrollably, and his spectacles dropped off his nose.

  What’s the matter, Professor? What’s happened?

  Professor Samuel, holding his sides, face flushed, tears pouring out of his eyes, managed to say: Nothing. I was just practising my badminton smashes. Nice cabaret, no?

  After that it was all confusion, for it was almost time to leave. Everyone was worrying about what they were going to buy now, and they milled around the courtyard, the newly arrived begging advice from the experienced, gathering information on the relative prices of the various makes of calculator they were thinking of buying for college-going brothers at home; of the portable television sets they were planning to take to their village-bound parents and sisters; and of the clothes they were going to buy for themselves (and there Rakesh was in great demand, for there was not a thing he didn’t know about all the brands of American jeans and Korean shirts). There was a mild panic when someone claimed to have heard that Professor Samuel hadn’t brought enough money for them all, and the Professor was immediately riddled by volleys of anxious questions. But he had no answers to give, because, as he said: How can I know whether I’ve got enough? First, I’ve got to count how many people there are here, and how can I count unless you stand still? That only made the panic worse – He admits he hasn’t got enough; that’s what he said – and everybody milled about even more, and that made counting still more difficult. Then, in the middle of all that, Hajj Fahmy appeared and shouted that it was time to tie on the dusters and get ready to leave, because sunset was no more than an hour away, and there would be no point in going if they got to the Star after dark. That reminded the Professor of something else altogether and he forgot about counting and pushed his way around the courtyard until he found Abu Fahl and cried, worriedly: Listen, Abu Fahl, what are we going to do if we do find those sewing machines in the Star? How will we bring them back? We can’t carry them with us into all those foreign shops in Hurreyya. What are we going to do? But Abu Fahl had his own worries now, for he was busy trying to find all the ropes and crowbars and everything else he had gathered together over the last few days in preparation for their journey to the Star, so he merely shrugged and said: How should I know? Why don’t you ask Alu? We only promised to present him with the sewing machines. He’ll have to think of some way of bringing them back himself. But that wasn’t good enough for the Professor, and he rushed off, clicking his tongue in irritation, to look for Hajj Fahmy. The Hajj tried to reassure him: Don’t worry, Samuel, it won’t be difficult – we can always put them in a taxi if it comes to that. But, said the Professor, there aren’t any taxis in that part of the Corniche. And this time the Hajj pushed him away: Don’t worry – we’ll manage.

  There was nothing more he could do, so the Professor went back to his counting, and while he was at it Karthamma ran into the courtyard, sweating and wild-eyed. I can’t find Boss, she cried to anyone who would listen. I just went to the house and there was no one there. Zindi’s cleared all her things out, and Kulfi’s gone, too, and there’s no sign of Boss anywhere. But there was too much noise in the courtyard, and everyone had something to do, so nobody had time to listen to her. Frantic with worry, Karthamma found Chunni and, shouting into her ear, told her everything; but Chunni only laughed, saying: Why’re you so worried? Where could they have gone? They’ll be in the house when we get back this evening, you’ll see. Where could they go? There’s nothing to be worried about. That heartened Karthamma, for there is nothing so reassuring as having one’s fears laughed at, and she went back to thinking about the pram she was going to buy for Boss.

  A little later the Professor finally finished counting and discovered that there were fewer people in the courtyard than he had expected – only thirty-two, where he had allowed for forty-five – so there was plenty of money for everyone. He tried to spread the good news, but his voice was too weak, and by that time people had forgotten about him anyway, so he had to ask Abu Fahl instead. But it was some time before even Abu Fahl could make himself heard, and when he did it only made matters worse in a way, for there was a great cheer and people began streaming out of the courtyard, and Abu Fahl had to run out and bring them back, because he hadn’t distributed the tools yet. There weren’t very many – a few crowbars, a couple of saws, some coils of rope and a pulley, a few shovels, pickaxes, an ancient car-jack, and three powerful torches – but because of the confusion it took a long time to hand them out.

