by Tahir Shah
As soon as I was married into a known Mumbai family, my in-laws put me up for The Willingdon Club. In the years that Ive had membership, I have been enthralled by a system that, despite all odds, has managed not only to survive, but to thrive. What impresses me is the way that theres almost no slack in the system. The rules, committees, and sub-committees, maintain a state of blissful harmony, and keep the prevailing state of mayhem outside the gates at bay.
Founded by the Marquess of Willingdon, in 1917, the club was supposedly established after the peer was refused entry for his guest, an Indian Maharajah, at the nearby Bombay Gymkhana. (According to legend, that club had a sign at its gates, bearing the slogan, ‘No dogs or Indians allowed). Needless to say, membership there was, like everywhere else at the time, restricted to whites. Incensed, the Marquess, later to become Viceroy, set up the first club with the radical new vision of membership for all.
But open membership doesnt mean for a moment the lowering of standards. Even now, Bollywood actors dont have a hope in getting their names onto the list. Nor do those who flout its rulebook. In a famous Mumbai moment, the celebrated artist M. F. Husain, who never wore shoes, was refused entry for arriving barefoot. (The rules also stipulate that rubber sandals or bedroom slippers are unacceptable).
Set in acres of greenery in the middle of the city, The Willingdons land value runs into billions of dollars. All around it, fashionable tower blocks are rising up, swish homes to the newly arrived.
As with many of the clubs established during the Raj, The Willingdon is predominantly a sports club. A little further south, in Colaba, is another – the Royal Bombay Yacht Club. Overlooking the Gateway of India, and next door to the Taj Mahal Hotel, the Yacht Club is set in a hulking Indo-Gothic building. One of the oldest of all Indian clubs, it was founded in 1846, and was awarded royal patronage by Queen Victoria.
For foreign visitors to India, temporary membership to a wide number of clubs is possible. The easiest way is to track down a local member to vouch for you. But if you cant find one, there are other ways of slipping in under the net. The Royal Over-Seas League in Londons St. Jamess, for instance, has reciprocal membership to a plenty of old colonial clubs across India and the Commonwealth, and it is forthcoming to new members.
Before being married I used to stay at the Yacht Club, in the grandest chambers imaginable. They were vast, had a view right over the Gateway of India, and they came with a manservant who was meek, fawning, and ever available. He even offered to dress me once, and did a great job killing the cat-sized rats that infested the upper floors. I used to spend months there at a time, fraternizing with characters straight out of a Graham Greene novel, and forgetting my responsibilities elsewhere.
In the evenings the resident members would congregate in the bar, its walls adorned with ensigns and naval insignia. Over pegs of whisky, they would swap tall tales from the high seas. The most colourful character of all was an Irishman. An Honorary Consul, who had managed to arrange for himself a grand apartment on the first floor, he was known to all as ‘Callaghan of India. A friend of his, an impeccable old member and former admiral in the Indian navy, once told me of the time during the monsoon that a sea of rats swarmed up from the sewers and into the Yacht Club.
‘They were simply everywhere, he said dreamily.
I asked what was done to quell them. The admiral shrugged.
‘One of chief members was a Jain, he replied, ‘and refused to allow them to be poisoned. So we just put up with them. A lot of them are still here. The old admiral sipped his Scotch. ‘I fear they outnumber the members six to one.
Although a great many of the colonial clubs now find themselves in the middle of sprawling cities across the Subcontinent, many more are tucked away in small towns and hill stations. In their ceaseless search for cool climes, the British would decamp en masse from the cities each summer, and move to higher ground. Hidden in the Nilgiri Hills is the hill station of Ootacamund (known as ‘Ooty by all). A bastion even now of English decorum, Ooty traditions die hard. Theres still fox-hunting in red jackets, even though there are no foxes at all. And, right at the centre of Englishness, is the Ootacamund Club.
Entering into the clubhouse is to step back into a sepia-tinted world right out of The Far Pavilions. The walls are hung with game trophies, the antique furniture carved from rosewood, mahogany and teak. The reading room has an imposing portrait of Queen Empress Victoria, and all around there are pictures of the Hunt.
