In an Antique Land

by Amitav Ghosh

  Every synagogue in the Middle East once had a Geniza and in accordance with custom, their contents were regularly emptied and buried. The Geniza of the Synagogue of Ben Ezra was added when the synagogue was rebuilt in 1025AD, but for some reason—possibly reverence for the past, possibly mere oversight—it was never cleared out. For more than eight centuries papers continued to accumulate inside the Geniza. At the peak of the community’s prosperity, during the first two and a half centuries after the rebuilding of the Synagogue in 1025, great quantities of manuscripts poured in. Then, towards the middle of the thirteenth century, the flow dried to a trickle, and only swelled again some three hundred years later, when the Spanish Inquisition sent yet another wave of Jewish immigrants flooding in to Egypt. Papers (and later, books) continued to accumulate intermittently in the Geniza until the nineteenth century, by which time Fustat had become a poor neglected backwater in Cairo’s rapidly expanding archipelago. The document that is thought to be the last to be deposited in the Geniza bears the date 1875: it was a divorce settlement written in Bombay.

  For centuries the Synagogue of the Palestinians lay forgotten within the half-abandoned precincts of the ancient fortress of Babylon. In about 1890, the eleventh-century building, the structure that Ben Yiju saw, was finally torn down and a new one was erected in its place: it still stands on the site today.

  Until recently the site of the Synagogue of Ben Ezra lay at one end of a plateau of rubble; an expanse of shattered brick and stone, that looked as though it had been flattened by a gigantic hammer. The Synagogue itself, an undistinguished, rectangular building, seemed just barely to have survived: much of its masonry had crumbled, and the shutters had fallen away from many of its windows. Its most striking feature was a pair of wrought-iron gates; although much discoloured and corroded, they were still graceful, their sinuous forms exuberantly Art Deco: they looked as though someone had ordered them from Paris in a flush of enthusiasm after a summer holiday. Above the narrow gateway, held in place by a length of iron tubing and a few heavy stones, was a Star of David, a little askew and festooned with cobwebs.

  Today the building is once again rejuvenated, its exterior scrubbed and well-tended. Prefabricated huts have sprouted in the rubble outside, where young engineers stand behind drawing-boards, their toes tapping gently to the beat of muted rock music: a team of Canadian experts and restorers has arrived, Mountie-like, to rescue the Synagogue from the assaults of Time.

  A few men wait for tourists at the entrance to the Synagogue, standing behind desks spread with beads, necklaces, bronze scarabs and busts of Nefertiti. One of them has been there for years, a plump, smiling man, dressed in a shirt and trousers. His trinkets and souvenirs do not seem to change much from year to year—in fact he never seems to do much business at all—but he is always full of smiles, good-natured, and helpful. He explains that ‘Amm Shahata, the caretaker, is inside, he can take visitors in and explain everything—he is Jewish, yahûdi, he knows all about the Synagogue.

  In a while ‘Amm Shahata appears, a sprightly old man, very thin and a little stooped. He too is dressed in a shirt and trousers, and his skull-cap is very much like any Egyptian Muslim’s. The two men exchange some companionable banter; his Arabic is indistinguishable from theirs, the staccato speech of working-class Cairo. He tells you his name: ‘Nathan in Hebrew and Shahata in Arabic.’ Close up he looks unexpectedly old, his teeth are gone and veins stand out on his forehead.

  ‘Amm Shahata soon lets it be known that he is a busy man: he has no time to waste; he ushers you briskly through the gateway and leads you into the main chamber of the Synagogue. Prisms of light shine through coloured windows; you are in a room with a very high ceiling, but otherwise of modest, schoolroom size. In the centre is a raised, octagonal altar, with benches arranged in rows on either side. The room has two levels. At the upper level is the women’s gallery, which runs around three sides of the room. At the far end of the gallery, on the left, is a small hole, high up in the wall; it opens into an empty chamber adjoining the back wall. ‘Amm Shahata points at the opening; that is the Geniza, he tells you, where a lot of papers were found, years and years ago.

  You wish it were indeed the old Geniza, but it cannot be. It is no higher than a bare six feet or so while the Geniza of the old Synagogue is known to have been at least as tall as the rest of the building, some two and a half storeys high. The old Geniza was probably left standing for a while, after the rest of the structure was torn down, but it must have perished later.

