The Circle of Reason

by Amitav Ghosh

  No, said Forid Mian. No trouble. Not really trouble. But you know how prices are going up and what rice costs. What can a poor man do? So when I see Jeevanbhai I ask him for some more money. And he says, where will the money come from? and he looks at my accounts and he doesn’t seem happy. That happens every other day. It would be too much if it were to happen in the evenings as well.

  Zindi nodded: Yes, but we’ve been missing you. We all wonder where Forid Mian is. Tell me, Forid Mian, how many years is it since you’ve been working in al-Ghazira?

  Forid Mian sighed and counted on his fingers. Must be fifteen, he said. Fifteen years!

  Fifteen years! Zindi clicked her tongue. That’s a long time. Chittagong in Bangladesh, wasn’t it?

  Forid Mian stared into space. Yes, he said, Chittagong, Chatgan, where the Karnophuli pours into the sea, almost Burma …

  Hah! Zindi squeezed his bony thigh. So, Forid Mian, tell me, how many wives and how many children have you got hidden away in your Chatgan by the Karnophuli?

  Forid Mian brushed her hand away. You’re laughing at me, Zindi, he said sharply. You know quite well I don’t have a family or a wife or children. I was too young when I left, and there was no money in the house anyway. Then I was at sea, and there was no time. And then here in al-Ghazira …

  Zindi raised a hand to cover her mouth: No wife, no children! Nothing? What are you going to do? Are you going to stay here for ever, in the Souq? Until your fingers are too stiff to hold a needle?

  What can I do? Forid Mian’s head fell until he was staring at his crossed feet. I have some money saved, I could afford to get married now, even start a small shop of my own. But I have no family left there now. Who would find me a wife? I’m afraid, Zindi: going back to a place alone, starting again, a man can’t do that at my age.

  How old are you, Forid Mian? Zindi asked.

  Fifty? Sixty? Something like that.

  Forid Mian shrugged.

  Zindi gurgled with laughter: Just the right age to get married. Something will have to be done for you, Forid Mian.

  She tweaked his bottom, and Forid Mian broke into laughter: Zindi, you don’t know, you can’t imagine, how I long for a wife. I’ve spent too many nights thrashing about on dry sheets. You don’t know how it hurts. You wake up in the morning and you’re bleeding, but you can’t stop …

  Zindi laughed with him, her huge shoulders rolling like round-bottomed pots. But Forid Mian noticed people turning to look at them, and he frowned in embarrassment. Zindi tapped him on the knee and said: Forid Mian. But he shook his head and pointed across the room, at Hajj Fahmy. The Hajj was holding his hand up and waiting for silence. Zindi decided to say no more; she had said enough for one day.

  Hajj Fahmy, eyes shining, smiled across the room at Abu Fahl. I have a question for Abu Fahl, he said to the room. Let us see if Abu Fahl can answer it. I’ve understood what Abu Fahl has said – why he couldn’t get Alu out today, and so on and fulan – I’ve understood it all, but for one thing, and this thing troubles me. Abu Fahl talks of how strong the concrete and the steel in the Star was, and how that concrete can hold up a mountain of rubble and a shopful of cars, and how you could hang the whole of the Ras on one of those girders. But here is my question: if that concrete and steel was so strong, why did the Star fall?

  Abu Fahl slid a finger under his cap and scratched his head. It wasn’t strong all over, he said, only in parts. He stopped, flustered.

  If it was strong only in parts, why did the whole of it fall?

