Amitav Ghosh - The Circle of Reason

It worked. They sent the message on the Malik’s new radio set; two warships stopped on the horizon and turned back; and within a week Goat’s Arse was recalled.

Two warships, or a good eye and a quick mind?

But still the Malik had to pay a price. Back in his own country Goat’s Arse made a tremendous noise and wrote a book about how close he had come to being a deep-fried fritter in his king’s service. Eventually they sent out a new resident known for his toughness; a thin-lipped fish of a man who arrived with a whole regiment of Indian soldiers. He left the Malik in the Fort, but posted a guard outside and exiled his Bedouin tribesmen. After a few months the Malik was forced to sign the oil treaty. Even at that stage, he tried to keep a hold on things by insisting that only Ghaziris would work in the Oiltown. But Thin Lips wouldn’t hear of it; he wanted only his own men, men he could control. Finally, the Malik signed when warships appeared again, but on one condition: that the Oilmen never leave the Oiltown and never enter al-Ghazira.

For many years things went on, uneasily but peacefully: the Oilmen stayed inside the Oiltown with their hirelings; the Malik was more or less a prisoner in the Old Fort, allowed out only on state occasions; Thin Lips virtually ran the town; and every seven years the Ant-Frying was ritually performed. One man did well out of it all, and that was Jeevanbhai Patel. He posed as the Malik’s accountant, and Thin Lips could think of no reason to keep a harmless old man like him out of the Fort, so he became one of the Malik’s few contacts with the outside world. Jeevanbhai went in and out of the Fort running the Malik’s errands, and the Malik used the influence he still had to get Jeevanbhai the contract for the customs. So Jeevanbhai turned his links with the Fort to good use and made money. The Malik had use for him, too: he was making his own plans for the future, and Jeevanbhai’s dhows, which at that time were sailing all over the Indian Ocean, often came back lying deep in the water. They were weighed down, people said, with guns and ammunition which somehow found their way into the Old Fort.

So things went on.

The Oiltown prospered and grew, and the time came when they wanted more space. They took permission and went around al-Ghazira looking for some more land, and eventually they decided on a few acres at the far end of al-Ghazira, almost on the border with the next kingdom. It was a marshy, sandy bit of land by the sea. To them it looked unused, and they assumed that they would have no trouble buying it — for more than it was worth, if need be.

But actually that was a very special piece of land. It was special for the Mawali because old Sheikh Musa was said to be buried there; it was special for the shopkeepers of the Souq because they held fairs there on all the great feast-days, and in those times, before borders had guards, thousands of people flocked to them from all the neighbouring kingdoms and the shopkeepers grew richer every year; the Malik loved that bit of land, too, for twice every year thousands of birds flew over it, and on those days the Malik was allowed out of the Fort, for there was no better place in the world for falconry.

So, when the Oilmen went blithely up to the Fort to buy that piece of land, the blood almost burst from the Malik’s face. Something terrible might have happened again if Nury the Damanhouri hadn’t seen them going in and told Patel. Patel ran to the Fort and calmed the Malik down. Of course, he had a plan. He went around the Souq, got the shopkeepers together, and they met Thin Lips and told him that if that bit of land were sold they would all shut down the Souq and emigrate to Zanzibar.

The Oilmen had one last try. They went to the Malik with a new treaty, and offered to double his share of the oil money if he sold them that land.

Later, people said that the Malik spat on the treaty and drove them out of the Fort with a whip.

No more was heard of buying land for a while: the Oilmen went back to the Oiltown; the Malik stayed in his fort; and Jeevanbhai continued to prosper. But that was when the world first heard rumours about the Mad Malik of al-Ghazira, and soon after Thin Lips took the Malik’s half-brother, the Amir, whom the Malik hated more than anyone else in the world, even more than his father, out of the Fort and sent him to England or America or somewhere, to study. By then Thin Lips had his own friends in the town, none of them very fond of the Malik, and he sent their sons with the Amir as well. The families who were loyal to the Malik — and there were many — complained, but there was nothing anyone could do, and soon things were quiet again.

Years passed: the Malik stayed in his fort, the Amir and his friends stayed abroad, and all was quiet in al-Ghazira. We heard of wars, then the British left, and Thin Lips with them. The Malik was free again, but by that time he had lost his old fire, and already a new embassy with a new Thin Lips was on the ascendant, so all was still quiet in al-Ghazira.

Then one day the oil company changed, and at once the whole of al-Ghazira was agog. New men arrived. They looked over the Oiltown, and it was as clear as daylight they weren’t happy with it. They surveyed al-Ghazira for a few weeks and eventually they found a new, better site for an Oiltown. You don’t have to wonder where that site was.

Soon after the Oilmen were seen going into the Old Fort, with a carload of money to buy the land, people said — but after barely ten minutes shots were heard in the Fort and the cars came hurtling out. No one was hurt, but the Malik had made a mistake. These men weren’t lightly to be shot at. For them life was a war. Nothing was going to stop them getting what they wanted; certainly not the Mad Malik of al-Ghazira. The battle for the site was no longer a game. It had become a feud, like the old desert feuds: a battle of honour.

The first move came soon after. One night a helicopter landed in the desert, far outside the city, and Nury the Damanhouri, who happened to be chasing a chicken, saw the Amir, the Malik’s almost-forgotten half-brother, and his friends step out. The Oilmen’s cars were waiting for them, and they were whisked away to a huge glittering new palace which had sprung up overnight on the far side of the city.

Who can describe the excitement, the near-frenzy of curiosity which gripped al-Ghazira then? People crowded into mosques and cafés, talking feverishly through the night; rumours blew like hurricanes through the Souq and you had to pay to stand under the Bab al-Asli. We heard stories of strings of pearls being given away for one little driblet of news. But there was no news to be had. The ornate silver doors of the New Palace stayed firmly shut, the Malik stayed in the Old Fort and the Oilmen in the Oiltown.

That was when Nury made his fortune. Inevitably, he was the only man in al-Ghazira to go freely in and out of the New Palace — it turned out that in his years away our Amir had developed a terrible weakness for boiled eggs.

In a matter of days Nury was a celebrated man: the café he went to had to build an extension over the road; the mosque he prayed at was always full to bursting; and soon we saw a new floor rising on Nury’s little house. Nury’s name became a byword, for he was always truthful and always right. When he said the Amir had been appointed Oil Minister, people laughed at him, for no one had heard of an Oil Minister before. But in a week there was a proclamation and Nury was proved right. It was Nury who first said that one of the Amir’s friends was going to become Defence Minister, and he was right. He was right about the Education Minister, the Culture Minister and the Foreign Minister as well. But, still, when Nury said the Amir would soon become Public Works Minister, doubt was born again. Why would the Amir want to be Public Works Minister as well as Oil Minister? It seemed meaningless, so we assumed it to be untrue, and suddenly Nury found himself alone in his café again.