In an Antique Land (9 page)

The tomb was visible from a long way off, across the fields: a simple, rectangular structure with a low dome and a large open space in front which served as a public space—a common threshing-floor, as well as the site of the village's weekly market. Now the tomb was festooned with dozens of small bulbs, its freshly whitewashed walls dotted with puddles of coloured light. The square in front was crowded with people, some thronging into the tomb, and others circulating amongst the fairground stalls that had been erected all around it.

A stall-owner called out to us as we walked into the square. ‘Come on,' he said, ‘let's see what you young fellows can do.'

There were several airguns balanced on his counter, pointing at a board with dangling balloons and candles. Smiling encouragement, he thrust a couple of guns into our hands. I was stooping to take aim when I heard Jabir's voice behind me:
‘From India …'

I looked over my shoulder and quickly turned back again. A large crowd had gathered around me; much larger than the crowds in any of the other stalls. ‘Doesn't know anything,' I heard Jabir say, ‘Nothing at all …' I squeezed the trigger, trying to keep my sights steady on a large balloon.

‘You missed,' said Jabir.

Ignoring my mumbled retort, he turned back to his audience. ‘Didn't I tell you?' he whispered. ‘Doesn't know a thing.'

I tried to fix the balloon in my sights again, while people clustered eagerly around Jabir. ‘Doesn't pray, doesn't even know Our Lord …'

‘What're you saying? Doesn't know Our Lord!'

I squeezed the trigger, and once again the pellet thudded into the board, wide of the balloon.

‘Doesn't know the Lord! Oh the Saviour!'

I shuffled off quickly to the next stall where a boy was selling pink, fluffy candy. Jabir's voice followed me: ‘Reads books and asks questions all day long; doesn't have any work to do …'

‘Can we talk to him?' somebody asked.

‘No,' Jabir said magisterially. ‘He won't understand a word you say. Only we in Lataifa know how to talk to him.'

I began to push my way quickly through the crowd, towards the other end of the square: I was hoping to put a distance between myself and Jabir, but he was not to be shaken off and followed hard on my heels. But then, providentially, I earned a brief respite; he and his cousins spotted a row of swings on the edge of the square and went running off to join the queue.

By the time I worked my way through the crowd their turns had come and they were heaving themselves back and forth, their jallabeyyas ballooning out around them, each trying to
outdo the other. The crowd began to cheer them on and one of the boys swung high enough to go all the way around the bar in a complete circle. Jabir attempted a couple of mighty heaves himself, to no effect, so he jumped off, shrugging dismissively. ‘I wasn't trying,' he said, dusting his hands. ‘I can do it when I try.'

Then he marched us off across the square again, towards the Sidi's tomb. ‘We should see the zikr,' he said sternly to his cousins. ‘That's the most important part of the mowlid.'

A group of about thirty men, of all ages, had gathered in front of the tomb. Standing in rows, with their feet apart, they were jerking their heads and their torsos from side to side while a man dressed in a white turban chanted into a microphone. They swung their bodies in time with the rhythm, only their heads and their upper bodies moving, their feet perfectly still.

‘They are Sûfis,' Jabir said for my benefit. ‘They are invoking God by chanting his name.'

Some of the men had shut their eyes, and the others looked rapt, mesmerized by the rhythm and the movement. As the singer increased the tempo, their heads began to move faster, keeping time, their eyes becoming increasingly glazed, unseeing.

Jabir and his cousins were soon bored by the zikr. ‘Makes me dizzy,' one of them said, and we went off to look at the stalls again.

It was not long before Jabir had a new audience.

‘Doesn't know Our Lord, doesn't know anything … if you ask him how water-wheels are made, he'll say: “They have babies”.'

‘Oh the black day!'

‘No!'

‘Go on, ask him.'

‘Do water-wheels have babies, ya doktór?' one of the boys said.

‘No,' I said. ‘They lay eggs.'

‘Did you hear that? He thinks water-wheels lay eggs.'

I began to yearn for the solitude of my room, and to my relief, I did not have to wait long before the boys decided to head back across the cotton fields.

Early next morning, Jabir burst in, his face flushed with excitement. ‘Do you know what happened last night?' he said, shaking me out of bed. ‘There was a murder—a man was murdered at the mowlid.'