  Abu Fahl recovered himself. It’s quite simple, he said confidently. Everyone knows that the contractors and architects put too much sand in the cement. They’ve been doing it for years. A cement shortage, they say. But actually they’re busy putting up palaces with the money they make from that cement – for themselves at home in England, or India or Egypt, America, Korea, Pakistan, who knows where? The cement they were using for the Star was nothing but sand. Not all of it, of course. For those parts of the building which were going to bear really heavy weights they cast very strong concrete. It’s one of those parts that Alu is lying under. The rest of that building was like straw. Anybody who had any experience of construction at all knew that it wouldn’t last. I wasn’t surprised when it fell; I’d been expecting it. That day I actually saw the whole thing begin, and I knew at once what was going to happen. Rakesh, Alu and some of the others were the only people working at the time. It was lunchtime, just before the afternoon prayers, and everybody else had stopped work. Our people had something to finish, so they were still inside. I was sitting outside talking to some people and suddenly a piece of plaster fell right beside me. I looked up and I distinctly saw the whole building beginning to shake, and somewhere, deep inside the Star, I heard rumbles. I knew at once what was going to happen, so I raced in and called out to Rakesh and the others to run, for the Star was going to fall. Ask them. If it weren’t for me, they wouldn’t be alive today. They all ran, except Alu, and that was because Alu has no experience; he knows nothing of buildings and construction. But let that be. The Hajj asks why did the Star fall. The answer is this: because, though parts of it were strong, the whole of it was weak because of bad cement and sandy concrete.

  Abu Fahl sat back, assured and commanding, accepting the thoughtful silence that had fallen on the room as a tribute to his good sense. Hajj Fahmy was the first to speak, smiling, teasing him: You’re wrong, Abu Fahl.

  Abu Fahl frowned: What do you mean, I’m wrong?

  Just that. I know you’re wrong.

  How?

  Because I know the real story; the true story.

  If it’s true, how’s it a story?

  All right, then, it’s a story.

  Abu Fahl challenged the old man: If you’re so sure, ya Hajj, why don’t you tell us?

  Hajj Fahmy looked around him: Are you sure everyone wants to hear it?

  Voices rose: Yes, there’s tea, there’s tobacco and what else have we got to do?

  Hajj Fahmy inclined his head, smiling.

  It’s just a story.

  Once many, many years ago, so long ago that the time is of no significance, an odd-looking man, a very odd-looking man, appeared suddenly one day in al-Ghazira. Thin and small he was, of course, as people often were in those days, though his wasn’t the thinness of hunger so much as that of the mangled rag: he looked as though he had been twisted and pulled inside out, for his colour was a strange yellowish brown, as though he were carrying his bile on his skin. At first people would have nothing to do with him; he upset everyone he met, because when one of his eyes looked this way the other looked that. He was so painfully cross-eyed it was said of him that when other people only saw Cairo he could see Bombay as well. And, in addition, one of his eyes was always half-shut, as though his eyelid had been torn off its hinges. That was the deceptive one; it roamed about, taking everything in, while the other acted as a decoy.

  No one knew anything about him. He didn’t even have a name for a long time. But then someone discovered that he was from northern Egypt, from the town of Damanhour, and so of course he was named Nury – Nury the Damanhouri. Soon he was found to be a quiet man, always willing to laugh, and never any trouble to anyone, so people grew to like him.

  It’s true; he was a quiet man, but in his quiet way he changed things while nobody noticed. Take his trade, for example – he brought something altogether new to al-Ghazira. But that’s a story in itself.

  Now, no one ever really knew why Nury had left Damanhour and come to al-Ghazira; in those days Damanhour was probably a better place to make a living than al-Ghazira. But a few months after he arrived a rumour went around al-Ghazira. People whispered that Nury had tried to divorce his wife because she had borne him no children. But when the council of elders was called they said everything was turned upside down – it was she who accused him of being as impotent as a wet rag, and challenged him to prove otherwise. They said he had fled Egypt in shame.

  People were curious, of cou
rse, but it wasn’t known for certain whether the story was true. Here, Nury married a widowed Mawali woman decades older than himself and they were happy together, for she never once talked of how they spent their nights. It didn’t matter. Nury was a philosopher; he knew that people always believe the worst. Though nobody knew for certain, there wasn’t a man in al-Ghazira who didn’t, at heart, believe the rumour to be true. No one ever stopped to ask where the story came from; no one ever imagined that perhaps it came from Nury himself. Once it began to be whispered, people believed it absolutely, indisputably.

  In his own small way Nury was a great man; he had the wisdom to see the world clearly. And like a logician he drew clear conclusions from what he saw.

  Here is a lesson: all trade is founded on reputation.

  Nury’s trade was selling eggs.

