by Tariq Ali
Confucius could not remain silent. ‘The same will happen in China, except they fuck pigs, not donkeys.’
The old man roared with delight. Usually nobody spoke to him; Zaynab signalled me with her eyes, but I had no idea what she wanted. Later she told me that it was a rule at the table that nobody should ever answer Great-Uncle. I thought this excessively mean, but she had that don’t-argue-this-one-with-me look in her eyes. I told her that her injunction would genuinely shock Mr and Mrs Confucius, because they came from a culture where ancestors were literally worshipped, including by many Hui. She was not impressed.
‘Young man’, he said now to Confucius, who was in his mid-sixties, ‘I thought China was bloody Communist.’
‘No, sir. They’re capitalists now and conquering the world with their commodities.’
‘Bloody good show. Did they bump the Communists off?’
‘Oh no, sir. The Communist leaders became capitalists.’
This puzzled the great-uncle, and, aware that his presence annoyed Zaynab, he did not speak again till the dessert was served. This was a sensational rice pudding, exactly the correct consistency. Great-Uncle posed a question that none of us had yet asked.
‘I was told there was an English lady with your party. Where is she?’
Zaynab was forced to announce that Alice was indisposed and had retired early. I was sure that the rusty orange juice that none of us had touched had rotted her insides, and the deadly desert diarrhoea germ, permanently in search of an opening, had scored a majestic triumph.
The old man mumbled something sympathetic. ‘I had no idea she was ill. Otherwise I would not have worn my dinner jacket.’
None of the rest of us had dressed for dinner, but we had not packed any smart clothes. As we were leaving, I was handed a note by a retainer. It gave me instructions for the rest of the evening. When everyone had retired at about ten p.m. and the guards were pretending to patrol the perimeters, two of Zaynab’s maids came to my room and wordlessly escorted me to their lady’s bedchamber.
‘I am a ruined man, Zizi. If we’re discovered I’ll be killed and you’ll be married off to twelve volumes of the hadith as a punishment. Paris is one thing, but in this holiest of holies where you were married to the Holiest of Holy Books, there can be only one punishment.’
‘Stupid man. Take off your clothes and get into bed.’
‘Are you not going to dismiss the maids?’
‘They’ve seen better things hanging in their time.’
‘I thought we were breaking up.’
‘I’ve told Alice she has no cause for anxiety. I’m sure she’ll be fine. And please stop winding her up. Did you know she was a distant relation of the Napiers?’
‘I’m taking my clothes off.’
‘I’m waiting.’
‘The Napiers of Napier Road in Karachi? It should be called Peccavi Road.’
‘It’s nice you’re in this bed.’
‘I feel a poem coming in my head. Where once a candle stood to light the Koran, a peasant entered and replaced the candle with his own ...’
The maids turned out the lights and retired to the adjoining room.
‘Has Alice got diarrhoea?’
‘I can’t find your candle.’
‘I’m perfectly happy.’
‘I’m returning to Paris soon. It’s irritating never to leave the house without a maid. These two are well trained. One was married to the peasant who replaced the candle, but he died a few weeks ago.’
I felt keenly aware that our relationship was about to undergo another change.
At five in the morning, the maids woke us up, helped me dress and returned me to my official quarters. Fifteen minutes later the muezzin called the faithful to prayer, but old Great-Uncle didn’t stir a muscle. Two hours later we were all having breakfast.
NINETEEN
AT NINE FORTY-FIVE WE moved to the big hall, an unusual structure that stood on its own, at a slight distance from the old house and the new additions. It had originally been built as a covered market so that the horse dealing took place in the shade and the animals could be thoroughly inspected before being bought or sold. Improvements in keeping with its later function had been made in the nineteenth century. Beasts of a different sort assembled here now. Local landlords, usually men of harsh and violent temperament, met here regularly to discuss common preoccupations, mainly brigandage of various sorts that was supposedly plaguing the countryside. For many centuries peasant brigands had constituted the only serious opposition to the vile rule of their masters, who had long forgotten that the origins of their own fortunes, as is the case with great families everywhere, lay in theft and pillage on a grand scale.
