In an Antique Land Read Free Page A

to him or go all the way to the next village, Nashâwy, a mile and a half down the road.
    It was thus that Abu-‘Ali had grown so large, Shaikh Musa said (he was generally extremely reluctant to discuss Abu-‘Ali but on this occasion he permitted himself a laugh): for years hehad eaten meat like other people ate beans, and eventually he had swollen up like one of the force-fed geese his wife reared on their roof.
    â€˜Women use their forefingers to push corn down the throats of their geese,’ added Shaikh Musa’s son Ahmed, an earnest young man, who was a great deal more heedful of my duties as a gatherer of information than I. ‘Corn, as you ought to know, is harvested just before winter, towards the start of the Coptic year which begins in the month of Tût …’
    It had long been a point of pride with Abu-‘Ali that he possessed more—more gadgets, especially—than anyone else in Lataifa. It was therefore a matter of bitter chagrin to him that he had not been the first person in the village to buy a television set. One of his own half-brothers, a schoolteacher, had beaten him to it.
    He was often reminded of this by a cousin’s son, Jabir, a boy in his late teens, with bright, malicious eyes and a tongue that bristled with barbs. Sometimes, when we were sitting in Abu-‘Ali’s guest-room in the evenings, Jabir would turn to me and ask questions like ‘What’s the name of the captain of the Algerian soccer team?’ or ‘Who is the Raïs of India? Isn’t it Indira Gandhi?’ The questions were entirely rhetorical; he would answer them himself, and then, sighing with pleasure he would glance at his uncle and exclaim: ‘Oh there’s so much to be learnt from television. It’s lucky for us there’s one next door.’
    It always worked.
    â€˜I don’t understand this television business,’ Abu-‘Ali would roar. ‘What’s the point of buying a television set now, when our village doesn’t even have electricity?’
    Smiling serenely, Jabir would point out that a television set could be run perfectly well on car batteries.
    â€˜Car batteries!’ Abu-‘Ali’s voice would be breathy with contempt. That’s like burning up money. I’m telling you, and you pay attention, let the electricity come to Lataifa as the government’s promised, and you’ll be able to watch the biggest and best TV set you’ve ever seen, right here, in this room, God willing. It’ll be better than the best television set in Nashawy, insha’allah, and it’ll be in colour too.’
    A sly smile would appear on Jabir’s blunt-featured face, with its adolescent’s crop of stubble and unquiet skin. ‘There’ll be other colour TVs here soon,’ he would say, leaning back contentedly against the bolsters on the couch. ‘My uncle Mustafa is going to get one for our house any one of these days, insha’allah.’
    All Abu-‘Ali could do in retaliation was glare at him; he knew he was no match for Jabir’s tongue. He would have loved to ban Jabir from his house, but it so happened that Jabir’s father was a cousin in the paternal line, and thus a member of the extended family, or lineage, of which Abu-‘Ali was nominally the head: he couldn’t have thrown Jabir out of his house without offending a whole platoon of relatives. Besides, it so happened that Jabir was also best friends with one of Abu-‘Ali’s sons, a schoolboy of his own age, about sixteen or so. The two of them were always together, with their arms around each others’ shoulders, giggling, or talking in furtive, experimental whispers. There was little Abu-‘Ali could do to rid his house of him; constrained as he was by the obligations of kinship, he had to choke daily on the gall of hearing about the soccer matches that his son and Jabir watched on the TV set in the house next