He remembered the boy’s face the day he had challenged him on this issue in class. He kept repeating something about the Pharaohs’ curly hair, he had gone on and on about it. “But sir, they’ve never found ‘bracelets of bright hair about the bone!’” he had smirked. “It’s always been dark hair, black, wiry, and curly like mine, hasn’t it?” He had perhaps read and investigated the subject in his own limited way, prepared his onslaught. He remembered feeling pushed into momentary silence by the boy’s logic that day.
“It is easy to oversimplify these things,” Sam had begun, slightly defensively. Defiant little idiot. Why do people blow things out of all proportion? Curly hair or straight, dark or blond, does it really matter? Does it? And if it doesn’t, then why have I been arguing about it?
He rummaged for an ashtray among the papers on the desk and fished it out of the chaos. A glazed blue porcelain sphinx held a shallow bowl in its paws with exaggerated solemnity. He stared at the creature: She seemed unperturbed by the crisis of the day. His eyes slid down its glazed throat to where the human breast turned into beast.
If only the meaning of events did not elude us as they unroll through our lives . . . he thought, desperate for some spark of wisdom or inspiration. Penny smiled at him, at his confusion perhaps, from across his desk, a calm sepia image in a silver frame.
Objectivity is the cardinal principle of my trade, that’s the principle I must follow. I know that more clearly than ever before. I must draw as far away as possible from the personal emotion attached to all this and . . . and try to read the article from beginning to end, without reference to myself. I need to honor my own integrity as a professional and not be driven by the university’s need for a politically correct image. My statement mustn’t undermine my own professionalism, or my future here as a teacher. After all, I’m the one who faces this rabble in the classroom, eye to eye.
He decided to ignore the messenger of death hovering behind Youseff’s image, visible even in the photograph as if through an x-ray machine. His raw statements had taken on a strange poignancy in the interview. Was it the power of the saint, the martyr, the mystic, that added layers to his message? Or was it the same wisdom that routinely pours out of the mouths of babes into deaf old ears unable to recognize it? The interview read extremely well. He came over convincingly as an idealist, a Utopian who remembered earlier blueprints in every detail.
He had quoted Thomas More—clearly he was a hero and a model for his own conduct in the dispute:
Now am I like to Plato’s city,
Whose fame flieth the world thorough;
Yea, like, or rather more likely
Plato’s plat to excel and pass.
Here was someone who dreamed of perfection though the dream had fallen out of fashion long ago. He was still dreaming of justice when almost the entire world had decided to concur in its acceptance of the failure of that dream. Here was someone who was willing to make the supreme sacrifice when sacrifice was no longer in currency, no longer a virtue. His idealism, his saintliness were so unblemished, so visceral that they hefted Sam toward an imperative he may otherwise have been able to constrain—at least in these circumstances. Instead, he too felt obliged to take a strong and absolute stand for what he believed in. He could not be less than honest in this situation. He could not compromise, not faced with this.
His telephone rang, a fraught screech of anxiety from the press office. He sounded vague speaking patiently, as if to a very slow child: He had to issue a denial, some kind of refutation. After all, he was not a racist! Was he?
“I’m not so sure what I would be denying! As a scholar in my own discipline I know I cannot, in all honesty, change my stance. I have not been misquoted on the subject. I don’t really know what I need to deny, Caroline! I wish I knew.” Sam felt curiously liberated by this uncertainty. “As I see it, there isn’t enough evidence to support the position he wanted me to take about the ancestry of the Egyptians.”
“There’s the broader issue, though. Let me write up something and send it to you.” Caroline could not believe the size of the problem on their hands.
“The fucking idiot!” she swore to her personal assistant as she put the phone down on him. “Bloody academics! So irresponsible! I wish they lived in the real bloody world! Do you think he realizes the meaning of what he’s saying?”
“What’s he saying then?” Wendy responded with minimal interest, filing away at a chip on her nail.
“Some mumbo jumbo about the truth of his discipline. In effect, that he’s not really bothered about denying the charge of racism. Would you believe it? Honestly! This is the climate we live in!”