‘What happened?' I said confusedly.

It had happened near the swings, Jabir said, exactly where we had been last night. The murdered man had been sitting on a swing when someone had come along and asked him to get off. He was pushed when he refused, and had fallen off and died, hitting his head on a rock.

And now, Jabir said, drawing himself up to his full height, there would be a blood feud. That was the law of the Arabs: ‘Me and my brother against my cousin; me and my cousin against the stranger.' This was a serious matter: if a man killed someone, then he and all his male kin on the paternal side could be killed in revenge by the dead man's family. They would have to go and hide with their maternal relatives until their uncles and the shaikhs of the land could talk to the dead man's family and persuade them to come to a council of reconciliation. Then, when the grief of the dead man's family had eased a little, an amnesty would be declared. The two lineages would meet in some safe central place, and in the presence of their elders they would negotiate a blood-money payment. That was thâr, the law of feud; damm, the law of blood; the ancient, immutable law of the Arabs.

‘All that for pushing a man off a swing?' I asked, bleary-eyed.

Jabir paused to think. ‘Well, maybe a little one,' he said wistfully. ‘Just a small feud.'

‘Who was the man who was killed?'

‘His name was Fathy,' said Jabir, ‘but people called him “the Sparrow”. He was from the village down the road: Nashawy. Now there'll be a feud there.'

I was somehow very doubtful, but for all the attention Jabir paid me, I could have been a six-year-old child.

I
T WAS
M
ABROUK
, Shaikh Musa's nephew, who was responsible for improving my standing in Jabir's eyes.

That year Mabrouk's father had done exceptionally well from his vegetable plot. He'd taken a risk the autumn before by planting a lot of carrots after the cotton harvest. Everyone had tried to dissuade him—his wife, his brothers (including Shaikh Musa) and most of his cousins and relatives. The carrots would have to be harvested all at the same time, they had said, and what if the prices in the market were low that week? He would end up selling a whole truckload of carrots at a loss; it was better to plant many different kinds of vegetables, less of a risk.

Mabrouk's father had not paid any attention. He was an obstinate sort of man, and their arguments had only served to settle his resolve. As it turned out, he had been lucky. The price of carrots happened to be exceptionally high at the time of his harvest, and he made an unexpectedly large profit.

A few weeks later, he put all his savings together, and he and
two of his brothers hired a truck and went off to Damanhour. When the truck returned, several hours later, the three brothers—all men of ample girth—were sitting in front, squeezed in beside the driver. In the back was a mysterious object, about as big as a calf but of a different shape, wrapped in several sheets of tarpaulin. The truck went quietly around to Mabrouk's house, and the object was unloaded and carried in through a back entrance, still wrapped in its tarpaulin sheets.

I knew nothing of this until Mabrouk burst into my room that afternoon: I heard the sound of feet flying up the stairs, and then Mabrouk threw the door open and caught hold of my arm.

‘Come with me, ya doktór,' he cried. ‘You have to come with me right now, to our house. My father and my family want you.' He was in a state of such feverish excitement that he could not bring himself to wait until I closed my notebook; he virtually dragged me out of the room right then, never letting go of my elbow.

Abu-‘Ali and his family were astonished to see Mabrouk racing through their house, for he had always had a reputation for being unusually shy. Jabir told me once that despite being the tallest and fastest amongst the boys of their age, Mabrouk wasn't allowed to play in the forward line of their soccer team: the sight of an open goal was sometimes enough to bring on one of his attacks of shyness.

But now, Mabrouk was transformed; as we hurried through the lanes he talked volubly about how his father and his uncles had hired a truck and gone to Damanhour. But when I asked what exactly they had bought, he shook his head and smiled enigmatically. ‘Wait, wait,' he said, ‘you will see.'

By the time we got there, a crowd had collected in Mabrouk's lane, and his house was in an uproar. His father had been
waiting for me, and after a hurried exchange of greetings, he spirited me past the crowd in his guest-room and led me quickly to a walled courtyard at the back, next to the pen where the livestock was kept—the most secret, secluded part of the house, the zariba. Their acquisition was standing in the middle of the courtyard, like a newborn calf, with an old shoe hanging around it to fend off the Evil Eye.