Founded in the first half of the 19th century, the Ooty Club is a nugget of real England, albeit one far away from home.
Theres English fare (Spotted Dick and Yorkshire Pudding), snooker, croquet, and rigid codes of dress. But, most English of all is the weather. Indeed, the English must have been in seventh heaven there. Discovering the Nilgiri Hills for the first time, in 1819, Lord Lytton wrote home to his wife:
‘Such beautiful English rain and English mud!’
THIRTEEN
Damascus
SALIM THE SON OF SULEIMAN was reclining on an ancient Damascene throne at the back of his shop.
His eyes were closed, the face around them lined with creases, its cheeks obscured by a week’s growth of tattered grey beard. As he slept off a lunch of mutton kebabs, his fingertips caressed fragments of ivory inlaid on the throne’s regal arm. Lost in the shadows between the front door and the chair, lay a treasury of objects, a spider’s web of clutter gleaned from centuries of Damascus life.
There were Crusader battle standards blackened by fire, tortoise shell jewel boxes, and Qur’an stands carved from great slabs of teak, epaulettes and chamber pots, fountainheads fashioned in the form of gazelles, mosque lamps and astrolabes, vast gilt mirrors, and bull elephant tusks.
Before leaving home I had found a visiting card from the very same antique emporium, in a file packed with my grandfather’s papers. An Afghan writer and savant, he had visited Damascus seventy-five years before me, and had written a book about the journey, entitled Alone in Arabian Nights. I was pleased to not only see the shop still standing, but to find it filled with such a treasure trove of wares.
At the sound of a customer’s feet, Salim opened an eye. He scanned the room, jolted up, and let the kitten curled on his chest tumble to the floor.
‘Can I interest you in an amulet?’ he said with a grin, ‘to keep you safe on Syrian roads.’
‘I don’t believe in all that,’ I replied.
The shopkeeper’s smile melted away.
‘Shhhh!’ he hissed. ‘You mustn’t say such things.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because He is listening!’
We both cocked our heads to look at the ceiling, and I changed the subject. I asked the price of a fabulous ceremonial axe that had caught my eye. Its blade was crafted from watered steel, inscribed with a spell.
Suleiman wagged a finger in my direction.
‘Everything is for sale except that,’ he said.
‘Why’s it different?’
‘I cannot tell you.’
Salim the son of Suleiman brewed a pot of tea, and sat in silence, while I begged him to sell me the axe. The more I implored, the more he shook his head. After an hour of sweet tea and failed persuasion, I strolled out into the thin winter light, feeling as if somehow I had been robbed of the opportunity of parting with my money.
Visit the old city of Damascus and it’s impossible not to be struck by a sense of living antiquity, and by the gems that fill the emporia hidden within its shadows. Explore the teeming souqs and you descend down through layer upon layer, onion-skins of life, stretching back twenty centuries, and more.
I have never been in a place where the antiques and bric-à-brac fit so squarely against the backdrop of humanity.
Trawl through the loot on sale, and the waves of past invaders stare you in the face. The Greeks were there, and after them the Romans and Byzantine Christians. Then came the Umayyed Caliphate, its empire stretching from India to Islamic Spain and, after it, th
e Abbasids, the Fatimids and the Seljuq Turks. The Crusades gave way to Mameluk rule, itself followed by the conquest of Tamerlane, the Ottomans and, after them, the French.
Mark Twain was spot on when, in the 1860s, he wrote, ‘To Damascus, years are only moments, decades are only flitting trifles of time. She measures time not by days, months and years, but by the empires she has seen rise and prosper and crumble to ruin.’
The American author’s visit to Damascus coincided with the great Victorian preoccupation for all things Arabian. The interest was partly fuelled by the translation of A Thousand and One Nights, which made the Orient fashionable. European parlours were suddenly awash with exotic furniture, tiles, and silks from the Arab world. By far the best of it came from Damascus, where the remnants fill the antique shops today, and where the craftsmen still toil away making merchandise that has changed little in design in over a thousand years.
