ADAM'S FRANCHISE
“The people of Daoistan had their revolution in the hope that, being free would liberate their imagination, allow new arts and new achievements, and thus create a new society. They destroyed everything that could possibly imprison their thoughts and actions and left themselves with a blank slate. But dreams echo the experience of life. From those dreams all creation stems. With history destroyed, traditions suppressed, marriages, births and deaths became mere ticks in a register, and only the mundane, unnoticed, uncared for facts of people's lives governed their fate and inspired little.”
Post Colonial Developments in Daoistani Culture.
Published 1989, Stodder and Houghton, £12.95
CHAPTER ONE
Saleem lived in Waihlahm, a sand-dune encroached village named by the Chinese who once settled on the edge of the Great Shan desert. The nearest town was too new to be given any more than the name No. 3 New Town, though Saleem rarely even bothered naming it that much. For him the town was, “the town,” the village, “the village,” and there was not much else besides the camels and shifting sands to attract his attention.
Since his wife, Jamilla, had been run down and killed by a passing truck, Saleem's favourite pastime, apart from spitting, was to sit stroking his grey unshaven chin, and watch his house succumb to the movement of the desert.
While he pissed up against the decayed front wall, his mind blank, his time his own, all jealousies negated, and all calls to serve the motherland forgotten, Saleem noticed that before him was a painted frieze depicting the story of a blue god and his sexual exploits.
“Most obscene,” muttered Saleem, when he worked out what one figure was up to with another.
For all of the thirty odd years that he had been living there, he had never seen this. Had it been covered over by plaster before? Saleem inspected the picture. The design contained scenes of what he supposed were Daoistani life. Some revolutionary guard must have attempted to make the whole thing more acceptable to the new regime. They had painted in heroic workers driving their motorcars, aeroplanes and railway trains, all of which, as far as Saleem was concerned, had done to Daoistan much the same as the blue god was doing to everyone else.
“Most boring,” said Saleem pulling off another hand full of plaster to reveal further sexual exploits. “Most dull,” he said about the revolutionary additions. Then placed his hand over his mouth and turned away from the images shocked at his own opinions.
He was above such things, he told himself. As a true son of the revolution, he was indifferent to pain, to beauty, to all but the most useful things, but he was long tired of the intellectual effort required for discerning what was truly useful and what was unnecessary. So it was better not to have any opinions at all, least of all suspiciously critical ones.
Water, however, was necessary. There was no controversy about that. Not that he cared much about water, or cared much about anything. Life consisted of eating, drinking, sleeping, waking, pissing against the wall and shitting in a hole. So long as one did not fall over in-between these points of interest, nothing else need be of concern. Today, however, was a reminder that the threat of falling over was ever present. It was the day Saleem waited for his son to bring his supply of water. The last summer's sandstorms had filled in the well and now, after several not particularly energetic attempts to dig it out, the amount of water Saleem could find no longer warranted the amount of work. He had contemplated letting nature take its course. If he was not meant to die of thirst, then why had the well dried up? Even so, he had sent a message to his son because it only seemed right that Saleem should become a burden. It served the boy right, though for what crime, Saleem did not know. He only knew that Adam irritated him and it was only fair that Saleem irritate him back.
Adam ran a shop in town and made a respectable living supplying gifts to the tourists. How he managed this, Saleem could never understand. He assumed that his son must have been doing something illegal somewhere. Indeed he was doing something that would have been illegal a few years ago. But now the government's reforms allowed all sorts of things to happen. Somehow, Saleem was sure this was a backward step. To allow what had been banned, made Saleem wonder why they had been banned in the first place? What could those great minds that created the revolution have been thinking?
Saleem heard a sound likd a bag of walnuts bursting over a tin shack's roof. The thought amazed him. He could remember when he was a child how his grandfather stored freshly picked walnuts on the roof and how some would roll down the slates. The rattling became more insistent and Saleem saw the dust cloud kicked up by Adam's struggling truck.
“If he's doing as well as he says,” thought Saleem, “why doesn't he buy a new one?”
Saleem walked to the gate and waited for Adam. He rolled himself a cigarette. In his life there had never been much and he had not asked for much, except for the respect of his wife, his son, and a good supply of decent tobacco. Even this meagre amount of desire he suspected of being frowned upon by the authorities.
