Ахмед Рушди - Quichotte - A Novel

Sancho in the passenger seat was weeping: the first tears of his young life.

“Now you understand unhappiness,” Quichotte said, not kindly. “Is this what you came here to learn? Learn it, then. Human life is mostly unhappiness. The only antidote to human misery is love, and it is to love that we must now rededicate ourselves. Let us go.”

“I want you to teach me your language,” Sancho said. “The language you spoke back there. I want us to speak to each other in that language, especially in public, to defy the bastards who hate us for possessing another tongue. I want you to start teaching me now.”

Quichotte found himself unexpectedly moved. “Very well,” he said. “I will teach you, my son. Your mother tongue, my child without a mother. It is a language of celebrated beauty. And I will also teach you Bambaiyya, the local variant which we spoke in my childhood streets, which is less beautiful but which you should know, because only when you know it will you truly be a citizen of that city which you have never seen.”

“When I have finished learning,” Sancho says, “I am going to come back and knock on that door again. I’m going to tell her, we don’t have to be afraid.”

Only knowledge of the Beloved can save us now. When Quichotte said that, Sancho had thought of it as proof of his detachment from real life. Now he saw that he had underestimated the old man. Now he had a beloved too.

“When she said ‘go away,’ ” he tells Quichotte, “I know that she meant ‘come back.’ ”

BEAUTIFUL FROM BEAUTIFUL WAS Khoobsoorat sé Khoobsoorat, which could also mean “more beautiful than beautiful,” which was a good meaning too . That was in the proper language, but in Bambaiyya she was also rawas, “fantastic,” and raapchick, “hot.” These words could also be used to describe the beauty of America, but there were also many other words of praise available for that. The Mississippi River at St. Louis was baap, which literally meant “father,” but in Bambaiyya it meant “great,” “best of the best,” or something like, but way cooler than, the now uncool “rad”: “That’s one baap river, ‘Dad.’ ” Chicago, and the great lake by which it stood, were both majboot: literally “strong,” but used to mean “fabulous,” “amazing,” “terrific.” “Chicago: totally majboot city, yaar ! And Lake Michigan— bilkul majboot pani !” (Completely amazing water.)

A sexy girl was maal, literally “the goods.” A girlfriend was fanti. A young, hot, but unfortunately married woman was a chicken tikka. In Ann Arbor they paused to take a look at the university campus and Sancho noted that there was a lot of maal walking around.

“I thought you found yourself a fanti who is waiting for you back in Beautiful,” Quichotte teased him gravely. “Also that girl you’re looking at has a ring on her finger. She’s definitely chicken tikka, I’m sorry to inform you.”

Sancho learned fast. “And that girl over there,” he said, “is a carrom board.” Flat chested.

Bambaiyya was not a polite vernacular. It possessed the harshness of life on the city streets. A man you didn’t like might be chimaat, “weird looking,” or a khajvua, a guy who scratches his balls.

America became Sancho’s language lesson. When there were shootings on the TV, he learned that a gun was a ghoda, which meant “horse,” and a bullet was a tablet, or sometimes a capsule . So English, in such mutations, found its way into Bambaiyya too.

Both of them were happy. Quichotte the teacher, as the words from far away evoked old memories, felt joined to his youth again, and he and Sancho were brought closer by the lessons, which leavened the tedium of the road with long bouts of laughter. The country rolled by, rivers and mills, wooded hills and suburbs, freeways and turnpikes, and all of it was comedy. Once, between Toledo (pop. 278,508) and Cleveland (pop. 385,809), Quichotte took a wrong turn and cried out, “Vaat lag gayi!”

“What did you say?” Sancho asked.

“I said,” Quichotte replied, abandoning his habitual dignity, “that we are totally screwed.”

To redescribe the country in their private language was also to take ownership of it. “I understand now why the racists want everyone to speak only English,” Sancho told Quichotte. “They don’t want these other words to have rights over the land.” That launched Quichotte into a new elaboration of his “Indian country” trope. “Once there were other words with rights,” he said. “Words belonging to those other Indians. Now sometimes those words are just sounds with lost meanings. Shenandoah, unknown Native origin. At other times the meaning remains but nobody knows it, which denies the word its influence. Ticonderoga is the junction of two waterways. Nobody knows that. Chicago is an onion field. Who knew? Punxsutawney, town of sandflies, or maybe mosquitoes. Nobody knows it, not even on Groundhog Day. Mississippi, great river. Maybe somebody could guess that. These are the words of lost power. New words were poured over them to take away their magic. On the West Coast, holy names of saints in Spanish, Francisco, Diego, Bernardino, José, also Santa Maria de los Angeles. On the East Coast, names from England burying the past beneath them, Hampshire, Exeter, Southampton, Manchester, Warwick, Worcester, Taunton, Peterborough, Northampton, Chesterfield, Putney, Dover, Lancaster, Bangor, Boston. And of course New York.”

“Can you stop?” Sancho pleaded. “Please. Just stop.”

“You’re right,” Quichotte admitted, stopping. “We are in the third valley, in which all knowledge has become useless. My useless knowledge, this rough magic, I here abjure.”

THEIR LINGUISTIC ACT OF possession made the country begin to make sense again. The random spatial and temporal dislocations stopped. The world settled down and gave Sancho the illusion, at least, of comprehensibility. They made their journey according to Quichotte’s plan. After Cleveland, Bunyan, Pennsylvania (pop. 108,260), then Pittsburgh (pop. 303,625), and after that, Philadelphia (pop. 1,568,000). Across state lines toward Chaucer, New Jersey (pop. 17,000), and Huckleberry, New York (pop. 109,571). Soon the Emerald City itself would come into view. The weather went on being disjointed, however; blazing hot one day, freezing cold the next, heat waves and hailstones, droughts and floods. Maybe that was just what the weather was going to be like now. At least geographical continuity seemed to have been restored. Why? In the world beyond knowledge, there was no why. There was just this odd couple, a father and his parthenogenetic offspring, heading toward their doom.

GOD, SANCHO DECIDED, was the Clint Eastwood “Man With No Name” type. Didn’t talk a whole lot, kept his thoughts to himself, and every so often he was the high plains drifter riding into town chewing on a cigar and sending everybody straight to Hell. In a lot of ways the opposite of Daddy Q, who never shut up. When Sancho got sick of listening to “Dad” it was actually kinda great to imagine that God was in the car too. God was the Silence. Sometimes that’s what was required.

They were riding into town. No cigars and maybe they were the ones who would get sent to Hell. He, “Dad,” saw nothing except his quest, heard nothing except what he wanted to hear. Sancho saw everything, heard it all. Across America he collected the sour expressions on the faces of motel clerks, baristas, and girls at cash registers in 7-Elevens.