When these outlaws were caught and punished, ordinary people felt great sympathy for them; songs and ballads about their deeds remain part of Sindhi folklore. They had defied authority, and for that they were honoured. It was rumoured that this hall had briefly been used as an execution, or rather a strangulation, chamber: those caught stealing were brought here and the life was choked out of them. Not all of them were men.
This was also the hall where the landed gentry of the region had met in the nineteenth century and decided that since the British conquerors had occupied Sind with such superior force, any resistance would amount to collective suicide, and their heirs would be punished by being deprived of their property. Thus, it was unanimously agreed, collaboration was the only way forward. Great-Uncle’s grandfather had been the moving force behind the decision. The landed collaborators had prospered. As the British prepared to leave India, they advised their old friends to transfer their loyalties to the Muslim League and the new Fatherland. They did so and continued to prosper.
Such was the historic location where Plato’s last work was going to be revealed to a handful of his friends. We arrived soon after breakfast and began looking at the old photographs that adorned the walls, including a very fetching one of the then-young great-uncle on horseback and attired in polo gear. We were interrupted by the slow march into the space of a team often brawny peasants, five on each side of the huge painting. They carried it in and placed it against the wall. More retainers rushed in to help uncover it. Plato would have found this both amusing and repulsive, but homilies were redundant, for had he been alive we wouldn’t be here and the work would not have existed in its present form. It was the artistic equivalent of his last will and testament.
Zaynab was becoming impatient. ‘Get the paper and cardboard off and open, open. Hurry up.’
Alice had recovered sufficiently to be present, and in case of an emergency there were six toilets attached to the hall—one for each of the big families who convened here in the old days. Zaynab desperately wanted MoMA in New York to host the first exhibition: hence her determination to bring Alice over to Jam Thanda Gosht and her irritation with me for ‘ragging Alice’.
Yu-chih, no doubt wondering why Confucius had dragged her to this place when she could have been sightseeing elsewhere, was trying not to look bored, and failing. The rest of us were impatiently awaiting Plato’s message to the world. Once the cardboard and brown paper had been removed, we saw that it was not one painting at all, but a huge triptych. Each panel was painted in different colours. I insisted that we should see each in turn, with the other two turned temporarily to face the ancestors on the walls.
The first panel was what Zaynab had seen at an early stage. ‘The horror, the horror’ had been her first reaction, and she had fled to Europe thinking that Plato was on the verge of insanity. The ‘horror’ was undoubtedly present as the core of the painting, but it was much changed since those early drafts. This was the Fatherland panel, the one he had told me might trigger an upheaval in the country. The cancers destroying it were painted as living organisms with tentacle-like attachments that were competing with each other to occupy the whole body. I had never seen anything like this before, from Plato or anyone else. It was certainly original. The colours used to paint the cancers were str
ange combinations of blood red and pus yellow, but each was given individual features.
Zaynab wanted me to explain each section in turn, though Plato’s message was clear enough. ‘It may be tedious but it’s necessary’, she had insisted the night before, ‘in order for Alice to fully understand the complexity of the painting.’
Ally only knew the young Plato’s work, which was not difficult to understand, not even the folio of 1964 etchings. So, I complied—as I usually did with Zaynab’s demands. The first panel, I said, could simply be titled ‘The Four Cancers of Fatherland’. These were lurid and surreal depictions. No subtleties, no mysteries to explain here. Plato loved leaving clues in his obscurer work, but had not bothered with any in this panel. The malignant cancer that had sprouted three siblings was shaped like an eagle. Stars and stripes in a state of cancerous decay were tattooed on the back of an Uncle Sam, like so many welts. The face of Uncle, watching the eagle with an approving smile, was unmistakable. It was Barack Hussein Obama, the first dark-skinned leader of the Great Society. The newest imperial chieftain was wearing a button: ‘Yes we can ... still destroy countries’. Plato’s image was designed to be crude, I thought, but was it accurate? Alice had become nervous and fidgety as she scribbled furiously in her notepad, a clear indication that the arrow had hit the mark.