  Of course, you have no cause to be disappointed. The Synagogue’s location has not altered, whatever the changes in its outer shell. The fact is that you are standing upon the very site which held the greatest single collection of medieval documents ever discovered.

  It was here, in this forlorn corner of Masr, that the memories of Abraham Ben Yiju and his slave lay preserved for more than seven hundred years.

  6

  ONCE, ON A very hot afternoon, when the sweat was dribbling off my face on to my notebooks, I gave up trying to work, and sat in my room with the door open, hoping to trap a breath of fresh air. It was very still that day, with the moisture from the freshly-watered cotton fields and rice paddies hanging heavy in the air. At intervals, as though frightened by the stillness, the ducks and chickens with whom I shared the roof would burst into an uproar, erupt out of their coops and flap around the roof in a gale of frenzied squawks, undaunted by the flat, white heat of the afternoon.

  As I sat watching, a pair of ducks began to race around and around the roof, one in pursuit of the other. They were of a species I had never seen before I came to Egypt: squat, ugly creatures, almost suicidally self-absorbed, with large red warts on their necks and mangy black and white bodies. The pursuer was the bigger of the two, and it soon caught up with the other and pinned it to the floor with its beak. Then, after it had hoisted itself on top, it raised one leg and suddenly its penis appeared, a bright, wet pink, about as long as a thumbnail. It flapped its tailfeathers for a moment, pressing against its mate, and then tumbled off, a look of bafflement on its face. I watched spellbound: I had had no conception that ducks had penises and vaginas.

  I happened to look up then and I saw Jabir, standing silently in the stairway, watching me.

  He began to laugh.

  ‘You were watching like it was a film, ya Amitab,’ he said, laughing. ‘Haven’t you seen ducks do that before?’

  ‘No,’ I said.

  His laughter was infectious; I found myself laughing with him.

  He came into the room and seated himself on the chair, taking care to keep his clean jallabeyya from touching the floor.

  ‘So tell me then,’ he said, throwing me a glance of interested inquiry. ‘What do you know on the subject of …?’

  He used a word I had not heard before. I must have looked puzzled, for he gave an incredulous gasp and said: ‘You mean you’ve never heard of …?’

  It was the same word again.

  I shook my head and he sank back in the chair, knocking his head with his fist, nearly dislodging his white skull-cap.

  ‘Ya Amitab,’ he said in mock despair. ‘What are you going to do in life if you don’t know about that?’

  ‘About what?’ I said.

  This only made him laugh. ‘If you don’t know you don’t know,’ he muttered mysteriously.

  ‘Don’t know about what?’ I said, in exasperation.

  ‘It’s not important,’ he said, grinning, elliptical. ‘It’s good to put a distance between your thoughts and things like that. But tell me this—of course you have circumcision where you come from, just like we do? Isn’t that so, mush kida?’

  I had long been dreading this line of questioning, knowing exactly where it would lead.

  ‘Some people do,’ I said. ‘And some people don’t.’

  ‘You mean,’ he said in rising disbelief, ‘there are people in your country who are not circumcised?’

  In Arabic the word ‘circumcise’ der
ives from a root that means ‘to purify’: to say of someone that they are ‘uncircumcised’ is more or less to call them impure.

  ‘Yes,’ I answered, ‘yes, many people in my country are “impure”.’ I had no alternative; I was trapped by language.

  ‘But not you …’ He could not bring himself to finish the sentence.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. My face was hot with embarrassment and my throat had gone dry: ‘Yes, me too.’

  He gasped and his incredulous eyes skimmed over the front of my trousers. For a moment he stared in disbelieving curiosity, and then, with an effort, he said: ‘And when you go to the barber to have your hair cut, do you not shave your armpits like we do?’

  ‘No,’ I said.

  He leant forward, frowning intently. ‘So tell me then,’ he said, pointing a finger at my crotch. ‘Don’t you shave there either?’

  ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘But then,’ he cried, ‘doesn’t the hair grow longer and longer until …’

  Inadvertently his eyes dropped and he stole a quick look at my ankles. I am convinced, to this day, that he fully expected to see the ends of two long, curly braids peeping out from the ends of my trousers.

