Amitav Ghosh - The Circle of Reason

So planned Abu Fahl, the organizer, at dawn, complaining but with secret relish, for in his instincts Abu Fahl was a storyteller and plans are the fantasies of the practical life.

Before Abu Fahl’s plans were ready there was a sharp, insistent hammering on the door to the lane. Abu Fahl opened it. Isma’il stood outside, a hacksaw in his hands. Behind him, in the lane, there was a large group of men. Some of them were brandishing axes, some crowbars, and others shovels.

Once or twice Abu Fahl, too, had visited a house or a shack with a crowbar in his hands. He smelt a threat the moment he saw the men crowding into the lane. Without flinching, betraying nothing, he parted his legs and planted them squarely in the doorway. Folding his arms across his chest, he clamped his one, red eye on Isma’il: What is this?

This? said Isma’il, surprised. This is a kind of saw. In demonstration he sawed a groove into the wooden door-post.

Abu Fahl caught his wrist. No! Not that, this. He waved a hand at the crowded lane.

Ya salaam ! Isma’il exclaimed, turning. Are there so many now? You see, I was coming to help you get Alu out of the Star. I brought this saw with me, for I thought you might need it. On the way I met some people, and they said: Where are you going, ya Isma’il? And I said: I’m going to get Alu out of the Star; he’s been buried three days and he’s still alive, and they say he has something to tell us. But there was no need for all that; they already knew about Alu and they all said: Wait, Isma’il, we’ll come with you. Everyone wants to know what a man can have to say after being buried alive for three days.

Isma’il scratched his head and smiled at Abu Fahl. The next moment Abu Fahl found himself overwhelmed with shouted offers of help.

There were too many men, far too many. Abu Fahl soon realized that he could only take a small group safely into the Star. But then there was a new problem — the men would not leave. Some even tried to force their way into the house, and Abu Fahl barely kept his temper.

Abu Fahl’s problems grew through the morning. People began to arrive from every part of the Ras, virtually from every shack. A whole construction gang arrived, determined to get Alu out of the Star before going to work. They wanted to set out at once, and Abu Fahl had to quarrel with them to keep them from doing so.

Soon the house was in turmoil: Abu Fahl shouting, astonished, gratitude turned to exasperation; Professor Samuel, loudly complaining until Jeevanbhai Patel led him away to his office; Karthamma and Chunni racing from the courtyard to Zindi’s room with glasses of tea; Isma’il fighting the geese with Kulfi-didi’s newly washed sari.

Only Zindi sat through it all unmoved. She greeted the men who flooded in and out of her room politely enough, but when they began to talk she turned silently away. Soon she was forgotten, left to herself, in her corner. She was grateful, for later, when she caught Rakesh’s arm and whispered into his ear, nobody noticed her. Go one last time, she said, just one more time. Go to Romy Abu Tolba’s shop and tell Tolba to give Forid Mian another message — Zindi will be waiting for you this evening. Just that.

Rakesh did not see at first that she was begging. When he did, he put his arm around her and squeezed her shoulder. Much later, he slipped out of the house and was back again before anyone missed him.

Abu Fahl was still under siege. He decided finally that he would go to the Star with perhaps five men, and only a few tools: some crowbars, ropes and torches, nothing else. The others resisted at first, but Abu Fahl cajoled, argued and shouted, and in the end he had his way. Only Isma’il, who appeared to know the way to the basement in the dark, Rakesh, and three other men, all of them experienced construction hands, were to go with him.

At dusk, when the six men were to set off, the crowd, swollen by people on their way back from work, had spilled out of Zindi’s house into the lane and beyond. The six men were pushed along the lanes of the Ras with cheers and shouts of encouragement. At the embankment Abu Fahl stopped and shouted into the crowd. If there was a crowd on the road the police would notice, and that would be the end of it all; they would just have to go back to their houses and wait till Alu was brought back.

The crowd watched the six men till they disappeared. Then some people wandered back to their shacks and some trickled back to Zindi’s house. As the evening wore on the trickle grew, and before long Zindi’s house was crammed with people again.

Zindi, frustrated and angry, her nerves worn by two days of waiting, doubled the rates for her tea, but still people called for more, faster than she and Karthamma could make it. They ran out of tea altogether, and Kulfi had to be sent to Romy Abu Tolba’s shop to buy more. She came back frightened. She had never seen the Ras so empty before; everyone who could walk was waiting at Zindi’s house, for Alu’s return. Once, Zindi left her room to go to the lavatory. She found her courtyard packed coffee-pot full and boiling over. Karthamma had prudently moved the geese, the rabbits and the chickens to the roof. Amazed, Zindi picked her way through a group of squatting Mawali women: the Mawali women rarely left their quarter and they had never been in her house before.

Then suddenly the excitement mounted. They heard a boy running and a shout: They’re coming, they’re coming. The younger men ran out of the house, pushing their way through the lane. After that word came in relays: Only Isma’il’s back. No, they’re all back, Isma’il’s running ahead. What about Alu? Have they got Alu?

Uncertain murmurs ran around the room and the courtyard: They’re leading someone; there’s a seventh person with them. And then voices somewhere in the lane: No, that’s a shadow — it’s just the five of them and Isma’il.

What about Alu? Is he dead? Has the Star killed him at last?

Abu Fahl stepped into a crackling silence. The crowd in the courtyard stirred and rose; people shoved and elbowed each other, straining for a glimpse of the men. And then it was certain — the only men with Abu Fahl were those who had gone with him. No Alu.

At once Abu Fahl was struck by a thunderclap of questions. The crowd surged towards him, jostling and pushing. He stumbled, fell, picked himself up again and shouted. He shouted again, and again, but even his bull’s bellow was lost in the commotion. Then Rakesh began beating an empty kerosene-tin, and slowly the metallic clanging prevailed and the shouts died away. Rakesh upturned the kerosene-tin on the floor and pushed Abu Fahl on to it.

Abu Fahl stood precariously still on the tin for a moment, rubbing his blind eye and looking at the faces that were raised towards him. He saw Hajj Fahmy’s wife, a lean string of a woman, and he heard her rumble: So tell us, Abu Fahl, is he dead at last?

No, said Abu Fahl. He isn’t dead. He’s as alive as you or me.

A long sigh blew through the courtyard, stirring up a volley of angry questions: Then, why isn’t he here? Why didn’t you get him out?

Abu Fahl held up his hand: There was nothing we could do; there were too few of us. He’s lying under a pile of rubble, and do you know how large that pile is? It’s a mountain. Even after we managed to get down to the basement, it was a long time before we could so much as see him. He’s right at the bottom of that mountain.

But just above him was a concrete slab, almost flat on the ground. At first we thought there couldn’t possibly be any living thing under that slab.

Then we saw that the slab was inclined very slightly. At one end it was about a foot or two off the floor. In the beginning we couldn’t see what lay under it there, for there’s a tangle of webbed steel blocking it at that end. And then, when we managed to look through, we saw him there, right in front of us, lying flat on his back, with that huge slab of concrete so close to his nose he could have touched it with his eyelashes. Another hair’s breadth and he would have been a dead man.