In an Antique Land

by Amitav Ghosh

  I was astonished: in all the time I had spent in Lataifa and Nashawy, I had never seen anyone shut a door upon people in their own house. But when I remarked on this it was Jabir’s turn to be surprised.

  ‘You used to shut your door,’ he said. ‘Have you forgotten or what? We had to bang on it if we wanted to come in.’

  Gesturing to me to seat myself on the bed, he cocked his head at the door. ‘There’s too much noise outside,’ he said. ‘Too many people: I was away in college for such a long time that now it’s become very hard for me here, with so many people in the house.’

  He had first left Lataifa in 1982, he said, the year after my departure from Egypt. He had gone to Tanta, a large town about sixty miles from Cairo, to do a degree in commerce at the university there.

  ‘It was wonderful,’ he said wistfully. ‘I lived on the campus, sharing a room with other students, and we all became close friends. We spent most of our time together, in class and afterwards.’

  ‘Did you find it hard?’ I asked. ‘Being away from your cousins, your family?’

  He threw me a look of surprise. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Not at all, and anyway I saw them from time to time. I was very busy, I was learning so many things, seeing new places, it was so exciting to be there …’

  Cutting himself short, he reached under his bed and pulled out a green plastic suitcase. A few shirts and trousers were neatly packed away inside, along with some books and several small packets, carefully wrapped in paper. Picking out one of those packages, he handed it to me and watched, smiling, as I undid the string.

  ‘It’s the wallet you gave me before you left Lataifa and went to Nashawy,’ he said. ‘You brought it back from Cairo—do you remember? I always use it when I go to the city, and if people ask me about it, I tell them about the Indian who gave it to me, and how he once mistook the moon for Ahmed Musa’s torch.’

  Laughing, he reached into his suitcase again, thumbed through a wad of photographs and handed me one. It was a picture I had taken myself, years ago, of Jabir, in a field near Lataifa; I had sent it to him later, from India, with one of my letters. I was proud of the picture, for I had succeeded in catching him at an unguarded moment, looking towards the camera in the way that came most naturally to him, with an expression that was at once challenging and quizzical, something between a smile and scowl. Seeing that picture again, after so many years, I realized that it was neither Jabir’s grey hair nor the shape of his face that was responsible for the difference in his appearance: the real change lay somewhere else, in some other, more essential quality. In the Jabir who was sitting in front of me I could no longer see the sly, sharp-tongued ferocity my camera had captured so well that day—its place had been taken by a kind of quiet hopelessness, an attitude of resignation.

  Jabir explained the other photographs in the pile as he handed them to me, one by one: they had been taken later, mainly in the gardens and buildings of his university. In the earlier photographs he was always with the same group of friends, classmates with whom he had shared a room for a couple of years. Most of them were working ‘outside’ now, so they had lost touch with each other. But they had been inseparable for the first couple of years; they had studied together and gone on holidays together, to Cairo, Aswan and the Sinai. It was clear from the tone of Jabir’s voice that the memories of those friendships meant a great deal to him, yet I couldn’t help noticing that in many of the pictures he looked like the odd man out, standing straight and looking fixedly into the camera, while the others around him threw themselves into attitudes of exuberant student horseplay. It was easy to see that they were all city boys, from middle-class families: they wore different clothes in each picture, pastel-coloured running-shoes, jeans and T-shirts. Jabir’s clothes, on the other hand, looked as though they had been bought in the bazaar at Damanhour, and the same few shirts and trousers recurred in several pictures in succession, as though to prove that he had stayed true to his frugal village upbringing.

  The beard that Shaikh Musa had mentioned appeared about three-quarters of the way through the pile of photographs. At first it had the look of cotton fluff, but later it took on a quite impressive appearance, reaching down to the line of his collar.

  ‘It took me a long time to grow that beard,’ he said. ‘I looked much better when I had it—more respectable. I never had to bargain when I went to the market—no one would try to cheat me.’