  That evening, towards sunset, I went for a walk in the fields. A fair distance from the hamlet I came upon Jabir and some other boys of his age, sitting beside a small canal. They had their textbooks with them and they were taking advantage of the comparative quiet of the fields to catch up with their schoolwork. I stopped dead when I saw Jabir; I was not sure whether we were still on speaking terms. But to my relief he waved cheerfully when he saw me coming, and then he and his friends jumped to their feet and fell in beside me.

  ‘You should go on with your studies,’ I said. ‘There’s still plenty of light.’

  ‘We should be returning now,’ Jabir said, ‘it will soon be time for the evening prayers. Look—the moon is already up.’

  I looked up and saw a full moon, brilliant against the fading purple of the evening sky. It was very quiet, except for the creak of distant water-wheels; in Lataifa, far away, the first lamps were beginning to shine.

  Jabir had his arms around the shoulders of the other boys. ‘Do you want to hear something?’ he said. He was whispering but I could hear him clearly in the sunset hush.

  ‘I was talking to him this afternoon,’ he said, gesturing at me with his chin. ‘And do you know, he doesn’t know what sex is?’

  I had checked in the dictionary as soon as he’d left: he was using the same word he’d used that afternoon.

  ‘What’s this you’re saying, ya Jabir?’ one of the boys exclaimed. ‘He doesn’t know what sex is?’

  ‘What am I telling you?’ Jabir retorted. ‘He doesn’t know. I asked him.’

  ‘And he looks so grown up and all.’

  ‘But he doesn’t know a thing,’ said Jabir. ‘Not religion, not politics, not sex, just like a child.’

  There was an awed silence. ‘Do you think he doesn’t know about “beating the ten” either?’ one of the boys whispered. I was not familiar with this expression at the time, but the gesture of the fist that accompanied it gave me a fair idea of its meaning.

  ‘No,’ said Jabir, ‘he’s like a child, I told you. That’s why he’s always asking questions.’

  ‘Shouldn’t we tell him?’ one of the boys said. ‘How’s he going to grow up if he doesn’t beat the ten?’

  ‘It’s no use,’ said Jabir. ‘He won’t understand; he doesn’t know a thing. Look, I’ll show you.’

  He detached himself from the others and called out to me: ‘Ya Amitab—stop, wait a minute.’

  Taking hold of my elbow he led me to the edge of the canal. ‘Look at that,’ he said, pointing at the reflection of the full moon on the water. ‘What is it? Do you know?’

  ‘Of course I know,’ I scoffed. ‘It’s Ahmed, Shaikh Musas son, shining his torch on the water.’

  There was a hushed silence and Jabir turned to cast the others a triumphant look while I walked on quickly.

  ‘No, ya Amitab,’ one of the boys said, running after me, his voice hoarse with concern. ‘That’s not so. It’s not Ahmed shining his torch in the water—that’s a reflection of the full moon.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘You’re absolutely wrong. Ahmed told me he would be going out for a walk today with his torch.’

  ‘But if it’s Ahmed how is it that we didn’t see him?’

  ‘We didn’t see him because he was a long way off. His torch is very powerful. It works on four batteries. He’s just bought new batteries—yesterday in Damanhour.’

  And thus we argued, back and forth, and by the time we reached Lataifa I had nearly won the argument.

  7

  FOR A LONG time afterwards, I remained a child in Jabir’s eyes.

  One evening, shortly after the start of Ramadan (which stretched over July and August that year), Jabir took me to a mowlid, a fair in honour of a saint’s birthday, in a village that lay across the fields. Several other boys from Lataifa went with us, among them Jabir’s younger brother, Mohammad, and a nephew of Shaikh Musa’s, a shy, quiet boy of fifteen, called Mabrouk.

  As we walked across the fields towards the distant lights of the mowlid, Jabir and the other boys told me about the legend of Sidi ‘Abbas of Nakhlatain, in whose honour the mowlid was being celebrated.

