Amitav Ghosh - In an Antique Land - History in the Guise of a Traveler's Tale

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 couple 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.’

Then he marched us off across the square again, towards the Sidi’s tomb. ‘We should see the zikr,’ he said sternly to his cousins. ‘That’s the most important part of the mowlid.’

A group of about thirty men, of all ages, had gathered in front of the tomb. Standing in rows, with their feet apart, they were jerking their heads and their torsos from side to side while a man dressed in a white turban chanted into a microphone. They swung their bodies in time with the rhythm, only their heads and their upper bodies moving, their feet perfectly still.

‘They are Sûfis,’ Jabir said for my benefit. ‘They are invoking God by chanting his name.’

Some of the men had shut their eyes, and the others looked rapt, mesmerized by the rhythm and the movement. As the singer increased the tempo, their heads began to move faster, keeping time, their eyes becoming increasingly glazed, unseeing.

Jabir and his cousins were soon bored by the zikr. ‘Makes me dizzy,’ one of them said, and we went off to look at the stalls again.

It was not long before Jabir had a new audience.

‘Doesn’t know Our Lord, doesn’t know anything … if you ask him how water-wheels are made, he’ll say: “They have babies”.’

‘Oh the black day!’

‘No!’

‘Go on, ask him.’

‘Do water-wheels have babies, ya doktór?’ one of the boys said.

‘No,’ I said. ‘They lay eggs.’

‘Did you hear that? He thinks water-wheels lay eggs.’

I began to yearn for the solitude of my room, and to my relief, I did not have to wait long before the boys decided to head back across the cotton fields.

Early next morning, Jabir burst in, his face flushed with excitement. ‘Do you know what happened last night?’ he said, shaking me out of bed. ‘There was a murder — a man was murdered at the mowlid.’

‘What happened?’ I said confusedly.

It had happened near the swings, Jabir said, exactly where we had been last night. The murdered man had been sitting on a swing when someone had come along and asked him to get off. He was pushed when he refused, and had fallen off and died, hitting his head on a rock.

And now, Jabir said, drawing himself up to his full height, there would be a blood feud. That was the law of the Arabs: ‘Me and my brother against my cousin; me and my cousin against the stranger.’ This was a serious matter: if a man killed someone, then he and all his male kin on the paternal side could be killed in revenge by the dead man’s family. They would have to go and hide with their maternal relatives until their uncles and the shaikhs of the land could talk to the dead man’s family and persuade them to come to a council of reconciliation. Then, when the grief of the dead man’s family had eased a little, an amnesty would be declared. The two lineages would meet in some safe central place, and in the presence of their elders they would negotiate a blood-money payment. That was thâr, the law of feud; damm, the law of blood; the ancient, immutable law of the Arabs.

‘All that for pushing a man off a swing?’ I asked, bleary-eyed.

Jabir paused to think. ‘Well, maybe a little one,’ he said wistfully. ‘Just a small feud.’

‘Who was the man who was killed?’

‘His name was Fathy,’ said Jabir, ‘but people called him “the Sparrow”. He was from the village down the road: Nashawy. Now there’ll be a feud there.’

I was somehow very doubtful, but for all the attention Jabir paid me, I could have been a six-year-old child.