  I made no comment and, after turning over a few more pictures, he added that it was in college that he had begun to learn the real meaning of Islam, from talking to some of his teachers and fellow-students. They had read the Quran together every day and held long discussions that lasted late into the night.

  ‘I was not involved in politics or anything,’ he said, ‘and I didn’t join any groups or societies. But I learnt to recognize what is wrong and what is true. I don’t know how to explain these things to you: you don’t understand matters like these.’

  ‘Why did you shave your beard off?’ I asked.

  His fingers slid over his freshly shaven chin in a slow, exploratory movement. ‘My family wanted me to,’ he said.

  ‘Especially my mother.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘They were afraid,’ he said. ‘There’s been trouble between the government and certain Islamic groups, and they were worried that something might happen to me—even though I don’t belong to any group or party.’

  He shook his head and let out an ironic snort of laughter. ‘This is a Muslim country,’ he said. ‘And it isn’t safe to look like a Muslim.’

  Then, abruptly, he dropped the subject and began asking me why I had not written for so long and what I had been doing since I left Egypt. My recital was a long one, and towards the end of it he grew pensive and began to ask detailed questions—about how much I had paid to fly to Egypt and the current exchange rates of the Indian rupee, the American dollar and the Egyptian pound.

  ‘I may have to buy an air-ticket soon,’ he said, at length. ‘I’ve been trying to get a job outside. I worked in Iraq while I was in college, and if God wills I shall go there again.’

  The first time he went, he said, was after his second year in college. One of his cousins, who was a foreman on a construction site in Baghdad, had taken him there so he could earn some money during his summer vacation. He had had to get a special kind of passport, because as a rule the Egyptian government did not allow its citizens to go abroad until they had completed their time in the army. Getting the passport hadn’t been easy, but it had proved to be well worth it, in the end. He had earned so much money that his father was able to add a new room to their house.

  He showed me a few photographs taken in Iraq, and I immediately recognized several other faces, besides his—friends and cousins of his, whom I’d known in Lataifa or Nashawy. The pictures were mostly taken in markets and parks in Baghdad, on holidays—I could almost see them myself, setting off in their best clothes, their faces alight with the pleasurable apprehension of being on their own in a faraway city, with their pockets full of money, well out of the reach of their parents and elders.

  ‘What was it like there?’ I asked.

  ‘I was young then,’ Jabir said, ‘and I was sometimes a little scared.’

  The Iraqis were very rough in their ways, he explained. He and his cousins and friends wouldn’t usually go out at nights; they would stay in their rooms, all of them together, and cook and watch television. But despite all that, Iraq was better than some other places; from what he had heard, the Gulf Emirates were much worse. At least in Iraq everyone got paid properly. As far as he was concerned, he didn’t care how the Iraqis behaved—all he wanted was to go back, after finishing with college and the army.

  For a while it had looked as though things would go exactly as he had planned. His time in the army had passed quickly and without hardship, for his college degree had earned him a comfortable bookkeeping job in his unit.

  ‘I was near Alexandria and it was nice,’ he said
. ‘The officers treated me differently, not like the other soldiers, because I’d been to college and everything. They treated me almost like I was one of them.’

  He had applied for a passport as soon as he got out of the army, and wasted no time in writing letters to his friends and cousins in Iraq, asking them to look out for job openings. He had expected that he’d be able to find a job without difficulty, just as he had the last time. But soon he discovered that things had changed. Iraqi soldiers and reservists had begun to go back to work and there were fewer and fewer jobs for foreigners. Worse still, the Iraqi government had established strict new laws which made it hard for Egyptian workers to send money home. But dozens of his friends and relatives were still there, of course, and they were managing well enough—anything was better than sitting idly at home, after all. So he had written to them again and again, asking them to let him know as soon as they heard of a job—he didn’t care what it was, he just wanted a job, somewhere ‘outside’, in Iraq or wherever.