  Sidi ‘Abbas had lived in Nakhlatain long, long ago, long before anyone could remember, and he had been famous throughout the region for his godliness and piety: people had said of him that he was a ‘good man’, gifted with ‘baraka’, the power of conferring blessings. Such was his fame that a large crowd gathered in his village when he died, and so many people were witness to the miraculous events that graced his funeral. Trying to lift the Sidi’s bier, the men of the village found, to their amazement, that they couldn’t move it at all; dozens of them tried, only to find that they could not so much as budge it. It was only when the Sidi’s son lent a hand that the body began to move, but even then, it was not he who moved the body: the Sidi had moved of his own volition.

  The Sidi’s body had led the wonderstruck people of the village into a mosque, and there the Sidi had communicated with them, telling them to build him a domed tomb, a maqâm: they were to celebrate his mowlid there every year. The people of the village had done as he had said, and in the following years the Sidi demonstrated his power to them time and time again, through miracles and acts of grace. Once, for instance, some thieves who were escaping with a herd of stolen water-buffalo were frozen to the ground, buffaloes and all, when they drew abreast of the Sidi’s tomb. Such was the Sidi’s power that anything left touching his tomb was safe: farmers who were late going home in the evening would even leave such valuable things as their wooden ploughs leaning against its walls, knowing that they would not be touched. Once, someone left a plough with leather thongs there, propped up against the tomb. After a while a mouse came along and, since mice like to nibble at leather, it had bitten into the plough’s thongs. But no sooner had its teeth touched the plough than it was frozen to the ground; that was how it was found next morning, with its teeth stuck in the thongs. Even animals were not exempt from the rules of sanctuary that surrounded the Sidi’s tomb.

  The tomb was visible from a long way off, across the fields: a simple, rectangular structure with a low dome and a large open space in front which served as a public space—a common threshing-floor, as well as the site of the village’s weekly market. Now the tomb was festooned with dozens of small bulbs, its freshly whitewashed walls dotted with puddles of coloured light. The square in front was crowded with people, some thronging into the tomb, and others circulating amongst the fairground stalls that had been erected all around it.

  A stall-owner called out to us as we walked into the square. ‘Come on,’ he said, ‘let’s see what you young fellows can do.’

  There were several airguns balanced on his counter, pointing at a board with dangling balloons and candles. Smiling encouragement, he thrust a coupl
e of guns into our hands. I was stooping to take aim when I heard Jabir’s voice behind me: ‘From India …’

  I looked over my shoulder and quickly turned back again. A large crowd had gathered around me; much larger than the crowds in any of the other stalls. ‘Doesn’t know anything,’ I heard Jabir say, ‘Nothing at all …’ I squeezed the trigger, trying to keep my sights steady on a large balloon.

  ‘You missed,’ said Jabir.

  Ignoring my mumbled retort, he turned back to his audience. ‘Didn’t I tell you?’ he whispered. ‘Doesn’t know a thing.’

  I tried to fix the balloon in my sights again, while people clustered eagerly around Jabir. ‘Doesn’t pray, doesn’t even know Our Lord …’

  ‘What’re you saying? Doesn’t know Our Lord!’

  I squeezed the trigger, and once again the pellet thudded into the board, wide of the balloon.

  ‘Doesn’t know the Lord! Oh the Saviour!’

  I shuffled off quickly to the next stall where a boy was selling pink, fluffy candy. Jabir’s voice followed me: ‘Reads books and asks questions all day long; doesn’t have any work to do …’

  ‘Can we talk to him?’ somebody asked.

  ‘No,’ Jabir said magisterially. ‘He won’t understand a word you say. Only we in Lataifa know how to talk to him.’

  I began to push my way quickly through the crowd, towards the other end of the square: I was hoping to put a distance between myself and Jabir, but he was not to be shaken off and followed hard on my heels. But then, providentially, I earned a brief respite; he and his cousins spotted a row of swings on the edge of the square and went running off to join the queue.

  By the time I worked my way through the crowd their turns had come and they were heaving themselves back and forth, their jallabeyyas ballooning out around them, each trying to outdo the other. The crowd began to cheer them on and one of the boys swung high enough to go all the way around the bar in a complete circle. Jabir attempted a couple of mighty heaves himself, to no effect, so he jumped off, shrugging dismissively. ‘I wasn’t trying,’ he said, dusting his hands. ‘I can do it when I try.’