In the 1800s, intrepid adventurers like Twain visited Damascus and were awed by it, while others swapped their prim London townhouses for palaces hidden in the depths of the Old City.
The most famous of the Orientalists was Sir Richard Burton. He arrived on January 1st 1870, shortly after Mark Twain had passed through. Employed as British Consul, Burton found himself in a melting pot of ancient and modern, a rare blend of Arab life that he regarded as utter Paradise. It’s easy to imagine his delight, after all his Consulate was housed in one of the grandest palaces of all, the fabulous Bait Quwatli. Now divided into homes and storerooms, and in a terrible state of repair, the interior harks back to a time when the Syrian capital was one of the grandest, most sophisticated cities in existence.
For me, a journey to Damascus is an amazing hunt from beginning to end, a slice through layers of history in search of treasure. Seeking out the palaces – ruined and restored – is a great way to glimpse at centuries past. Some buildings have sadly been destroyed, and others have had their beauty savaged by botched restorations, but there are riches awaiting anyone with a sense of adventure.
Look for the old palaces and, when you find them, there aren’t any turn-styles or tourist lines – just a watchman if you’re lucky to open the door. The ceilings may have fallen in, and the frescoes might be cracked, but squint a little, use your imagination, and it all comes vibrantly to life. Very soon you can hear the sound of music and staccato conversation, and smell the scent of fleurs d’oranges, as the hostess sweeps through the room.
A Damascene mansion’s reception rooms were designed to astonish visitors, aweing them with a sense of wonder. Such buildings tended to be the property of powerful political families, rather than successful merchants. And so the mansions themselves were an expression of political power and aspiration. Of them all, the most extraordinary, and the easiest to visit now, is the eighteenth century Beit Nizam, located on a narrow residential lane off Straight Street.
From the outside nothing at all is given away. It looks quite unremarkable. But ring the bell, and wait for the guardian to get up from his afternoon siesta, and you enter a dream world of Arabian fantasy.
The house boasts three sprawling courtyards and many reception rooms as grand as any. There are alabaster colonnades and marble floors inset with quartz, octagonal fountains and lavish gilded doors, fabulous painted ceilings and stained glass, turquoise Iznik tiles, exquisite mosque lamps, and murals festooning the walls.
The house is silent now except for birdsong in the orange trees, the stillness bridging the century and a half since the mansion was a hub for high society. Stroll the courtyards and it’s easy to picture the exiled Algerian leader, Abd al-Qadir, sitting in the shade, chatting with Burton, or their scandalous friend Lady Jane Digby revealing her latest love affair.
But the longer you spend in palaces like Beit Nizam, the more you find yourself touched by melancholy. A sense of sadness is somehow reflected in it all, as if the bandwagon rolled on.
As I traipsed around the Old City, marvelling at the shattered time-capsules of splendour, I got a sense that no one really cared – except me. The guardians were blasé to the grandeur, as were the ubiquitous families of cats perched on the rooftops; and the local Damascenes were too busy struggling with the present to give much care to the past.
The most poignant example of this sense of sorrow surrounds the home of Jane Digby. An English socialite and aristocrat, she had exiled herself to Damascus at the age of forty-five. It must have been the one place she could think of where her reputation had not yet reached.
In Europe, the drawing-rooms of high society resounded to gossip of her indecent liaisons. She had been married young to an English Baron, before being divorced by him after a slew of scandalous affairs, including one with her own cousin. Freed from marriage, she embarked on a catalogue of liaisons with numerous nobles, including King Ludwig I of Bavaria and, after him, with his son, King Otto of Greece.
Lady Jane spent half the year near Palmyra in goat hair tents, with her lover, a Bedouin sheikh twenty years her junior. The other six months was passed in Damascus, in a house that lies just outside the walls of the Old City.