Was this the first critical entry by the art world? I could hear the sycophants hard at work reassuring liberal opinion that Plato could be safely ignored. He was a marginal painter, not a celebrity with over twenty prizes to his name. I. M. Malik was a much greater and more important artist from that country and was already working on a portrait depicting the president as Saint George fighting an Islamist dragon breathing mushroom clouds. Commissioned by a private collector, it had already been booked into seven museums on the strength of the idea and Malik’s formidable reputation. But which painting would last? This is a question usually avoided by toadies, who can only live in and for the present so as never to be on the wrong side of history. Adept at sniffing power in every sphere, which is part of their trade, they shift effortlessly from one posterior to another. Plato had nothing to fear from their judgement.
The second cancer, painted in blood red and khaki, appeared to be saluting the first. Or was that simply my imagination? I moved back. I was right. He had not wasted much time on Fatherland’s army and had painted the dictators it had given the country in garish colours. They were devouring bits of the dying country as if keeping the chemotherapy at bay. That must have been in Plato’s mind, though not everyone present accepted my interpretation. Zahid thought it was far-fetched, but Alice and Zaynab agreed with me. One of the despots was crumbling and different bits of metastasizing material were floating in the air. The chemo had disintegrated at least one tumour. It was all a bit too much.
The green bomb-shaped blobs with beards were the jihadis, shown in slow separation from the previous two and developing a life of their own. But who were these five bloated figures with linked arms, all of them defecating gold coins, with each figure’s outstretched hand cupped under his neighbour’s buttocks, making sure that the enriched droppings fell on it, until you got to the last figure, who was eating the gold-shit with such vulgar abandon that his face was lathered with it? An odd nose, a typical display of teeth, a populist wave identified this gang as poor Fatherland’s much-despised politicians.
The colours used in this panel matched the intensity of the work. Looked at from a distance it was stunning, but the closer one got to the painting the more horrific it became. What gave this section real depth, however, was not so much the satire, which was obviously strong, but the wall of humanity with which the painter had encircled the canvas. Zaynab had not seen this in the first draft. Plato must have finished it not long before he was taken to the hospital to die. The people on the edge were part-hedge, part-fence, men and women not unlike the ten who had carried the painting into this hall an hour ago and were waiting patiently in the hot sun outside to take it away again.
The people in the painting are also waiting. Why are they waiting? What are they thinking? Portraying them as a wall, Plato is stressing their collective strength. They are many, the cancers are few. What are they waiting for? For the interlinked cancers to reach them? Each face reflects a different form of pain, resignation, anger, despair. I’m reminded of his very first work, the Partition etchings, but this is different, for these people are not simply victims. Their passivity masks their strength. We may be poor, their faces appear seem to be saying, but our dreams are pure. There is no blood on our consciences. Perhaps there should be some. Did Plato feel that too, during his last days, as he fought against time to finish this painting? Some figures have one hand behind their backs. Is the artist implying the existence of concealed weapons? Will the last attempt to save Fatherland come from below and sweep every malignancy away? I don’t know, but that is what I would like to think was in his mind, a last Utopian shout. Was it, Plato?
There are a few smiling faces on the canvas, representing innocence and hope. Infants being suckled by peasant Madonnas, one of them with a tiny mole below her breast, intended to remind us, or perhaps me, of Zaynab. The babies are unaware of what lies ahead, like so many who once thought that Fatherland was the future. This is Plato’s stunning farewell to the land to which he was forced to flee as a refugee more than half a century ago.
We sat in silence for a while, contemplating the work. Alice spoke first. ‘Very brilliant. No doubt about it. His best work. Very brilliant indeed. Some atrophy as they age. He improved with every year. Problems: MoMA won’t take Obama-as-cancer. They would if the picture were by a very famous artist, but Plato has only recently become known in the States.’
