The foundling was perhaps two weeks old, clearly illegitimate, and it was equally plain that its options in life were limited. The crowd was in a doubtful, confused mood. Then the mosque’s Imam appeared at the head of the flight of steps, and beside him was Ayesha the seer, whose fame had spread throughout the city.
The crowd parted like the sea, and Ayesha and the Imam came down to the basket. The Imam examined the baby briefly; rose; and turned to address the crowd.
‘This child was born in devilment,’ he said. ‘It is the Devil’s child.’ He was a young man.
The mood of the crowd shifted towards anger. Mirza Saeed Akhtar shouted out: ‘You, Ayesha, kahin. What do you say?’
‘Everything will be asked of us,’ she replied.
The crowd, needing no clearer invitation, stoned the baby to death.
After that the Ayesha Pilgrims refused to move on. The death of the foundling had created an atmosphere of mutiny among the weary villagers, none of whom had lifted or thrown a stone. Mishal, snow-white now, was too enfeebled by her illness to rally the marchers; Ayesha, as ever, refused to dispute. ‘If you turn your backs on God,’ she warned the villagers, ‘don’t be surprised when he does the same to you.’
The pilgrims were squatting in a group in a corner of the large mosque, which was painted lime-green on the outside and bright blue within, and lit, when necessary, by multicoloured neon ‘tube lights’. After Ayesha’s warning they turned their backs on her and huddled closer together, although the weather was warm and humid enough. Mirza Saeed, spotting his opportunity, decided to challenge Ayesha directly once again. ‘Tell me,’ he asked sweetly, ‘how exactly does the angel give you all this information? You never tell us his precise words, only your interpretations of them. Why such indirection? Why not simply quote?’
‘He speaks to me,’ Ayesha answered, ‘in clear and memorable forms.’
Mirza Saeed, full of the bitter energy of his desire for her, and the pain of his estrangement from his dying wife, and the memory of the tribulations of the march, smelled in her reticence the weakness he had been probing for. ‘Kindly be more specific,’ he insisted. ‘Or why should anyone believe? What are these forms?’
‘The archangel sings to me,’ she admitted, ‘to the tunes of popular hit songs.’
Mirza Saeed Akhtar clapped his hands delightedly and began to laugh the loud, echoing laughter of revenge, and Osman the bullock-boy joined in, beating on his dholki and prancing around the squatting villagers, singing the latest filmi ganas and making nautch-girl eyes. ‘Ho ji!’ he carolled. ‘This is how Gibreel recites, ho ji! Ho ji!’
And one after the other, pilgrim after pilgrim rose and joined in the dance of the circling drummer, dancing their disillusion and disgust in the courtyard of the mosque, until the Imam came running to shriek at the ungodliness of their deeds.
Night fell. The villagers of Titlipur were grouped around their Sarpanch, Muhammad Din, and serious talks about returning to Titlipur were under way. Perhaps a little of the harvest could be saved. Mishal Akhtar lay dying with her head in her mother’s lap, racked by pain, with a single tear emerging from her left eye. And in a far corner of the courtyard of the greenblue mosque with its technicolour tube-lighting, the visionary and the zamindar sat alone and talked. A moon – new, horned, cold – shone down.
‘You’re a clever man,’ Ayesha said. ‘You knew how to take your chance.’
This was when Mirza Saeed made his offer of a compromise. ‘My wife is dying,’ he said. ‘And she wants very much to go to Mecca Sharif. So we have interests in common, you and I.’
Ayesha listened. Saeed pressed on: ‘Ayesha, I’m not a bad man. Let me tell you, I’ve been damn impressed by many things on this walk; damn impressed. You have given these people a profound spiritual experience, no question. Don’t think we modern types lack a spiritual dimension.’
‘The people have left me,’ Ayesha said.