“Maybe it’s more useful to be on the wrong side these days?”
“Oh, Wendy,” Caroline sighed, “you do have a way of hitting the nail on the head sometimes! Meanwhile, as they say in the business, this university has a bit of an image problem on its hands.”
Happy had never met the chaplain before. She looked up as he came to sit down beside her with their two cups of coffee and a plate of digestive biscuits. His parlor was predictably olde worlde, as were the bone china teacups (Minton? English country garden?) though his language was refreshingly unworthy of his role in the college.
“I don’t know what else to suggest. Only the Vice Chancellor has the power to sort out this blasted mess. Real dog’s dinner, isn’t it?” his biscuit crumbled untidily into his armchair.
“But there’s no time to wait. Three days! He’s sinking fast, I shudder to think what might happen in that time. Have you seen the hostility and anger that’s getting pumped up in the students by the minute?”
“I know what you’re saying, Happy. Here’s a situation that doesn’t make sense. Bloody meaningless confrontation, if you ask me!”
“I’m not one to believe in conspiracy theories, but the way events have shaped up on this campus is really strange. Both sides are so deeply entrenched, so dogmatic.”
“We’ll know if someone at the top gets nominated for a knighthood next year, won’t we?” he winked.
“Might be too late for some.” She put down the empty cup and rose. His unconditional sympathy for the students had been heartening. She had spent the last three days trying to push staff opinion in their favor, just to defuse the crisis. She was terrified lest something irrevocable like death bring them all to a point of no return. On a personal level the staff were all flexible, even sympathetic, but as a group, as a warring faction, they were as intransigent as the most hotheaded of students. The heads of faculties and the dean all sheltered behind the Vice Chancellor, and now that this young man’s life was seriously at risk, he was away, out of reach on a week’s holiday.
The Chaplain stood up to see her to the door. He had promised to try to contact the VC for her. She felt cold and numb as she stepped out of his cosy parlor into the dark winter evening. The students had mounted a candlelight vigil outside the Redgrave Theater. She stood near the heavy wooden entrance doors, watching. It was a moving spectacle, a fearful, breathless, hushed moment. She could feel the tension and bitterness in that subdued hum almost brushing against her skin.
Police had cordoned off two lanes on each side of the A class road, which ran between the blocks and buildings of the university. The quieter late-evening traffic, forced to slow down through the bottleneck, was less noisy than usual. She wondered what to do next. A part of her wanted to light a candle and stay with them but she resisted the temptation.
The door opened gently and Sam Jennings appeared on the pavement beside her. She tried to avoid his eyes but he had seen her. Somehow, he had managed to put himself in the opposite camp. He noticed her anxiety and drew up closer to say hello, forcing her to respond.
To an extent he had been prepared for the ostracism: He was aware of her anger and that of some other staff members, but he wondered why. Perhaps because the world at large oversimplifies solutions to problems. Black and white. Far too simplistic when the real world is overwhelmingly gra
y.
“Shall we go for a drink?” he asked hastily as he saw her turning to leave.
“Can’t, I’m afraid . . . I’m booked to see a play,” she improvised.
“It’s early yet. A quick one . . . ?” he insisted.
“All right, then. It’ll have to be very quick, though,” she gave in with bad grace.
They walked around to The Jolly Beggar, which seemed unusually deserted for that time of evening, and he managed to get their drinks in record time. She was wondering what they could talk about to avoid the obvious, but he clearly didn’t want to.
He took a deep breath and launched into an explanation of his own position. “All this was unnecessary. It’s only giving free publicity and attention to a stupid, small-minded, parochial group! An insignificant loopy lot on the fringe, that’s all, the Green Dragons! Sometimes it’s best to tolerate rather than suppress things that act like a steam vent. They should’ve been ignored.”
“It’s too late to go back to that option,” her voice sounded cold even to her own ears. She felt angry with him, extremely angry.
“How is he?” he asked.
“Seriously ill.”
“Get him to stop. Talk to them,” he urged.