  At last, when all the tools had been given out and everything was more or less ready, Abu Fahl remembered Alu and saw him sitting at the loom with his head in his hands. It made Abu Fahl angry to see him sitting there like that. Come down here, Alu, he shouted, we’re going now. But Alu hesitated, and sensing his reluctance Abu Fahl went up to the platform and pulled him off it. What do you think? he said, thrusting a coil of rope into his hands. Do you think you’re going to sit there like that all day while we do all the work and fetch you your sewing machine?

  The others were already straggling out, led by Hajj Fahmy and Professor Samuel. Abu Fahl waited with Alu and Zaghloul till everyone was gone. Then, after making sure that no one was left in the courtyard except the women of Hajj Fahmy’s house, they set off through the lanes of the Ras. By the time they reached the top of the embankment the sun had dipped low over the city, and the others were strung out over the road ahead of them. They could see Rakesh, Karthamma and Chunni a long way ahead of them. They stopped for a moment to catch their breath, and when they started walking again Abu Fahl clapped Alu on the shoulder. So, he said, at last you’re going to get your sewing machine.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Sand

  The sleek black road on the embankment ran through a kilometre or so of empty sandflats after leaving the Ras behind. Then gradually it sloped downwards till the road was on level ground. A little farther on, stray mud-brick houses appeared on either side. With every step after that the houses crowded closer and closer to the road. Soon the road merged into a narrower and much older thoroughfare which ran along the inlet. From that point onwards the road became a thronged, bustling hive. Fifty or even a hundred men, no matter what they were carrying, could have vanished into that crowded street with all the ease of pigeons in a piazza.

  On one side of the road, jostling for space, were tiled Iranian chelo-kebab shops, Malayali dosa stalls, long, narrow Lebanese restaurants, fruit-juice stalls run by Egyptians from the Sa’id, Yemeni cafés with aprons of brass-studded tables spread out on the pavement, vendors frying ta’ameyya on push-carts – as though half the world’s haunts had been painted in miniature along the side of a single street.

  The other side of the road was comparatively less crowded, for it looked out over the inlet and no shops or stalls were allowed there. That was where the people of the Old City came with their friends and brides in the evenings, to walk and eat and watch the brilliant sails of the sambuqs and booms in the inlet.

  The other bank of the inlet rose steeply out of the water into a solid concrete-and-glass cliff of hotels and offices.

  The road became even narrower and still more crowded farther on when it reached the wooden jetties and rickety wharfs of the old harbour. There, the pungent muddy waters of the inlet were only a step away from the road, and in places the pointed lateen sails of the sambuqs sometimes seemed to be poised directly above the pavement.

  It was there, in a little ro
om above a café, that Jeevanbhai Patel had had his office.

  Soon after that the road wound around the inlet, through a huddle of houses and away, straight into the sands beyond, towards the broad sweep of a curving headland in the distance. At that point the road broadened and blackened and became the Corniche.

  A short way after the last cluster of houses, the Corniche began to rise gradually, and by the time the sea first became visible on the left, a kilometre or so away, it was a good height above the sand on the seaward side, and still rising. In contrast, on the other side of the road, to the right, the ground fell away only slightly. All along that side of the Corniche the viscera of newly begun high-rise buildings lay scattered in a long, skeletal trail. Soon an outward curve took the road even closer to the sea, and there it rose still higher, till it was about ten feet above the sandy beach on the far side. At its outermost point the road was so close to the sea that its surface was usually moist with spray. At that point there stood a huge, almost-finished airline office. The office had been built to take advantage of the view, and one part of it jutted out almost into the road. There the road turned, angling sharply around the building, so that approaching the building from one end the other side of the curve was blocked out of view. After that the Corniche ran inland for a stretch before curling out again to meet the Star.

  When Zindi first spotted the airline office, Hajj Fahmy, Professor Samuel and a knot of people immediately behind them were very close to the building and walking fast. The rest were strung out behind in an untidy dribble, their dusters bright against the indistinct greyness of the twilight. Sometimes, when the road curved, she could see silhouettes; the outlines of crowbars and axes on bent shoulders clearly etched against the sand and the evening sky.