‘The people are confused,’ Saeed replied. ‘Point is, if you actually take them to the sea and then nothing happens, my God, they really could turn against you. So here’s the deal. I gave a tinkle to Mishal’s papa and he agreed to underwrite half the cost. We propose to fly you and Mishal, and let’s say ten – twelve! – of the villagers, to Mecca, within forty-eight hours, personally. Reservations are available. We leave it to you to select the individuals best suited to the trip. Then, truly, you will have performed a miracle for some instead of for none. And in my view the pilgrimage itself has been a miracle, in a way. So you will have done very much.’
He held his breath.
‘I must think,’ Ayesha said.
‘Think, think,’ Saeed encouraged her happily. ‘Ask your archangel. If he agrees, it must be right.’
Mirza Saeed Akhtar knew that when Ayesha announced that the Archangel Gibreel had accepted his offer her power would be destroyed forever, because the villagers would perceive her fraudulence and her desperation, too. – But how could she turn him down? – What choice did she really have? ‘Revenge is sweet,’ he told himself. Once the woman was discredited, he would certainly take Mishal to Mecca, if that were still her wish.
The butterflies of Titlipur had not entered the mosque. They lined its exterior walls and onion dome, glowing greenly in the dark.
Ayesha in the night: stalking the shadows, lying down, rising to go on the prowl again. There was an uncertainty about her; then the slowness came, and she seemed to dissolve into the shadows of the mosque. She returned at dawn.
After the morning prayer she asked the pilgrims if she might address them; and they, doubtfully, agreed.
‘Last night the angel did not sing,’ she said. ‘He told me, instead, about doubt, and how the Devil makes use of it. I said, but they doubt me, what can I do? He answered: only proof can silence doubt.’
She had their full attention. Next she told them what Mirza Saeed had suggested in the night. ‘He told me to go and ask my angel, but I know better,’ she cried. ‘How could I choose between you? It is all of us, or none.’
‘Why should we follow you,’ the Sarpanch asked, ‘after all the dying, the baby, and all?’
‘Because when the waters part, you will be saved. You will enter into the Glory of the Most High.’
‘What waters?’ Mirza Saeed yelled. ‘How will they divide?’
‘Follow me,’ Ayesha concluded, ‘and judge me by their parting.’
His offer had contained an old question: What kind of idea are you? And she, in turn, had offered him an old answer. I was tempted, but am renewed; am uncompromising; absolute; pure.
The tide was in when the Ayesha Pilgrimage marched down an alley beside the Holiday Inn, whose windows were full of the mistresses of film stars using their new Polaroid cameras, – when the pilgrims felt the city’s asphalt turn gritty and soften into sand, – when they found themselves walking through a thick mulch of rotting coconuts abandoned cigarette packets pony turds non-degradable bottles fruit peelings jellyfish and paper, – on to the mid-brown sand overhung by high leaning coco-palms and the balconies of luxury sea-view apartment blocks, – past the teams of young men whose muscles were so well-honed that they looked like deformities, and who were performing gymnastic contortions of all sorts, in unison, like a murderous army of ballet dancers, – and through the beachcombers, clubmen and families who had come to take the air or make business contacts or scavenge a living from the sand, – and gazed, for the first time in their lives, upon the Arabian Sea.
Mirza Saeed saw Mishal, who was being supported by two of the village men, because she was no longer strong enough to stand up by herself. Ayesha was beside her, and Saeed had the idea that the prophetess had somehow stepped out of the dying woman, that all the brightness of Mishal had hopped out of her body and taken this mythological shape, leaving a husk behind to die. Then he was angry with himself for allowing Ayesha’s supernaturalism to infect him, too.
The villagers of Titlipur had agreed to follow Ayesha after a long discu
ssion in which they had asked her not to take part. Their common sense told them that it would be foolish to turn back when they had come so far and were in sight of their first goal; but the new doubts in their minds sapped their strength. It was as if they were emerging from some Shangri-La of Ayesha’s making, because now that they were simply walking behind her rather than following her in the true sense, they seemed to age and sicken with every step they took. By the time they saw the sea they were a lame, tottering, rheumy, feverish, red-eyed bunch, and Mirza Saeed wondered how many of them would manage the final few yards to the water’s edge.