  Nobody had ever sold eggs in al-Ghazira before. Not in a properly organized way, at least. In those days, everyone in the town had a few chickens in their houses, and when they laid they ate eggs, when they didn’t they didn’t. No one would have thought of buying or selling eggs, except perhaps from a neighbour.

  Nury changed all that. He found out who had chickens and whose chickens laid when. Every morning he would set out with his basket beside him and go from house to house, buying eggs from some and persuading others to buy a few on the days their chickens weren’t laying. He was successful, but none of it would have been possible but for one thing, and Nury had thought of it. That was the sign of his genius.

  Selling eggs is a trade like no other. Who looks after the chickens in a house? Who sells their eggs? Everyone knows the answer: the women of the house. Nury’s trade was founded on dealing with women. There was not another man in al-Ghazira who could have gone from house to house talking to the women and been left alive for a week. But no one so much as asked a question about Nury the cross-eyed Damanhouri, for everyone had heard his story. Nury was safe and his trade prospered. Nury, harmless and ageless, went from house to house buying and selling, talking of God knows what.

  Nury built a trade on a story. Soon people were used to eating eggs every day, or whenever they wanted to, and people began to count on the extra money they made from selling eggs. Nury did quite well out of it all; soon he even built himself a little house. Nury’s trade was a work of craftsmanship; a masterpiece in the art of staying alive. Nury’s crossed eyes had the gift of looking, not just ahead, but up and down, right into the heart of things.

  But here is another lesson: Blindness comes first to the clear-sighted.

  Never mind. Most people in Nury’s place would have been happy merely to carry on with their trade. Not Nury. Nury the Damanhouri was an artist. For him every egg was an epic, a thousand-page song of love, death and betrayal. By looking at an egg Nury could tell what the chicken had been fed; from that he knew whether the house he had bought it from was close to starvation or had finally found a pot of gold. If one day a house had no eggs to sell, Nury would wonder why and ask a few questions and discover that they’d killed their chickens to feed a man who had a son who was the right age for their daughter. If a poor man’s house suddenly began to buy eggs, Nury would be the only man in al-Ghazira to know that they’d found a pearl the size of a football. Nury had imagination. But, more important, Nury was the only man in al-Ghazira who went from house to house every day, talking to people, even going into courtyards, taking in, in one glance, as much as other people take in in ten. Not a leaf fell, not a sheep shat in al-Ghazira without Nury’s knowing of it. But all this he did quietly, for silence was in his nature.

  There is a moral in this: an eye in a courtyard is worth a hundred guns.

  Inevitably, Jeevanbhai Patel was the first man to see what Nury was worth. Patel was already a well-to-do man then, and he gave Nury some pointless job to do in the evenings, when he wasn’t doing anything else. The job was unimportant. What Patel wanted was his knowledge, for he saw power in knowledge, and for him power meant money. In barely a month Patel’s investment paid off.

  At that time the Malik – this very same Malik who lives shut away in the Old Fort now – was a young man, recently returned from a school for princes in India, where the British had sent him. He had become Malik after his father’s death, only a year before, but already people knew that here was a man very different from the senile and foolish old Malik, his father. This new Malik was a storm of energy. No one met him who did not come away reeling. People said that it was impossible even to look at the Malik for more than a minute at a time – his whole face was blood red like the setting sun. They said he had secret ways of making the blood rush to his face to terrify people. He never laughed, never smiled, and such was his temper that much of the time people were grateful to leave the Fort alive.

  At that time something happened which made his temper worse than ever. A few years ago the British had found oil in some of the kingdoms around al-Ghazira, and already there were rumours that al-Ghazira was just a speck of sand floating on a sea of oil. So the British, for the first time, sent a resident to al-Ghazira, to make the Malik sign a treaty which would let the British dig for oil.

  With great fanfare the Resident arrived, in a battleship. People liked him: he was a fat, round little man who laughed a lot and slept a lot. He liked fancy clothes and pomp and ceremony and parading soldiers. Everywhere he went in al-Ghazira hundreds of people followed him, because whenever he spoke he made his lips into a circle of such perfection that everyone who saw him held their breath waiting for a black, wonderfully rounded goat’s turd to fall out. And so it was that he came to be known as Goat’s Arse.