  Abu Fahl, Zaghloul and Alu, still bringing up the rear, were only a hundred paces or so ahead of her. That was a stroke of luck for her, for she could not have planned that. Otherwise it had all happened exactly as she had hoped. She had waited in the harbour with Kulfi and Boss, hidden in the little launch that was to carry them to Zeynab. She had spotted Hajj Fahmy and Professor Samuel easily enough despite the crowds, for the dusters on their arms stood out like bright lights. She had waited till they had gone past, all of them, and then, at a careful distance, she had hurried after them to salvage what she could of her fallen house.

  It had been a long walk and she was tired now. Her feet ached and the tension of expecting something to happen at every turn had worn her patience away. But nothing had happened. Maybe it was she who was wrong after all, and Hajj Fahmy right. She stopped to wipe her face. She could see the shadowy figures of Hajj Fahmy and Professor Samuel in the distance, very close to the airline office and the blind curve. She shut her eyes and turned to the sea breeze and let it play over her face. She pulled the neck of her dress up with her finger and gratefully felt the coolness of the breeze on her chest.

  And while she stood there, with her eyes shut and the wind licking gently at her body, she knew suddenly that it had happened, for she heard something like a shout, and by the time she had turned a whirling cloud of sand had blotted Hajj Fahmy and Professor Samuel from her view.

  As she watched, a helicopter rose into the greyness behind the building and swooped down on the road. She had seen it before that evening, twice. It had flown overhead and away, in the other direction. She hadn’t given it much thought: rich young Ghaziris were always buzzing the roads in their planes and helicopters. But this time it was coming in very low, sweeping the road slowly. And now it was above her, a high staccato drumming noise, buffeting her with axe-like strokes, pulling at her clothes. Around her the sand was rising in solid walls from both sides of the road to meet it. As it passed above, only a few feet from her head, she saw a pointing arm, the barrel of a gun and a black uniform.

  She knew then that this was no young Ghaziri on a joyride, but a part of the machine that she had known to be lying in wait.

  It was all sand now, everywhere, like the desert in a Khamsin, wrapping her in layers, sifting into her mouth and into her eyes. She was caught in a sandy fog, hardly able to see the road beneath her feet. She could hear screams in the distance, and odd muffled popping sounds. Then she heard the helicopter again, and in terror she ran blindly along the edge of the road. She heard it swooping low over her and she threw herself over the side and rolled to the bottom of the embankment. As she rose unsteadily to her feet again, she felt an odd stickiness on her eyelids. She drew a hand across her face and it came away covered in blood. She screamed, but the sound was lost, for there were shouts and screams everywhere now, shrilling eerily out of the gritty, golden cloud. Faintly she caught a whiff of tear gas.

  Sobbing with fear, she pulled the scarf off her head and wrapped it over her face, covering her nose and leaving only a slit for her eyes. She tried to run but fell and struck her head against the embankment. She struggled up and tried to run again, in the other direction, but she could see no more than a few feet ahead; and suddenly, horror-struck, she realized that she was running towards the screams. She stopped in utter, terrified confusion, and then somewhere close by she heard a shout. She looked up and saw two figures tumble off the road and come rolling down towards her, screaming. A moment later another figure came crashing down after them.

  When he was almost upon her, she recognized Abu Fahl. He collapsed in a heap hardly a foot away from her and lay there whimpering in shock, blood pouring from a gash in his head. A little way behind him lay Alu and Zaghloul, clinging to the sand in blank terror.

  Suddenly Zindi’s head was clear again. She pulled Abu Fahl’s arm and shouted – Get up, get up – but he lay as he was, inert on the sand. She shook him and then drew her hand back and slapped him hard across his face. His head snapped back, and then slowly recognition filtered into his eyes. She pulled him to his feet and screamed into his ear: What about the others, all the rest, Samuel, Karthamma, Chunni, Hajj Fahmy?

  He could only shake his head stupidly. She turned him round and pushed him towards Zaghloul and Alu. Take them with you, she shouted, pointing towards the inlet, and run in that direction. Hurry, we can still get away; they haven’t seen us yet and there aren’t any of them on this side of the embankment. They were all on the other side so that we wouldn’t see the ambush.