I had heard that the building had been rediscovered by Lady Jane’s biographer, Mary Lovell, a few years ago. With time to spare, I went in search of it for myself. The trouble was that no one in the Syrian capital was interested in a European woman who lived more than a century ago, and one celebrated for her promiscuity. I had inexact directions, which were of little use until, that is, I came across a little shop where electrical motors were being repaired.
Mohammed, the owner, was having lunch at a workbench strewn with wire, dismembered fans, and grease. As I entered with my makeshift map, he insisted I join him. In the Arab world, a visitor must be received with hospitality irrespective of circumstance.
Lunch was followed by tea and conversation mostly about Chinese-made fans, and a blow by blow account of Mohammed’s youth. After that, he guided me through an album of pictures of his extended family, and served yet more tea. Three hours after my arrival, I inquired politely if he might show me the house of Lady Jane. He seemed confused, then smiled.
‘Follow me,’ he said.
We left the workshop and went round the corner and down an alley no wider than a man. Mohammed rang a bell high on the doorframe. After some time, an old woman poked her veiled head out and I was ushered quickly inside. The palace of Beit Nizam had impressed me for its sheer grandeur and indulgence, but rarely have I been touched as I was by the home of Lady Jane.
In the many decades since her death, the house has been divided up among as many as thirty families, but the famous octagonal parlour remains in a near-perfect state. The walls are still covered with the original handmade paper, brought from London by Lady Jane herself. Fitted cupboards stand in each corner, their doors inlaid with delicate filigree. The ceiling – alas partly concealed by a crude mezzanine floor – is octagonal, its central medallion ornamented with little mirrors.
Three generations of a family live in the two rooms now. They were clustered on vinyl couches with bouquets of plastic flowers all around, watching Baywatch on an old Japanese TV. Before leaving, I took a mental snapshot, and found myself wondering what the scandalous Lady Jane might have made of the scene.
Back in the covered bazaar, the traders were getting ready for the evening rush, when Damascenes take a stroll before dinner. Brisk business was being done in saffron, mothballs and in underpants, in pumice, plastic buckets and olive oil soap.
One shop was far busier than all the rest.
Its back wall was lined with jars filled with curious ingredients – sulphur, dried chameleons, oak apples and antimony. Dangling from a string near the light was a clutch of tortoise shells, eagles’ wings, and a glass box filled with salamander’s tails. I watched as veiled women would wander over one by one. They would hand a scribbled list to the apothecary who, in turn, would weigh out a handful of roots, damask roses, poppy seeds or a dried starfish.
In a narrow alley a stone’s throw away, a hun
ched old craftsman was hammering a strand of steel beside a forge. His workshop was blackened with soot, his hands as coarse as glass-paper. The swordsmith paused to greet me, and held the blade into the light for me to examine his work. Damascus was once famed for so-called ‘watered steel’, a technique which leaves a fluid-like grain on the metal. Blades of astonishing sharpness were fashioned until about 1700, when the technique was lost.
Nearby, in Souq al Khayyatin, the tailor’s bazaar, I came across a series of chambers where red and white kafir headscarves were being woven on great cast iron looms, imported from France more than a century ago. The chambers were vaulted, their frescoed walls hinting at the former use of the place, as a hammam. The brocade spinners now populate the magnificent central steam room, its ceiling crowned by an octagonal cupola, songbirds tweeting in their cages all around.
Inspired by the ruined bathhouse, I decided to follow Arab tradition and visit a hammam. Bathing is extremely popular across the Islamic world, and is a way for friends to spend time together relaxing, as much as it is a means to get clean. The hammams of Damascus are legendary, many dating back more than a thousand years.
I had been recommended the Al Selsela, which lies close to the ancient Umayyed Mosque. Its owner, another Mohammed, was slouched on a chair near the doorway, watching an Egyptian soap opera on a portable TV.
‘A clean man has a pure heart,’ he whispered as I entered, quoting a favoured Syrian proverb. His family had run the establishment for generations, he said, and he knew all the customers by name. Some of them were lounging about in the central salon, chatting, smoking shisha, and drinking sweet tea.