Amitav Ghosh - The Circle of Reason

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 course, 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.