  She pushed him again – Run – but he clung helplessly to her arm: And you?

  I’m coming, she said. But, first, I’ve got to see if there are any others. She gave him a shove, and this time he stumbled away; and, pulling up her skirts, she scrambled up the side of the embankment.

  The tear gas clawed at her nose and eyes as soon as her head was level with the road. For a moment she was blinded. Then, very hazily, through a golden-grey glow, she saw a line of helmeted black-uniforms with riot-shields and batons, charging the milling crowd on the road. She saw Hajj Fahmy prone, screaming under a baton; she saw Professor Samuel and Rakesh being dragged off the road by their feet, and then she couldn’t see any more for her eyes were smarting like a salted wound. Blindly she pushed herself back towards the edge of the embankment, and just as she was about to slip down again she heard a familiar shriek across the road.

  She fought her eyes open, scraping at them with her nails, and darted across. It was Chunni, kneeling on the ground, tearing at her hair and screaming hysterically, as though she wanted to rip her lungs apart. Zindi crouched low and clutched at Chunni’s hand. She caught a bleary glimpse of Karthamma lying beside Chunni and she snatched at her hand, too, and pulled, crying: Come on, quick. But Chunni slapped her hand away, and before Zindi could stop her she had struggled to her feet and wandered off, screaming, straight towards the black-uniforms. Then Karthamma’s head rolled limply to one side and Zindi screamed, too, for she saw that Karthamma was dead; that she had fallen on a pickaxe, and that the end of the axe had passed through her back and emerged bloodily from her navel.

  Heaving the body away, Zindi turned and threw herself across the road and down the embankment. She rolle
d to the bottom, her skirts ripped to shreds and splashed with blood. When she managed to push herself up again, she saw three figures, nothing more than shadows, vanishing into the haze. She ran after them and caught up; and together, shielded by the darkness, they hurried towards the inlet and the waiting motor-launch.

  And, though she was weeping herself, she comforted them and helped them and she put her arms around their shoulders and held them up, for they stumbled often on that torn beach: it was not long since that the black-uniforms had driven their jeeps across the same sand, leaving it furrowed and sown with salt.

  Part III

  Tamas: Death

  Chapter Twenty

  Playing to a Beat

  And so it happened one day that Dr Uma Verma came upon an odd little group in a roadside café while she was walking down the sand-blown, dusty length of the Avenue Mohamed Khemisti in the little town of El Oued on the north-eastern edge of the Algerian Sahara.

  She was on her way to visit a Berber patient of hers, an elderly Acheche woman who had promised her half a dozen eggs from her own chickens. She was walking very briskly; not because she was in a hurry – her patient had assured her, smiling till the tattoos on her face disappeared into her wrinkles, that there would always be eggs in her house for the ‘Indian doctor’ – but partly because that was how she always did everything. That was one of the first lessons her father had taught her. Often, before he set off for school in the morning, the old man would say to her: If you’re going to do anything, do it as though you meant to finish it, and finish it well besides. That’s what went wrong with this country – nobody ever thought anything worth finishing. Look at those Rajput kings and all those Mughals who sat around in Delhi and began things – just began … She could see him now, old Hem Narain Mathur, masterji, his bespectacled eyes bright in the gaunt hollow of his face, smiling, sucking his teeth, standing as though for a photograph beside the most treasured of his few possessions, his first bookcase – a few old nailed-together planks of wood which he had clung to somehow through all his years of wandering – three shelves which held all the most beloved books of his college years, the very bookcase which now haunted a corner of her drawing-room in El Oued like some patient, dusty ghost waiting for who knew what? And she could see herself watching him, stiff and starched in her school uniform and oiled braid, hurrying him out of the house – It’s time to go now, Ba – out into the almost-Himalayan cool of the Dehra Dun morning; walking hand-in-hand through their gullie, past the Clock Tower, listening to his frayed old cotton shirt and white trousers swishing briskly beside her, trying to keep up with him and wondering why it was that he who walked so briskly and talked so often of finishing – not just beginning – had never finished anything himself.