I was taken aback for a moment, and then I realized that he was referring obliquely to Abu-‘Ali: he had asked me once how much I paid him and had sunk into an amazed silence when I quoted the sum. But before I could say anything, Shaikh Musa changed the subject: resorting to one of his favourite ploys he began to talk about agriculture.
‘And these,’ he said, pointing at the cucumbers on the tray, ‘are called khiyâr. The best are those that are sown early, in spring, in the month of Amshîr by the Coptic calendar.’
Not one to be left behind in a conversation of that kind, Ahmed immediately added: ‘Amshir follows the month of 
ûba, when the earth awakes, as we say, and after it comes Barmahât …’
Later, after dinner, when Shaikh Musa and I were alone in the room for a while, he began to wax expansive, talking about his boyhood in Lataifa and about Abu-‘Ali as a child. But once the family returned he cut himself short, and there was no opportunity to discuss the matter again for shortly afterwards he got up and left the room.
No sooner had Shaikh Musa left than Ahmed began to tell me how cotton was rotated with the fodder crop berseem. ‘Write it down,’ he said, handing me my notebook, ‘or else you’ll forget.’
I scribbled desultorily for a while, and then, searching desperately for something else to talk about, I happened to ask him if his mother was away from the hamlet.
A hush immediately descended upon the room. At length, Ahmed cleared his throat and said: ‘My mother, God have mercy on her, died a year ago.’
There was a brief silence, and then he leaned over to me. ‘Do you see Sakkina there?’ he asked, gesturing at the woman in the black fustan. ‘My father married her this year.’
For a moment I was speechless: in my mind Shaikh Musa was very old and very venerable, and I was oddly unsettled by the thought of his marrying a woman a fraction his age.
His wife noticed me staring and smiled shyly. Then, Ahmed’s wife, the self-possessed young woman in the cotton dress, turned to me and said: ‘She’s heard about you from her family. You have met her uncle, haven’t you? Ustaz Mustafa?’
Again I was taken completely by surprise. But now things began to fall into place.
4
JABIR, ABU-‘ALI’S YOUNG relative, had woken me one morning, soon after I arrived in Lataifa. ‘Get up, ya mister,’ he said, shaking me. ‘Get up and meet my uncle.’
I sat up bleary-eyed and found myself looking at a short, plump man who bore a strong family resemblance to Jabir; he had the same rosy complexion, blunt features and bright, black eyes. He also had a little clipped moustache, and the moment I saw it I knew it was the kind of moustache that Jabir was sure to aspire to once his feathery adolescent whiskers had matured.
At that time, I was still innocent of some of the finer distinctions between salaried people and fellaheen but I could tell at once, from his starchy blue jallabeyya and white net skull-cap, that Jabir’s uncle did not make his living from ploughing the land. Jabir’s introduction made things clearer, for he added the word Ustaz, ‘Teacher’, to his uncle’s name — a title usually given to men who had been educated in modern, rather than traditional, forms of learning.
‘This is Ustaz Mustafa,’ said Jabir. ‘My uncle. He studied law at the University of Alexandria.’
Ustaz Mustafa smiled and, nodding vigorously, he addressed me in classical, literary Arabic. ‘We are honoured,’ he said, ‘to have Your Presence amongst us.’
I was dismayed to be spoken to in this way, for in concentrating on learning the dialect of the village I had allowed my studies of classical Arabic to fall into neglect. I stuttered, unsure of how to respond, but then, unexpectedly, Jabir came to my rescue. Clapping me on the back, he told his uncle: ‘He is learning to talk just like us.’
Ustaz Mustafa’s face lit up. ‘Insha’allah,’ he cried, ‘God willing, he will soon be one of us.’
I noticed that he had a habit of flicking back the cuff of his jallabeyya every few minutes or so to steal a quick look at his watch. I was to discover later that this gesture was rooted in an anxiety that had long haunted his everyday existence: the fear that he might inadvertently miss one of the day’s five required prayers. That was why he looked much busier than anyone else in Lataifa — he was always in a hurry to get to the mosque. ‘I have read all about India,’ said Ustaz Mustafa, smiling serenely. ‘There is a lot of chilli in the food and when a man dies his wife is dragged away and burnt alive.’
‘Not always,’ I protested, ‘my grandmother for example …’
Jabir was drinking this in, wide-eyed.
‘And of course,’ Ustaz Mustafa continued, ‘you have Indira Gandhi, and her son Sanjay Gandhi, who used to sterilize the Muslims …’
‘No, no, he sterilized everyone,’ I said.
His eyes widened and I added hastily: ‘No, not me of course, but …’
‘Yes,’ he said, nodding sagely. ‘I know. I read all about India when I was in college in Alexandria.’
He had spent several years in Alexandria as a student, he said; he had specialized in civil and religious law and now practised in a court in Damanhour. He talked at length about his time at university, the room he had lived in and the books he had read, and in the meanwhile two of Abu-‘Ali’s sons came up to join us, carrying a tray of tea.
Soon, the conversation turned to village gossip and for a while, to my relief, I was forgotten. But Jabir was not going to allow me so easy an escape: he had noticed that Ustaz Mustafa’s questions had unsettled me and he was impatient for more entertainment.
‘Ask him more about his country,’ he whispered to his uncle. ‘Ask him about his religion.’
The reminder was superfluous for, as I later discovered, religion was a subject never very far from Ustaz Mustafa’s mind. ‘All right then,’ he said to me, motioning to the boys to be quiet. ‘Tell me, are you Muslim?’
‘No,’ I said, but he didn’t really need an answer since everyone in the hamlet knew that already.
‘So then what are you?’
‘I was born a Hindu,’ I said reluctantly, for if I had a religious identity at all it was largely by default.
There was a long silence during which I tried hard to think of an arresting opening line that would lead the conversation towards some bucolic, agricultural subject. But the moment passed, and in a troubled voice Ustaz Mustafa said: ‘What is this “Hinduki” thing? I have heard of it before and I don’t understand it. If it is not Christianity nor Judaism nor Islam what can it be? Who are its prophets?’
‘It’s not like that,’ I said. ‘There aren’t any prophets …’
‘So you are like the Magi?’ he said, bright-eyed. ‘You worship fire then?’
I shook my head vaguely, but before I could answer, he tapped my arm with his forefinger. ‘No,’ he said, smiling coquettishly. ‘I know — it’s cows you worship — isn’t that so?’
There was a sharp, collective intake of breath as Jabir and the other boys recoiled, calling upon God, in whispers, to protect them from the Devil.
I cleared my throat; I knew a lot depended on my answers. ‘It’s not like that,’ I said. ‘In my country some people don’t eat beef because … because cows give milk and plough the fields and so on, and so they’re very useful.’
Ustaz Mustafa was not to be bought off by this spurious ecological argument. ‘That can’t be the reason,’ he began, but then his eyes fell on his watch and a shadow of alarm descended on his face. He edged forward until he was balanced precariously on the rim of the bed.