It was a brand-new diesel water-pump, the first of its kind to come to Lataifa. There were several such pumps in the surrounding villages: they were known generically as ‘al-makana al-Hindi', the Indian machine, for they were all manufactured in India.

Mabrouk, his father, his mother and several cousins and uncles, were standing around me now, in a circle, looking from me to the machine, bright-eyed and expectant.

‘Makana hindi!' I said to Mabrouk's father, with a show of enthusiasm. ‘Congratulations—you've bought an “Indian machine”!'

Mabrouk's father's eyes went misty with pride as he gazed upon the machine. ‘Yes,' he sighed. ‘Yes, that's why we asked you to come. You must take a look at it and tell us what you think.'

‘Me?' I said. I was aghast; I knew nothing at all about water-pumps; indeed, I could not recall ever having noticed one before coming to Lataifa.

‘Yes!' Mabrouk's father clapped me on the back. ‘It's from your country, isn't it? I told the dealer in Damanhour, I said, “Make sure you give me one that works well, we have an Indian living in our hamlet and he'll be able to tell whether we've got a good one or not.' ”

I hesitated, mumbling a few words of protest, but he nudged me eagerly forward. A quick look at the anxious, watchful faces
around me told me that escape was impossible: I would have to pronounce an opinion, whether I liked it or not.

A hush fell upon the courtyard as I walked up to the machine; a dozen heads craned forward, watching my every move. I went up to the machine's spout, stooped beside it and peered knowledgeably into its inky interior, shutting one eye. Standing up again, I walked around the pump amidst a deathly silence, nodding to myself, occasionally tapping parts of it with my knuckles. Then, placing both hands on the diesel motor, I fell to my knees and shut my eyes. When I looked up again Mabrouk's father was standing above me, anxiously awaiting the outcome of my silent communion with this product of my native soil.

Reaching for his hand I gave it a vigorous shake. ‘It's a very good makana Hindi,' I said, patting the pump's diesel tank. ‘Excellent! ‘Azeem! It's an excellent machine.'

At once a joyful hubbub broke out in the courtyard. Mabrouk's father pumped my hand and slapped me on the back. ‘Tea,' he called out to his wife. ‘Get the doktór al-Hindi some tea.'

Next day Jabir came to visit me in my room, late in the evening. He seemed somehow subdued, much quieter and less cocky than usual.

‘I was talking to Mabrouk,' he said, ‘I heard he took you to his house to see their new “Indian machine”.'

I shrugged nonchalantly. ‘Yes,' I said. ‘He did.'

‘And what was your opinion?' he asked.

‘They've bought a good machine,' I said. ‘A very good one.'

Jabir sank into silence, nodding thoughtfully. Later, when he rose to leave, he stopped at the door and declared: ‘My father and my uncles are thinking of buying an Indian machine too, insha'allah.'

‘Good,' I said.

‘I hope you'll come with us,' he said.

‘Where?'

‘When we go to Damanhour to buy it,' he said, shyly. ‘We would profit from your opinion.'

I stayed up a long time that night, marvelling at the respect the water-pump had earned me; I tried to imagine where I would have stood in Jabir's eyes if mine had been a country that exported machines that were even bigger, better and more impressive—cars and tractors perhaps, not to speak of ships and planes and tanks. I began to wonder how Lataifa would have looked if I had had the privilege of floating through it, protected by the delegated power of technology, of looking out untroubled through a sheet of clear glass.

S
OON THE MONTH
of Ramadan arrived and I began to think of taking a holiday. First I would go to Alexandria, I decided, to talk to Doctor Issa, and to see whether I could make arrangements for moving out of Abu-‘Ali's house. After that I would go to Cairo: I had spent one night there when I first arrived, but I had seen nothing other than the airport, and the station. Now at last, the time had come to pay the city a proper visit.

As the days passed the thought of my trip became ever more exciting. We were then well into Ramadan, and I was one of the handful of people in the hamlet who were not fasting. I had
wanted to join in the fast, but everyone insisted, ‘No, you can't fast, you're not Muslim—only Muslims fast at Ramadan.' And so, being reminded of my exclusion every day by the drawn, thirsty faces around me, the thought of Cairo and Alexandria, and the proximity of others among the excluded, grew ever more attractive.