  Once every week Goat’s Arse would go to the Old Fort and plead and argue, trying to persuade the Malik to sign the treaty, but the Malik wouldn’t hear of it. He had seen what had happened to the princes of India and he had sworn he would never let himself be reduced to their state. So, inevitably, the day came when – much against his will, for he was a peaceable man – Goat’s Arse began to talk of calling for battleships and the Malik began to despair.

  The Malik used to read a lot, and at that time, in his worry, he began to spend whole days reading until it became a kind of madness – histories of the great Baghdadi and Cairene dynasties, lives of the caliphs and the kings and so on. From one of these he got an idea. In his madness he decided he would teach the British a lesson.

  He decided to fry Goat’s Arse.

  Carefully the Malik made his plans. He invited Goat’s Arse to a private dinner to celebrate, he said, his birthday. Goat’s Arse was delighted; he thought the Malik had finally decided to sign the treaty. It was a special occasion, he thought, and ought to be treated with proper ceremony. When the day came he dressed himself in his best uniform, all scarlet and black, and mounted his great white charger. Before him, with their lances and flags and raised pennants, rode his small squadron of Indian cavalry, and ahead of them marched four Sikhs, immense men in turbans, playing bagpipes and kettledrums. It was something to see: plump little Goat’s Arse on his white horse, with all those troops, turbaned and bearded, sashed and sabred, parading through the town, past the harbour, into the Maidan al-Jami‘i, straight through towards the Fort on the hill. The whole town came running out of their houses to follow them. At the foot of the hill the crowd was stopped by the Malik’s Bedouin guards, for the Malik had given them strict orders that nobody was to be allowed near the Fort but Goat’s Arse and his entourage. So the crowd stopped at the foot of the hill and watched Goat’s Arse and his troops till they disappeared.

  Outside the Fort, Goat’s Arse’s troops presented arms and blew their bugles and did many other things of that kind, until the great old gates swung slowly open. Then Goat’s Arse rode majestically to the head of his squadron, stately and erect on his white charger, and led them towards the gate …

  How was Goat’s Arse to know that right above that gate the Malik had stationed the man he most trusted – a eunuch, ebony-black and so enormously fat he had come to be known universally as Jabal
the Mountainous Eunuch – with a vat of boiling oil, or that in seven kingdoms Jabal was renowned for his cowardice, and at that very moment, waiting for the Malik to fire the flare which was to be his signal to tip the oil over, he was a quaking heap of flesh almost ready to jump into the oil himself?

  Goat’s Arse rode serenely on, the plumes in his helmet nodding in the wind, his squadron trotting behind him, on and on; and at the right moment, just when the charger’s head entered the shadow of the gate, the Malik fired his flare and Jabal the Eunuch, in one shivering rush, heaved at the vat of boiling oil.

  The trouble was, something went wrong with the flaregun. The flare looped into the courtyard and burst into light about a foot from the horse’s nose. The horse reared, whinnying, throwing Goat’s Arse wide of the gate, and charged straight into the Fort. There was a waterfall of oil, but all that was fried was the end of the horse’s tail, only a few hairs, which were of no use to anyone.

  In a flash Goat’s Arse’s soldiers had him off the ground – bruised but very alive – and galloping through the city. What they were going to do was no mystery: they were going to radio their warships to bombard al-Ghazira. The streets emptied behind them until in moments the city was midnight-still, every door locked and every last grain of gold hidden away under secret bricks. At the Fort the Bedouin were trying to hurry the Malik into the desert. Even there they could hear the wails of the women rising above the town, already lamenting the sack of al-Ghazira.

  But there was one thing no one knew; only one townsman had been in the Fort at the time of the Bloody Fry-day as it came to be called – only one who had seen precisely what had happened – and naturally that was Nury the sharp-eyed Damanhouri, who had heard of the feast and raced to the Fort with a donkey-load of eggs. He was coming out of the kitchen when the flare exploded, and no sooner had the first drop of oil sizzled on to the horse’s tail than Nury was on his donkey, heading straight for the Souq, for he knew that here at last was something Jeevanbhai would value.