‘Don’t tell them,’ said Zaynab. ‘Let them interpret it as they wish.’
‘There is no other interpretation. That’s where the power of the painting lies, Zaynab.’
Yu-chih, who had barely said a word since arriving in this backwater, entered the fray. ‘It’s universal. Any gallery with a curator who knows what constitutes artistic merit will not turn this painting down. The Horse Thief is a very large new gallery in Beijing. They would exhibit this tomorrow. I hope slides are being prepared.’
‘Westward or eastward, Zaynab?’ Tasked in a whisper. She looked at me pleadingly. I turned the Fatherland panel to the wall and displayed the next. This was in classic Plato colours. The entire canvas was covered in waves of blue, turquoise and dark green. We were confronted with a turbulent ocean. Please, I thought, no mermaids. Don’t do it, Plato. In the centre of the painting was a large shell-shaped island with six men surrounding a single woman. Plato had clearly had to restrain himself from painting her as a mermaid. The paint used to cover up the tail was in a slightly different shade, and his death had prevented any further retouching. Five of the figures, surprisingly, were painted almost in Socialist Realist style. Only one, like the sea, was surreal. I moved close to examine the subjects and recognized each one. The others followed suit, and a guessing game began. Everyone knew Kemal Ataturk, though his portrait was the only surreal one. The famous hat, the cryptic smile, the cigarette, the tilted face were all his, but what lay below? He was dressed in tights and his legs were posed in a fantastic pirouette. Rudolf Nureyev or a whirling dervish? The choice was ours. I had no idea that Plato had ever been interested in Ataturk, so this was a surprise—or was he trying to imply something that is often discussed in Istanbul but never written or painted?
The other figures were also from the world of Islam, but of a very different time. Intellectual dissidents, like the man who had painted them, and for that reason heroes who had thrilled his artist’s blood. A blind poet is seated at the feet of the others. On his lap lies a famous work that was, in fact, the only parody ever done of Zaynab’s husband, and that, too, in the twelfth century. How we have progressed. The poet, Abu Ala al-Maari, is conversing with fish and birds. Watching him with kindly, amused and protective expressions are three men in robes and turbans,
each clinging to his own best-known work as if someone were threatening to snatch it away from him. These three were old friends I had introduced to Plato thirty years ago, when he was in his most nihilist phase regarding the faith of his forebears: the great scholars of al-Andalus and the Muslim world, Ibn Hazm, Ibn Sina and Ibn Rushd. The last man, and I chuckled with delight, was the Sicilian geographer Muhammad Idrisi, showing them all his map of the world. I introduced these figures to the others, with Zaynab nodding a bit too vigorously, as if she already knew—one of her few irritating habits, because she only did it when she was surprised but did not wish to admit to her lack of knowledge.
At first the single woman puzzled me. Whom had Plato intended? Then I noticed that the uplifted arm had a sleeve with an Arabic inscription: Allah, I am fit for greatness and stride with great pride / I allow my lover to reach my cheek, and I grant my kiss to he who craves it. But it was the hand that seemed odd. It had six fingers. Sixer. It was Wallada! A tenth-century poet in Cordoba who maintained a salon, not far from the Great Mosque, that was the site of many heated debates on art and literature and where gossip-carriers reported each day on the latest goings-on in the city. Sixer was the insult she had publicly hurled at her lover, a truly great poet, Ibn Zaydun, whose love poetry is taught to this day in Arab schools and universities. Zaydun had betrayed Wallada’s love by seducing her maid, and subsequently moved on to young men. The poem she recited against him in public lacked literary merit—unlike her epic in defence of gossip, which only survives in fragments—but was repeated endlessly at the time for its shock value, and poor Ibn Zaydun became known in the city, indeed as far afield as Palermo and Baghdad, as the Sixer:
They call you the Sixer,
Your life will leave you before this name does;