The truck stopped, belched exhaust and Adam jumped out. He looked like his wiry little father but he had given up pyjamas for a T-shirt and Jeans.
“This looks so bad,” he said, “a rich man like me having his father living in these conditions! And look at the way you dress. Who dresses like that nowadays? Look at me. These are real Levis. Authentic. It says so on the label. That is what you should be wearing. Some decent clothes. Instead of making us all look backwards. So why don't you come and live with me in town? You could find a much better job there. You would look better. You would feel better. Instead of this.”
“And what would the government say?” asked Saleem, pointedly lighting up the roll of paper in his hand, then trying to drag a few puffs of tobacco smoke from it. “They appointed me caretaker and caretaker is what I am.”
“The place is falling down,” said Adam, “So what exactly are you taking care of?”
Saleem ignored his son. His job was to oversee the process of decay. That was all. He searched through his mind for a few suitable words: unify thought, unify action, unify the nation, eliminate ideological impurities, learn and dig! He had learnt to dig instead of learning to read or write. And now he watched his son as if watching an alien being from another planet. Just where had this person come from? Surely Saleem's blood could not run through this person's veins?
Adam sagged under the weight of the red plastic canister and staggered towards the rusty water tank. He slopped the water into it and Saleem bent over the edge to watch as the level rose. Scum floated on the surface.
“Is that it?” asked Saleem.
“There's another load to go in,” said Adam, “Don't you worry.”
Saleem was not worried but he was not that impressed by the quantity. He wanted more and was horrified to have to admit it to himself.
“If you lived with us,” said Adam, “There would be no need of this.”
“I stick to my post,” said Saleem, wandering away from Adam, hoping that he would avoid one of Adam’s long suffering stares that said how Saleem should at least give him a hand humping the water canisters. That boy, thought Saleem, forgets my age.
Saleem lit himself a mostly paper cigarette and walked out of the gate. He looked down the ruined street towards the desert and found, playing on the edge of the village, the dark skinned children of the desert nomads. Saleem watched one of them walking towards him. She wore a crimson sari that blew in the wind.
“What are you doing here?” he shouted at her.
She continued to approach and looked him in the eye until he nervously looked away. Judging by the bracelets around her ankles and the silver rings through her black nose, Saleem recognised her as a dancer and wondered whether he should be speaking to her at all. The girl pulled out a package from her sari, unwrapped it, and offered him some sweet meat.
“Who are you?” he asked and glanced about to see if anyone was watching him.
One of the ruined houses further into the village seemed to shimmer with the heat of fires.
“What's your name?” Saleem asked the girl.
“Amina,” she said, with a giggle.
Saleem, turned away, showing her the correct degree of contempt, and headed back for his house. He could see that his job as caretaker was going to take on more importance. A vision of him fighting off these gypsies came into his mind.
Amina followed Saleem into the courtyard. Her brown kohl rimmed eyes opened wide as she looked up at the frieze and saw beneath the soot, the blue god and his dancers.
“Ah, my people have been here before.”
A gust of wind unravelled her veil to reveal her long black hair. She stomped her feet and set her jewellery jangling, then stopped, flashed her eyes at Saleem and grinned.
“And now we're here again!”
A typical gypsy, thought Saleem, she'll most likely steal everything from me and die in a brothel.
Saleem sucked in a nicotine-rich lung full of fumes and thought about his dead wife. She had been very respectable. He took a final drag on his cigarette, reducing it to barely enough to hang on his bottom lip, and stared hard at Amina, who grinned, holding her veil up to cover her mouth.
“Go on! Go away now. I’m busy,” he said. “Go on! Go and play.”
Saleem could hear Adam trying to clear some blockage in the water tank with a rusty metal rod and watched Amina walk out of the compound. Every movement was in harmony. Even the wind blowing her sari fell in with the rhythm of her prowling walk. Saleem shuddered. He had not felt like that for a long time.
“I’ve finished,” shouted Adam. “But you think about what I said. This can’t go on, you know. No-one else lives in the village anymore. They are more sensible. At your age you could do with some modern comforts couldn’t you?”
“I have the bounty of the desert,” said Saleem, spitting bits of loose tobacco, “What more do I need?”
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to THE BOGGLED MIND to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.