Amitav Ghosh - The Circle of Reason

Late last night, Jeevanbhai said, with an almost imperceptible slur, they brought him back. Bhagwan jane , God knows how they did it. They must have taken thirty or forty men into the ruins of that building, and tools and things as well. There’s a police cordon around the ruins, all day and all night. How did they get through it? God knows. Perhaps, but of course this is just speculation, Abu Fahl — you don’t know him, a very wily man; knows every corner and every turn in al-Ghazira — found a way to pay those policemen to stay away from the building for a while. Perhaps.

Anyway they brought him back. And it wasn’t as though he was barely alive, like a survivor from a disaster of that kind ought to be. He was well, hearty, smiling, as healthy as any of us. I know: I saw him later. How does one account for that? A whole building had collapsed on him. No ordinary building, but millions and millions of dirhams in effect. It wasn’t good money, but any money on that scale has a certain weight. You can’t disregard it. And still he lived through the fall of that whole building. Apparently — this is just hearsay — he lay flat on the floor with a huge block of concrete just inches from his chest. And that, too, for four days. It is no exaggeration to say that many people in that situation would have died of shock. And, far from being dead, he seemed to have come out a new man altogether, if such a thing is possible.

People say, I don’t know with what truth, that he had no food or water for those four days. And when they were offered to him, they say, he refused. And when they asked him whether he wanted to leave that place, right till the very end, they say, he said no, he wanted to be left alone to think.

One could say: people think of these things when something unusual happens. But the truth remains, and it is that when he was brought out at last he was unscathed. It came as no surprise to anyone when some of the women there started saying that it was the doing of a dead sheikh whose grave lies under those ruins; one of his many miracles. People say these things.

I believe a crowd had gathered there long before he was brought back. When they saw him in the distance, they ran on to the road and carried him back to a house which belongs to one Hajj Fahmy — you don’t know him — an elderly man, greatly respected in that area. They carried him into the courtyard and put him on a platform where Hajj Fahmy keeps his loom — he was once a weaver — and they all crowded into the courtyard to listen to him.

And all evening the crowds grew and grew.

I heard all this, for I wasn’t there at the time. I was at my office near the harbour. I went there after I left the Souq, for there were a few things I had to do. Even in my office things weren’t as they usually are. My assistant, one Professor Samuel — no longer my assistant, I should add, but that comes later — had left the office even though I had told him to wait. And, very unusually for him, he had left it in great disorder.

But I had my work to do and it was only much, much later that I went back to the Ras, where we all live. Anybody could see that something unusual was happening there. Usually the Ras sleeps early, all except Zindi’s house, because people have to work. But last night I had a feeling — if one may talk of such a thing — that no one was sleeping. And yet the whole place was in darkness. Not a light in any of the shacks, not a person to be seen on the lanes, nobody sleeping out on the roofs. The whole place was, to use a simple word, deserted.

But at the other end of the Ras, where Hajj Fahmy lives, there were bright lights, and a faint hum, like a slow-running machine — the noise a crowd makes merely by breathing.

I thought they had organized a film on the beach as they do sometimes, though the place is never so deserted then. But I was tired, and I wanted to sleep, so I went straight back towards my room.

There again, when I pushed the door of the house open, things were not as they usually are. It was empty, or so I thought, and that house is never empty. I called out once or twice, but there were only echoes and the sound of geese hissing. I looked into the room on my left, where the men sleep, and it was empty. I looked to my right, into the room opposite, and — to tell you the truth — I was so startled I almost bit my tongue off.

Zindi at-Tiffaha — you don’t know her — a woman large enough to fill a room, was sitting on a mat in the corner, staring at me, but sightlessly, and without a sound, like a corpse. And in her lap was a baby no less silent, staring at me, too, with huge black eyes.

Zindi at-Tiffaha is the key to your mysteries, though you don’t know her. She’s the solution. It was she who brought your man here; it was she who fed him and found him work; and it was her house that he was living in when the Star fell. She rules over that house like a seth over a shop: nothing happens in it that she doesn’t plan. But last night there she was, sitting alone, like a statue, while her whole house was elsewhere.

Something’s wrong, I said to myself. This is not how Zindi is. There’s something on her mind. To tell the truth, actually, I knew quite well that there’s been something on her mind for some time. She’s been arranging secret meetings with the man who works in this shop and he’s been telling me a few things. But with me at least she’s always been able to keep up a brave face. Last night that face had melted away.

I said to her: Zindi, where’s everyone else? And when she answered I was, to admit nothing shameful, quite relieved, for even though she looked alive I couldn’t be sure.

She said: They’ve gone to bring Alu back.

Very quietly, I said: And what about you, Zindi? Why didn’t you go?

To my surprise — for Zindi is not a woman who tells people any more than they need to know — she answered. She said: If we all spent our time chasing every new madness that sweeps the Ras, what would happen? Some of us have to think of staying alive and keeping the house together as well. And what would I do there anyway? I’m just an old woman trying to cope with the world on my own.

Of course, you don’t know her, so you don’t know what her words meant. Neither I nor anyone else has ever before seen the slightest crack in Zindi’s strength. Even yesterday I would have sworn to you that not even a pile-driver could squeeze anything like hopelessness out of her. When she said what she did, I knew something had driven Zindi at-Tiffaha to the edge of her wits; that she was ripe and waiting for a guiding hand.

But at that very moment a woman called Kulfi, who lives in the house, ran into the room and shouted: Zindi, Karthamma’s stolen your money-tin. She’s throwing all your money away. Come on, quickly.

Then the old Zindi was back again. Faster than we could see, she counted from the corner, along the wall to the fourteenth brick. She pulled it out and found the hollow behind it empty. And the next moment she was out of the house, rolling like a wave, with the baby still in her arms, and we were running behind her.

The lane behind Hajj Fahmy’s house was thick with people, even though you can’t see into the courtyard of his house from the lane. But, still, there must have been more than a hundred people there, in a lane where two men usually have to fight to pass abreast. The crowd was like a wall. But Zindi was running fast, and with her weight she had worked up the power of a steam-roller. Holding the baby above her head, she crashed through the crowd, and we were carried along in her wake. She stopped at the door to the courtyard, not because she could not have gone any farther, but because — I think you could say — she was frozen with surprise.

The courtyard was even more crowded than the lane; you could see nothing but people. But, at the same time, it was absolutely silent, and the only sound you could hear was Alu’s voice, clear as water. He was sitting behind the loom on the platform, weaving very fast, but without so much as looking at the loom, and talking all the while.