“Didn’t you hear me, Sam? It’s too late! He’s dying.”
“I’ll talk to the Vice Chancellor. I can get him to change his mind: I know.”
“You? You’ll talk to the VC?” Contempt accentuated the surprise in her voice. “Why should you? You’ve just said you don’t believe in what the students are saying!”
“It would still be quite insane to carry on this conflict on these terms, that’s why.”
“I wish you’d changed your mind earlier, Sam. The VC is away for three more days and I don’t think Youseff will last that long.”
His face blanched. Then he opened his brief case and took out a blank sheet of headed notepaper. He wrote down a statement and handed it to her.
I, the Vice Chancellor of the City University of London, do hereby agree to all the demands of the Students’ Union pertaining to the Green Dragon Club and its publication. I also agree to undertake appropriate measures to curb these activities within the campus as soon as possible.
Sincerely,
E.L. Whitton
He had signed the VC’s name in a manner only vaguely resembling the real thing, but they wouldn’t know. She shook her head in disbelief.
“Just give it to them. They’ll accept it as real,” he urged in a whisper.
“But that would be cheating! You could get into so much trouble, Sam. What if the VC doesn’t agree to abide by this?”
“He will. I could claim that he asked me to write this on his behalf. But even if he doesn’t, at least the boy would be saved by then, wouldn’t he?”
She sat staring at the note for a long moment. He was right. The students would accept it as a victory. It would be virtually impossible for the VC to fight against a fait accompli, an action for which a senior member of his staff, and a very close friend, had taken personal responsibility.
“Why are you doing this, Sam?” she couldn’t help wondering about his motives.
“I haven’t worked that out yet. . . . But you better take it and go before I change my mind.”
“Right! All right, then. Great!” She looked into his eyes and smiled. Warm and effusive. Suddenly her usually somber and intense face was transformed. Her eyes glowed with a mellow hazel light, no longer that cold, stony green. She picked up his coat and held it up for him as he craned down gratefully to slip his frozen shoulder into the sleeve.
“If only one could solve all the riddles the sphinx keeps hidden under those stone paws. . . .” he was thinking. “If only . . .”
RUBIES FOR A DOG: A FABLE
Shahrukh Husain
Shahrukh Husain (1950– ) was born in Karachi and educated at the Convent of Jesus and Mary there. She published her first stories in the children’s section of the magazine Woman’s World when she was eight years old. She migrated to Britain in 1970 and has lived there since.
Husain writes fiction and nonfiction for adults and children, and is particularly interested in folklore, myths, and women’s studies. She is also a translator, a screenwriter, and a practicing psychotherapist dealing with intercultural issues. Husain coauthored Urdu Literature with David Matthews and her husband, Christopher Shackle (Third World Publications, 1985). Her books for children include Mecca (Evan Brothers, 1993) and Tales from the Opera (Barefoot, 1999). Her adult fiction series, originally published by Virago Press and translated into many languages, contains myths that she has reworked for modern audiences, including The Virago Book of Witches (Virago, 1993; later published as Daughters of the Moon, Faber, 1994), Women Who Wear the Breeches (Virago, 1995; later published as Handsome Heroines, Anchor Doubleday, 1996). She has also written a nonfiction work, The Goddess: Power, Sexuality, and the Feminine Divine (University of Michigan Press, 2003).
Husain cowrote the screenplay for Ismail Merchant’s 1993 film, In Custody, adapted from Anita Desai’s novel, which was nominated for an Oscar and a BAFTA award, and received the President of India Gold Medal.
“Rubies for a Dog: A Fable” first appeared in Women Who Wear the Breeches and provides a fascinating example of a woman’s assertion of equality through cross-dressing. Husain’s version was developed from an English adaptation that appeared in The Everland Storybook edited by Oliver Brown (1931) but the original story dates back to medieval times and is based on “The Tale of Azad Bakht” from the great Urdu classic, Bagh-o-Bahar (A Tale of Four Dervishes) by Mir Amman Dehlavi (1803), the first book of Urdu literary prose. Although a reconstruction of Turkish, Persian, and early Urdu tales, Bagh-o-Bahar portrays the Indo-Muslim culture of the early nineteenth century. The story provides an excellent example of how texts mutate across countries, cultures, languages, and continents.