  In the meantime, he had come back to Lataifa to wait until he was notified about the government job to which he was entitled by virtue of his college degree. It was not much to look forward to, for the salary was a pittance, a fraction of what a construction worker could earn in Iraq. But still, it was something. He had waited for months to hear about the job, and when the notification still hadn’t arrived, he had begun to work with a bricklayer, as an apprentice: there were many houses being built now, in Lataifa and Nashawy, with the money that people were receiving from ‘outside’.

  ‘It’s just for the time being,’ Jabir said quickly. ‘Until I find a job outside. I’ll leave as soon as I hear of something, insha‘allah.’

  Piling the photographs together, he put them away again, rearranging his suitcase in the process. I could tell from the way he did it that packing his suitcase had become a habit with him.

  ‘I made a mistake,’ he said at last, shutting the suitcase. ‘I thought a degree would help me, so I went to college. It was an exciting time and I learnt so much, but at the end of it, look, what am I doing? I’m a construction worker. I wasted time by going to college; I missed the best opportunities.’

  And as a measure of his folly, there was the example of his brother Mohammad, who had planned his future better. Mohammad was a year younger than Jabir, but he looked older, being taller and more heavily built. Unlike Jabir, he had never taken an interest in his studies and had barely managed to get through school; the thought of going to college had never entered his mind. Instead, he did his National Service as soon as possible, and then apprenticed himself to a carpenter in a nearby village. After spending a few months in acquiring the rudiments of the trade, he got himself a job in Jordan—that was at a time when jobs were still easy to get. He’d been in Jordan ever since, making good money. Recently he had written to say that he was coming home for a while—there was a chance that he might be able to get a job in Italy soon and he wanted to make arrangements for his future.

  Jabir broke off there, his lips tightly pursed. He wouldn’t say any more but the rest was clear enough: Mohammad wanted to get married before going off again. He had probably saved enough money to buy a house or an apartment—in Damanhour perhaps, or somewhere else—so he was now in a position to make a good marriage and set up house. In all likelihood, the only reason he had waited so long was because Jabir was older, and therefore entitled, by custom, to marry first. But, of course, Jabir had no savings and no means of buying an apartment of his own. And without one he wouldn’t be able to marry someone compatible, a girl with a college education—instead he would have to marry a cousin from Lataifa, and live with his family, with no place to call his own. That was why it was imperative for him to find a job as soon as possible; time was running out—Mohammad had waited long enough, and no one would blame him now if he went ahead and got married. He had more than done his duty by custom.

  In some part of his mind, Jabir was probably entirely in sympathy with his brother’s predicament, yet if Mohammad were to be the first to marry, it would be a public announcement of his own failure. I had only to look at Jabir’s face to know that if that happened he would be utterly crushed, destroyed.

  Turning his back on me, Jabir busied himself with his suitcase, repacking it yet again, as though to satisfy a craving. ‘I’ll be going back to Iraq soon,’ he said, in a voice that was barely audible.

  I couldn’t see his face but I knew he was near tears.

  4

  THE RETURN TO Aden, undertaken with such gladness of spirit, was to bring nothing but tragedy to Ben Yiju. Such were the misfortunes that befell him there that within three years or so he uprooted himself once again. It was to Egypt that he now moved, and shortly after his arrival there, he tried once more to establish direct communication with his brother Yusuf, in Sicily.

  The letter he wrote on this occasion was a long one, like the last, but his mood and his circumstances were greatly changed and the nostalgic exuberance that had seized him upon his return to Aden had now yielded to a resigned and brokenhearted melancholy. Writing to his brother now, he felt compelled to provide him with an account of some of the events that had befallen him since he last wrote, in 1149.

  ‘I wrote a letter to you a while ago,’ Ben Yiju told Yusuf. ‘It reached Mubashshir, but he did not care to deliver it to you: [instead] he arrived in Aden [himself].’

