Amitav Ghosh - The Circle of Reason

Jeevanbhai was too subtle a man to think of acts as important in themselves; that was why he stopped the Malik from attacking the New Palace, even though, with the townspeople behind him, he may well have won the day. But for Jeevanbhai it is not acts, but warnings, meanings, those delicate shades which remove an act from mere adventure and place it in history, which are important. Jeevanbhai didn’t simply want to burn the date palms. What would be the use of that? For him the date palms were to be words, to tell the Amir that dreams collapse from the inside, of themselves.

That was the irony of it.

The first part of Jeevanbhai’s plan went off perfectly: the palms had already been planted, and the Amir’s guards, posted to guard the track to the city, were snoring behind a sand-dune, a long way from the site, while their horses were tethered under the palms. The three of them soaked the place in oil without so much as a sound. In less than an hour they were ready, and not one of the guards had noticed.

Already smiling in triumph, Jeevanbhai reached out for the rag which he had handed to Jabal beside him, but his hands clutched empty air. Jabal was gone.

It was not the Amir’s dreams which collapsed from within.

Spinning around, Jeevanbhai saw a mountainous shadow creeping towards the guards, already too far away to stop. Next moment Nury caught his arm and pointed to the beach — the boatmen, never slow to smell defeat, were far out to sea.

But even then the old fox had a trick or two left. He tore off his dhoti, tied one end of it to a kerosene-sodden date palm, and took the other in his hand. Just as Jabal was shaking the guards awake, Jeevanbhai handed the reins of one of the guards’ horses to Nury, cut the rest loose and drove them off. With shot spraying into the sand around them, he leapt on to the horse, pulled Nury up behind him, and lit his dhoti. They were lying flat on the galloping horse, holding on for their lives, when the palms burst into flames.

In the harbour the shots were heard from a long way off, and since it was already dawn a crowd soon gathered. When they saw a galloping horse beating up a cloud of dust on the far side of the inlet, there was a tremendous commotion. Some thought it was a Bedouin raid like those their grandfathers had told them about; others thought the sheikhs of the neighbouring kingdoms were attacking at last as people had so often said they would. All was confusion: al-Ghazira had been quiet so long nobody knew how to deal with a crisis. People — men, children, women — ran into the streets, screaming and crying. Then the horse was upon them, rearing, hoofs scything the air, and Nury and poor, half-naked Jeevanbhai were picking themselves from the dust and shouting, Run, run — but before they could turn the earth shook beneath their feet, for the Malik, no longer able to hold himself, was firing his ill-directed bazookas into the sea, raising volcanoes of water where it didn’t matter. And then that whole early-morning crowd, half-dressed and unwashed, underweared and unshat, turned as one man and fled down the road with Nury in the lead.

For some reason, nobody has ever understood why, instead of turning into the city, after the harbour, Nury ran straight on, past the sandspits and further, with the crowd flocking behind him in a dust-clouded mass, and shots and bazookas shaking the whole city; on, down past the Ras, along the old road, while behind them, far away in the New Palace, the Amir and his mounted guards were trotting out, towards the Maidan al-Jami‘i; and in the Oiltown the Oilmen’s uniformed hirelings from every corner of the world were polishing their guns and their batons …

But Nury knew nothing of that, and Jeevanbhai was already lost far behind; he had fallen and rolled into the Ras where he lay hidden for days, in which other house but Zindi’s? Nury just ran, on and on, until in front of him, out of the sand, there suddenly arose the barbed-wire fence of the Oiltown. From the other side of the fence, faces stared silently out — Filipino faces, Indian faces, Egyptian faces, Pakistani faces, even a few Ghaziri faces, a whole world of faces. In despair Nury threw himself on the fence begging them to open the gates. But the faces stayed where they were, already masks, staring at his sad, desperate, crossed eyes.

You must remember this was long ago, so long ago that even oil didn’t bring much money and not one Ghaziri in a hundred or even a thousand had cars and houses and palaces in Switzerland. It was before the great strikes and the riots; before the Oilmen’s planes bombed the Ghaziris in the Oiltown; before the unions were driven into secrecy; before the women and the schoolchildren poured into the streets to fight, and were murdered with the newest and best guns and helicopters and computers money can buy. It was before all of that.

In those days many Ghaziris wanted work. But there was no work for them in the Oiltown, for the Oilmen knew that a man working on his own land has at least a crop to fight for. Instead they brought their own men. They were welcome: since the beginning of time al-Ghazira has been home to anyone who chooses to call it such — if he comes as a man. But those ghosts behind the fence were not men, they were tools — helpless, picked for their poverty. In those days when al-Ghazira was still a real country they were brought here to slip between its men and their work, like the first whiffs of an opium dream; they were brought as weapons, to divide the Ghaziris from themselves and the world of sanity; to turn them into buffoons for the world to laugh at. And with time on their side they succeeded. So, when Nury threw himself on the fence and clawed his hands to ribbons, begging them to let him in, nothing happened, for there were no men inside to open the gates for Nury the desperate Damanhouri.

When the gates did open, it was to let out the Oiltown’s uniformed guards with their batons and shields and water-hoses. There was nothing Nury could do but turn again, and run, with the crowd milling behind him.

By this time the crowd was an avalanche of people and confusion, and they were driven straight on, past the Ras again, straight towards the Maidan al-Jami‘i, like fish into a net. The Amir’s men had long since ringed the square, and blocked all the lanes and roads leading out of it. Once the crowd was inside, coolly and efficiently the guards let fly.

It was not the End or the Day of Judgement — nothing of the kind. The guards hurled not bullets but tear gas. In a few minutes the excitement died away and the crowd was as docile and drugged as a school of stunned fish. The Amir’s men let them out and herded them back to their houses. Some people’s eyes watered for days afterwards, a couple of old men were stricken with palsy because of the excitement, and there were a few broken legs and a miscarriage or two. All that was lost was a little breath.

We were wrong. This was no feud: no tyrants died; there was no fratricide, no regicide, no love, no hate. It was just practice for the princes of the future and their computers — an exercise in good husbandry.

Only Nury died. He was running across the Maidan towards the Bab al-Asli when the tear gas burst. Temporarily robbed of his sharp eyes Nury shambled helplessly around until he blundered into a Bedu boy, come to the Souq on his camel to sell wool. The animal, frenzied by the noise and the gas, bit poor Nury’s head cleanly off his shoulders.

That was the end of Nury the Sharp-Eyed Damanhouri.

It happened for the best: even if Saneyya had not already blown away the foundations of his trade, Nury would have been homeless in the new Ghazira. There was no place in it for sharp-eyed egg-sellers. All the eggs now came from the poultry farms of Europe, and Nury could never have afforded a plane.