In the Urdu original, the King, Azad Bakht, is the narrator and tells a series of tales within tales, in which the courageous but nameless “Wazir’s daughter” is an important catalyst. In Hussain’s story, the Wazir’s daughter is called Samira. She is the central character and has a strong sense of self worth, as a woman and an equal, and she sets out to prove it, admirably.
• • •
Once there was an Emperor, much loved and much respected, but when he put his faithful old advisor, the Grand Wazir, into prison, and worst of all, told nobody the reason why, people wondered about his sense of fair play. Still, everyone accepted that emperors can be erratic at times and that the Wazir had probably said something so offensive that it did not bear repetition. So everyone in the kingdom looked the other way. Everyone that is, except the Wazir’s daughter, Samira. She refused to sit idle in the halls of her father’s sumptuous mansion while he, the provider of all this luxury, languished in a dank cell with chains locking both his limbs and his lips. But try as she might, she could not get her father to tell her anything, and without the facts she could do nothing. “You are my child,” the old Wazir said sadly, “and I thank God for you. I will not risk your life by telling you what happened. If I had a son he would do what is necessary to clear my name. But I cannot send a daughter.”
When Samira’s father refused her help because she was a woman, she felt humiliated and useless. She crept back to her castle and wept, and cursed the narrow vision of men who bound women in their homes, then considered them incapable of achieving anything outside.
“If I visit my father,” she thought miserably, “I will only remind him that he has no son while I, his wretched daughter, incapable of helping him, remain ensconced in his mansion, swathed in silk, decking myself in gold and jewels and always in danger of jeopardizing his reputation. As far as he’s concerned, the only good I can do is to live a blame-free life so that people call him a man of noble birth and without character.”
A few days later, Samira received a message from her father. Was all well with her? He was grateful for the food she had sent and he di
d not wish to impose a visit on her, but he needed to know she was safe and well. A message would be enough.
Samira longed to see her father—but how could she? Her woman’s body, her long hair, her feminine attire would be anathema to him. To see in her what could have been, but was definitely not, must be unbearable for him. She stood staring at herself in the mirror—exquisite as a pari, tall and straight as a cypress tree, rosy cheeked, from head to toe the essence of beauty. Yet she hated every part of herself. In a rage, she picked up a small dagger and began to rip away her clothes. Then she looked with pleasure at the velvets and chiffons and beaded silks lying in fragments on the floor. But when she looked up, her reflection still mocked her.
“I’m still here,” it taunted. “Still beautiful and still female. Now what will you do to deny me?”
Samira put the sharp blade to her head and long silken strands of hair slithered lifeless to the floor. For a moment she fancied she saw a woman reflected in the soft heap of her tresses—her mother. “You are right,” she seemed to say. “I approve of your plan.”
Reassured, Samira ran to her father’s bedchamber and began looking in his wardrobe. She searched and foraged amid the brocades and velvet until at last she found a small bundle of starched pink muslin, sparkling with silver mica from the sea. She undid the knot that tied it, and there it was! The outfit her father wore when he went wandering amid the crowds of Constantinople to learn what the people of his great Emperor Azad Bakht were thinking. It was useful for a Wazir to know whether people were content or discontent, what pleased them about their sovereign and what made them unhappy, whether they thought him wise or whether they decried a folly or two that had crept into his character. Then the Wazir would act on it. Cleverly and diplomatically, he would reshape the criticism and filter the contents of his findings into the Emperor’s ear to mould him into an even better ruler, just as he had done for his father before him. No fool was our worthy Wazir—until this last time. What had gone wrong? For he had made a mistake that he would probably never have the chance to rectify. That is if Azad Bakht and the Wazir had their secretive way. But Samira had her own ideas in the matter.
And the World Changed Page 15