In an Antique Land: History in the Guise of a Traveler's Tale by Amitav Ghosh

Author:Amitav Ghosh [Ghosh, Amitav]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Travel, Middle East, General, History
ISBN: 9780307792266
Google: MUOz-GfRunwC
Amazon: B004JN1CDS
Publisher: Vintage
Published: 2011-07-19T16:00:00+00:00

17

EVEN THOUGH KHAMEES never mentioned the subject himself, everyone around him seemed to know that he was haunted by his childlessness.

Once, on a cold winter’s day, I dropped in to see him and found him sitting with his father in the guest-room of their house—one of the shabbiest and most derelict in the village. His father was sitting in a corner, huddled in a blanket, hugging his knees and shivering whenever a draught whistled in through the crumbling walls. He smiled when I stepped in, and motioned to me to sit beside him—a thin, frail old man with absent, wandering eyes. He had worked as a labourer in Alexandria during the Second World War, and he had met many Indians among the soldiers who had passed through the city at the start of the North African campaign. They had made a deep impression on his memory and at our first meeting he had greeted me as though he was resuming an interrupted friendship.

Now, after I had seated myself beside him, he leant towards me and ran his hands over my wool sweater, examining it closely, rubbing the material carefully between finger and thumb.

‘That’s the right thing to wear in winter,’ he said. ‘It must be really warm.’

‘Not as warm as your blanket,’ interjected Khamees.

His father pretended not to hear. ‘I’ve heard you can get sweaters like that in Damanhour,’ he said to me.

‘You can get anything if you have the money,’ said Khamees. ‘It’s getting the money that’s the problem.’

Paying him no attention, his father patted my arm. ‘I remember the Indian soldiers,’ he said. ‘They were so tall and dark that many of us Egyptians were afraid of them. But if you talked to them they were the most generous of all the soldiers; if you asked for a cigarette they gave you a whole packet.’

‘That was then,’ Khamees said, grinning at me. ‘Now things have changed.’

‘Do you see what my children are like?’ his father said to me. ‘They won’t even get me a sweater from Damanhour so I can think of the winter without fear.’

At that Khamees rose abruptly to his feet and walked out of the room. His father watched him go with an unblinking stare.

‘What am I to do with my children?’ he muttered, under his breath. ‘Look at them; look at Busaina, trying to rear her two sons on her own; look at Khamees, you can’t talk to him any more, can’t say a thing, neither me, nor his brothers, nor his wife. And every year he gets worse.’

He pulled his blanket over his ears, shivering spasmodically. ‘Perhaps I’m the one who’s to blame,’ he said. ‘I married him off early and I told him we wanted to see his children before we died. But that didn’t work, so he married again. Now the one thought in his head is children—that’s all he thinks about, nothing else.’

A few months later, in the spring, after nearly a year had passed and the time for my

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