Amitav Ghosh - The Circle of Reason

Jeevanbhai spat disgustedly through the collapsible gates into the corridor. All right, he said, come at eight-thirty, come at seven, stay the night, do what you like. Can’t we decide all that later?

No; the important things come first. So you’ll be here at eight-thirty with the documents, then?

Why do we want documents? Can’t we just have an agreement, between friends?

Yes, we could if we were friends, but you haven’t had a friend since your wife died. So listen, you bastard, you bring those documents with you tomorrow or I’ll tear out your cock and stuff it up your arse with a pneumatic drill. Do you understand?

Jeevanbhai backed away from her, licking his teeth. Yes, he said, I’ll bring them.

Fine, she said and shoved him towards the room at the back. We’ll go inside now.

Before going into the room, Jeevanbhai switched off all the lights in the shop, while Zindi put Boss back on the counter. The only light in the tiny room at the back came from a table-lamp that had been turned to the wall. Jeevanbhai cleared files and papers off a folding steel chair and gestured to it. A half-empty whisky-bottle and a few glasses stood on the desk, weighing down the litter of flapping paper. Jeevanbhai waved the bottle at her. Have a little bit?

Zindi made a face: A little bit.

So what happened yesterday? Jeevanbhai asked, pouring whisky into two glasses. He handed Zindi one of the glasses. She stared at the amber liquid for a moment, and then threw her head back and drained the glass.

A little bit more?

A little bit.

So what happened yesterday? Jeevanbhai asked again, pouring whisky into their glasses.

Nothing very much happened, she said. She took the glass and gazed into it, holding it in both hands. Then she pinched her nose tightly shut and tossed the whisky down.

I met him exactly where you’d said, she began. He was standing in the road outside your office and I went straight up to him and spoke to him in Hindi.

He was absolutely flabbergasted. Who knows what he’d expected? His mouth fell open and his eyebrows shot all over his forehead. He looked as though he was longing to run back across the road into the office. Perhaps he thought there had been some kind of mistake; that he was talking to the wrong woman. And then, when he understood that it wasn’t a mistake, he began to behave like a schoolboy who’d run into his headmistress with a cigarette in his mouth. In the taxi he sat squeezed against the door, as though he was afraid of being beaten, and began to talk about birds.

Birds!

It seemed as though he wasn’t really in his right mind. It grew even worse when he was trying to explain what he did for his living. He seemed to be choking on his tongue. In the end he managed to say: I’m a journalist — but he didn’t, for one instant, look as though he expected to be believed.

The whole thing seemed more and more difficult as the taxi drew closer to the Ras. How was anyone going to take this tip-top suited-booted babu into the Ras without people knowing exactly what he was the moment they saw him?

But it was the Ras itself which solved that problem.

From a long way away it was clear that something unusual was happening around the embankment. The driver saw it, too, and he slowed down. There was a crowd at the foot of the embankment. Even at that distance, they could hear shouts and a tremendous noise. Then a large part of the crowd broke away and went up and over the embankment, and disappeared into the Ras.

They saw then what had drawn the crowd — a car lying on its side. The taxi-driver stopped the car when he saw the crowd. He was a Ghaziri and he tried to stay away from the Ras, he said, when it looked as though there’d be trouble. So they had to walk the last part.

There was so much confusion, nobody looked at them twice. They slipped into the crowd and worked their way down the embankment to the car (she holding him by the hand). It was a new Peugeot, balancing on one side, with a wheel still spinning, and a door open in the air, like a trapdoor. There was a jagged, gaping hole in one side of the windscreen, and what was left of the glass was all frosted over with cracks.

Someone must have been hurt, she said to somebody.

No, he said, whoever he was, no one was hurt. It must be true, she thought to herself. There’s no blood anywhere.

So how did it happen?

It was all to do with the mugaddams, the labour contractors.

Adil al-Azraq, the blue Moroccan, and his cousin had come to the Ras in their car that evening as they often did. When they reached the embankment, they lit cigarettes, gave the horn a gentle push, and sat back in their seats, expecting people to come running up to them, as they usually did.

But there was a surprise waiting for them. They sat for a full five minutes, which they’d never done before, and there was still no sign of anyone. They blew the horn again, a little less languidly this time. It made no difference. They blew it again, and again, until at the end of twenty minutes, when the setting sun had heated the car into an oven, Adil the Blue had his elbows jammed on the horn. But still they wouldn’t get out of the car and go into the Ras — their prestige wouldn’t let them.

Then the men appeared — not running, but in a compact, dignified group. There were a lot of them there — about thirty, including Rakesh and Zaghloul. Abu Fahl was in the lead. They’d decided that he’d speak for all of them.

Abu Fahl didn’t waste any breath on greetings. He went straight up to them and said: Listen, I have to tell you something. Here in the Ras we’ve all been thinking a lot about dirt and germs and money. We’ve managed to do away with almost all the money in the Ras. The big problem is you mugaddams. With you it’s money, money, money all the time: take money, hand out money, take back money. It’s a dirty system: it spreads germs like a squid spreads ink. We’ve decided to do away with it. From now on we’ll go to the contractors and architects ourselves, all together, and we’ll work out our own terms, and we’ll carry the money we make safely to the bank, in envelopes. You can join us if you like — you can come and work with us. But — salli-’ala-n-nabi — no one here will work for a mugaddam again.

Adil the Blue and his cousin were fuming and steaming all through this, especially Adil, whose burnt blue cheeks had turned purple. He’d have run Abu Fahl over right then, but his cousin stopped him. He saw Zaghloul and twenty-eight others standing around the car, so he squeezed Adil’s elbow to keep him quiet and smiled at Abu Fahl and said: Abu Fahl, why not send all these people away, to the bottom of the embankment, and then we’ll talk?

Abu Fahl could see no harm in that, so he told Zaghloul to take the others off, and he went to the side of the road and watched them go down the embankment.

The moment the others had gone Adil the Blue started the car and threw it at Abu Fahl’s back.

Abu Fahl spun round, as quick as a top, but the car was just a hair away from his chest. So, instead of running, he jumped at the bonnet and managed to roll over safely on the other side. He picked himself up, ran to the side of the embankment and looked for something to throw, but there was nothing there, except a few pebbles. So he slipped his watch off his wrist — it was a heavy old automatic, not one of those thin quartz things — and hid it in his palm.

Adil the Blue looked back, and he was surprised to see Abu Fahl still on the embankment, waiting for him. He wheeled the car around and went straight for him, steering carefully. Abu Fahl waited until it was almost on him, and then in one movement he hurled his watch at the windscreen and jumped aside.

The watch was thrown with such force that when it hit the windscreen there was an explosion of glass. Adil lost control and the car rolled over the side of the embankment.