  But Mubashshir’s visit, so long awaited, had not turned out as Ben Yiju had expected: ‘I did all that was in my power for him and more, but he dealt me a ruinous blow. The events would take too long to explain, O my brother …’ A couple of lines scribbled in the margin provides a hint of what had passed between them. In the course of his stay in Aden, Mubashshir had defrauded his brother of a huge sum of money: As for Mubashshir, he is nothing but a lazy man; malevolent in spirit. I gave him whatever he asked for, and in return he dealt me a ruinous blow. The price of my deeds was a thousand dînârs …’

  Yet, painful as it was, the discovery of his brother’s dishonesty was a small matter compared to the weight of Ben Yiju’s other misfortunes: in the meantime he had also suffered the loss of his first child, the son born of his union with Ashu, to whom he had given the joyful name Surur.

  The surviving copy of the letter still contains a part of the passage in which Ben Yiju tells Yusuf of his son’s death. He had once had, he writes, two children like sprigs of sweet basil …’—but here the sentence breaks off, for the letter has been badly damaged over the centuries. The little that remains of the passage is punctuated with a bizarrely expressive succession of silences, as though time had somehow contrived to provide the perfect parentheses for Ben Yiju’s grief by changing the scansion of his prose. It reads:

  And the elder [of the two children] died in Aden …

  I do not know what to describe of it …

  I have left a daughter, his sister …

  It was partly because of this daughter, Sitt al-Dâr, that Ben Yiju was now writing to his brother; he had been separated from her for prolonged periods over the last several years, and her future was now his most pressing concern.

  Soon after moving to Aden, Ben Yiju had transferred his base out of that city and into the highlands of the interior, to a city called Dhû Jibia, which served as one of the principal seats of the ruling Zuray’id dynasty. For about three years afterwards he had lived mostly in the Yemeni mountains while his daughter remained in Aden, in the custody of his old and faithful friend Khalaf ibn Ishaq, living in his house as a member of his family.

  The reasons for Ben Yiju’s move are not entirely clear, but the loss of his son must have played a part in inducing him to leave Aden. In any event, he was already living in the mountains when he received news of yet another loss, just a couple of years after his arrival in Aden.

  In 1151 Ben Yiju’s old friend and one-time mentor, Madmun ibn Bundar, died in Aden. Ben Yiju was to read of his death in a letter from a correspondent: ‘The news reached your exalted honour’s slav
e, of the death of the lord and owner Mamûn … the stalwart pillar, Nagîd of the land of Yemen, Prince of the communities, Crown of the Choirs …’ To Ben Yiju the news of Madmun’s death must have come as a terrible blow: among his few surviving pieces of verse is a Hebrew poem, composed in memory of his friend.

  In some ways, however, Ben Yiju evidently found a good deal of fulfilment in his new home in the Yemeni highlands. Such documentation as there is on this period of his life suggests that he enjoyed a position of some prominence within the Jewish communities of the interior, and he may even have been appointed to serve as a judge. Yet there must also have been many anxieties attendant on living in that relatively inaccessible region: his correspondence shows that he was greatly concerned about the safety of the roadways, for instance, which is hardly surprising considering that he was separated from his only surviving child by a wide stretch of difficult terrain, in a divided and war-torn land.

  An extraordinary dilemma was to result from Ben Yiju’s long separation from his daughter. His friend Khalaf, whose house she was living in, eventually approached him with a proposal of marriage for her, on behalf of one of his sons. The documents provide no indication of what her wishes in the matter were, but it is more than likely of course that Khalaf was acting with her consent; it is even possible that it was the young couple themselves who had prevailed upon him to speak to Ben Yiju about a betrothal, expecting that the request could hardly be refused when it came from a friend of such long standing.

  But close though Ben Yiju was to his friends in Aden, he stood apart from them in one respect: their family origins, unlike his own, lay in the region of Iraq. The matter need not have made a difference had Ben Yiju chosen to ignore it, for such marriages were commonplace within their circle. But in the event Ben Yiju chose to disregard his long-standing association with Khalaf and his family: almost as though he were seeking to disown a part of his own past, he now decided that he could not let his daughter marry a ‘foreigner’. Instead, he began to dream again of reaffirming his bonds with his family in the accepted fashion of the Middle East, by marrying her to her cousin, his brother Yusuf’s eldest son, Surur.