He talked about Louis Pasteur. They listened without a sound as he told them in detail about Louis Pasteur’s life, his experiments and his discoveries, how he went out into the villages of his country, leaving behind the security of his laboratory, and found cures for incurable diseases, restored the vanishing livelihood of thousands of weavers by saving the silkworm, made milk pure for the world, destroyed the venom in dogs’ teeth, and so many other things.
But yet, he said, Pasteur had died a defeated man.
Why? he asked, and you could feel — if such a thing is possible — the silence beginning to stir.
He, and others before him, he said, had thought over the matter for a long, long time, and at last, in the Star, it had fallen to him to discover the answer. There, in the ruins, he had discovered what it was that Pasteur had really wanted all his life — an intangible thing, something he had not understood himself, yet a thing the whole world had conspired to deny him.
Purity. Purity was what he had wanted, purity and cleanliness — not just in his home, or in a laboratory or a university, but in the whole world of living men. It was that which spurred him on his greatest hunt, the chase in which he drove the enemy of purity, the quintessence of dirt, the demon which keeps the world from cleanliness, out of its lairs of darkness and gave it a name — the Infinitely Small, the Germ.
And when Alu came to that all his old mildness vanished. He let the loom be and sat with his hands folded on his lap, absolutely still, but his voice grew in strength and power until it reached beyond the courtyard and into the lanes and gullies outside.
He told them about germs: how they are everywhere and nowhere; how they flow freely from hand to hand, how they sweep through a thousand people in a day, in a minute, faster than a man can count, throwing their coils around people wherever they may hide.
Pasteur had discovered the enemy, the Germ, but he had never been able to find him. All his life he had tried to launch war but, like a shadow, the enemy had eluded him, and in the end Pasteur had died defeated and bewildered.
Why? Because for all his genius Pasteur had never asked himself the real question: where is the germ’s battleground? What is it that travels from man to man carrying contagion and filth, sucking people out and destroying them even in the safety of their own houses, even when every door and window is shut? Which is the battleground which travels on every man and every woman, silently preparing them for their defeat, turning one against the other, helping them destroy themselves?
That was the real question, and Pasteur had never known it.
Then he leapt to his feet and with a sigh the whole crowd rose with him. He shouted in Arabic: Wa ana warisu, and I am his heir, for in the ruins of the Star I found the answer.
Money. The answer is money.
The crowd gasped, and while they were still reeling he shouted again: We will wage war on money. Are you with me?
And the whole crowd shouted back: Yes. Yes. Yes.
No money, no dirt will ever again flow freely in the Ras. Are you with me?
And again the crowd roared: Yes.
We will drive money from the Ras, and without it we shall be happier, richer, more prosperous than ever before.
But this time only a few people shouted with him. There were other voices which said: How?
I think it can safely be said that there was a note of uncertainty in Alu’s voice then, as though he had only just understood what he was saying. Alu hesitated; I think he knew what he wanted to do, but not how to do it. The crowd sensed him falter. Another moment and the first bursts of laughter would have pealed out, sanity would have returned and that would have been the last anyone ever heard of Mr Alu.
But at that moment he was rescued. By whom?
By Professor Samuel, ex-accountant and clerk. He’s not really a professor of course. He was a teacher in some small-town college and, as you know, at home every teacher, whether he teaches pundits or pehlwans, is called a professor. This Samuel is an odd man, with peculiar ideas, but in his own way he is also a very clever man, a fine accountant. He had no sooner heard what Alu had to say than he delivered himself of a plan, full-grown and breathing.
First, he said, he would open files, with a page for every earning person in the Ras. Everyone would take their pay to him as soon as they received it, and the sum would be entered in the files against that man or woman’s name. The money would go into a common pool. Once a week the Professor and whoever wished to go with him would go into the Souq and buy everything that was needed in the Ras with that money. Then people could come and take whatever they needed, and the cost would be taken out of their accounts. In that way, he said, they would be able to do away with shops, and no longer would the shopkeepers drain away their savings, their sweat, and their labour in profits.
When he said that, the whole crowd rose and shouted and cheered, but the Professor stopped them. The shopkeepers of the Ras, he said, could be given a wage if they were willing to work with the others and help in buying and dividing food. They could be freed from their greed and they would be assured a livelihood. Otherwise, he said, there would be no place for them in the Ras.
Every person, he said, was to leave their address, their country, their town or village, wherever it was that they wished to send their money, and it would be entered into their pages on the files. At the end of every week, punctually, their savings would be sent back. And when the time came everybody there would see for themselves that the money they saved thus greatly exceeded anything they’d saved before.
There were many other things. I forget. Everyone was to be left a little money, whatever they needed to spend outside the Ras. But once they were in the Ras the money would have to be put away in an envelope and not touched again, until it was far outside the embankment. There would be no need for it in the Ras: they would get doctors, food, everything that was necessary, even films. No one would lack for something he needed, if he had no money today. The money would be found for him and taken out of his account later when he earned it.
Then Alu spoke again. He said that the Professor had read what was in his mind and put it in words. He asked the crowd: Are you willing to ask the Professor to work for us? To pay him a wage for his work? And in unison the crowd shouted: Yes.
That was how I lost my assistant.
Alu quietened them again. There was one other thing, he said. Every person in the Ras who wished to fight this war would also have to tie a piece of cloth above his right elbow. And whenever they left or entered a dwelling in the Ras they were to use that bit of cloth to dust the threshold, so that they left no dirt behind nor carried any with them. In this way, he said, they could know who was with them, and who against, and they could carry their fight to every doorstep.
After that there was so much noise, so much cheering, so much laughter that even Zindi flinched. Then I saw Abu Fahl rise and go up to Alu with his hands in his pockets. He pulled his hands out and emptied his pockets on to the platform. Alu tried to stop him, but the money was already there, beside him, and Abu Fahl wouldn’t touch it again. Professor Samuel was irritated, as well he might be, by this kind of impulsive foolishness. But he shouted for pencil and paper and counted the money and wrote it all down. There were others after that. First, the people from Zindi’s house: Zaghloul, a saner boy, you would have thought, had never lived; Chunni, the woman who swallows most of Professor Samuel’s earnings in exchange for I will not speculate what; thin Rakesh, and after him the whole crowd, hundreds of people, until the money on the platform had grown into a mound, and Samuel had run out of paper. By then it was all chaos, and I was grateful for the sheltered certainty of Zindi’s arm: women singing, people dancing and shouting. And in the middle of all that Hajj Fahmy’s family were busy sending out tray after tray of tea (they kept an account of course, for Professor Samuel’s files).