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.
And in a way that was the strangest thing of all; that he was talking. For Alu was a very silent man. I’ve seen him in the house every day for six months now, so in a way I know him well, for you can know a lot about a man by watching him daily. Whenever he was in the house he was quiet; most of the time he was in pain, too, for he always had boils bursting out all over him. And the rest of the time, when he wasn’t at work, he was at Hajj Fahmy’s — weaving, they say. In all those months I wonder if I’ve exchanged more than ten words with him. It wasn’t just me. As far as I could tell, all the others were friendly with him, but none of them was his particular friend. There were rumours about him and Karthamma, but no one could tell what to make of those. She’s a tall woman, very dark, with the temper of an animal, but also an animal’s courage, for she was the one person in the house who was never afraid to defy Zindi. Anyone else who did that, Zindi would have thrown out long ago, but not Karthamma. For Karthamma has a baby — the child Zindi was holding in her arms that night — and poor, childless Zindi treasured her for that alone; because she was a mother and because she had given her a son. If pure will could change flesh and blood, that baby would be more hers now than his mother’s.
Maybe the rumours about Karthamma and Alu were true, maybe not. But Zindi believed them anyway; perhaps because she wanted to, because she hoped that Alu would take Karthamma’s mind off the baby. But I, who have seen the world a bit, used to wonder: what could silent Alu and Karthamma have in common? Sometimes you saw them in the courtyard, she rubbing oil on the boils on his back. She was fond of him, maybe she even loved him, but to me it seemed the love of a sister, not of a lover. Did he talk to her? Perhaps; for, after all, she had stolen the money anticipating something. But if she recognized the Mr Alu she saw that night she must have been the only one in the Ras. To everyone else he was a quiet morose man, tormented by boils. A mild man, you would have said, who didn’t care much about anything.
But last night nobody else seemed to remember the man as he was. I was the only one who saw him and recognized a mystery. I saw a man I knew, but I heard a voice I had not heard before. I hate mystery: unless mystery is the tool of business it is its enemy. But, hate it or not, there he was in front of me, as great a mystery as any I’ve seen, and I could find no explanation.
He was talking softly, but there was a force in his voice which carried it over the clicking of the shuttle, so that nobody missed a word; an extraordinary force, perhaps you could call it passion. It was like a question, though he was not asking anything, bearing down on you from every side. And in that whole huge crowd nobody stirred or spoke. You could see that silently they were answering him, matching him with something of their own.
That was another mystery, for the people who were there are rarely quiet — at work, at night, in the cinema. But last night, peering into the courtyard under Zindi’s arm — which as fastidious men you may well appreciate wasn’t easy, or greatly facile, if one may put it as such, for as you may know, when Virat Singh, the famous wrestler, the great marble-biceped pehlwan of Bareilly, was living here, he once attempted to press his suit a little forcefully with her, but since he was not greatly to her taste she overpowered him, merely by baring an armpit and blowing gently upon it — but anyway, as I was saying, last night, peering under Zindi’s arm in not altogether salubrious conditions, I saw that very crowd absolutely silent, listening to a man, hardly more than a boy, talk, and that, too, not in one language but in three, four, God knows how many, a khichri of words; couscous, rice, dal and onions, all stirred together, stamped and boiled, Arabic with Hindi, Hindi swallowing Bengali, English doing a dance; tongues unravelled and woven together — nonsense, you say, tongues unravelled are nothing but nonsense — but there again you have a mystery, for everyone understood him, perfectly, like their mother’s lullabies. They understood him, for his voice was only the question; the answers were their own.
And what of me, looking out of Zindi’s dear, half-forgotten arms, in those few moments while her eyes were busy and Abu Fahl elsewhere? I will tell you: I saw mysteries, all around me, one growing out of another, and I could find no grasp on them, not the slightest hold. I was afraid. I was so afraid, I breathed and sniffed until my nose ran, grateful for Zindi’s generosity.