The butterflies were with them, high over their heads.
‘What now, Ayesha?’ Saeed called out to her, filled with the horrible notion that his beloved wife might die here under the hoofs of ponies for rent and beneath the eyes of sugarcane-juice vendors. ‘You have brought us all to the edges of extinction, but here is an unquestionable fact: the sea. Where is your angel now?’
She climbed up, with the villagers’ help, on to an unused thela lying next to a soft-drink stall, and didn’t answer Saeed until she could look down at him from her new perch. ‘Gibreel says the sea is like our souls. When we open them, we can move through into wisdom. If we can open our hearts, we can open the sea.’
‘Partition was quite a disaster here on land,’ he taunted her. ‘Quite a few guys died, you might remember. You think it will be different in the water?’
‘Shh,’ said Ayesha suddenly. ‘The angel’s almost here.’
It was, on the face of it, surprising that after all the attention the march had received the crowd at the beach was no better than moderate; but the authorities had taken many precautions, closing roads, diverting traffic; so there were perhaps two hundred gawpers on the beach. Nothing to worry about.
What was strange was that the spectators did not see the butterflies, or what they did next. But Mirza Saeed clearly observed the great glowing cloud fly out over the sea; pause; hover; and form itself into the shape of a colossal being, a radiant giant constructed wholly of tiny beating wings, stretching from horizon to horizon, filling the sky.
‘The angel!’ Ayesha called to the pilgrims. ‘Now you see! He’s been with us all the way. Do you believe me now?’ Mirza Saeed saw absolute faith return to the pilgrims. ‘Yes,’ they wept, begging her forgiveness. ‘Gibreel! Gibreel! Ya Allah.’
Mirza Saeed made his last effort. ‘Clouds take many shapes,’ he shouted. ‘Elephants, film stars, anything. Look, it’s changing even now.’ But nobody paid any attention to him; they were watching, full of amazement, as the butterflies dived into the sea.
The villagers were shouting and dancing for joy. ‘The parting! The parting!’ they cried. Bystanders called out to Mirza Saeed: ‘Hey, mister, what are they getting so fired up about? We can’t see anything going on.’
Ayesha had begun to walk towards the water, and Mishal was being dragged along by her two helpers. Saeed ran to her and began to struggle with the village men. ‘Let go of my wife. At once! Damn you! I am your zamindar. Release her; remove your filthy hands!’ But Mishal whispered: ‘They won’t. Go away, Saeed. You are closed. The sea only opens for those who are open.’
‘Mishal!’ he screamed, but her feet were already wet.
Once Ayesha had entered the water the villagers began to run. Those who could not leapt upon the backs of those who could. Holding their babies, the mothers of Titlipur rushed into the sea; grandsons bore their grandmothers on their shoulders and rushed into the waves. Within minutes the entire village was in the water, splashing about, falling over, getting up, moving steadily forwards, towards the horizon, never looking back to shore. Mirza Saeed was in the water, too. ‘Come back,’ he beseeched his wife. ‘Nothing is happening; come back.’
At the water’s edge stood Mrs Qureishi, Osman, the Sarpanch, Sri Srinivas. Mishal’s mother was sobbing operatically: ‘O my baby, my baby. What will become?’ Osman said: ‘When it becomes clear that miracles don’t happen, they will turn back.’ ‘And the butterflies?’ Srinivas asked him, querulously. ‘What were they? An accident?’
It dawned on them that the villagers were not coming back. ‘They must be nearly out of their depth,’ the Sarpanch said. ‘How many of them can swim?’ asked blubbering Mrs Qureishi. ‘Swim?’ shouted Srinivas. ‘Since when can village folk swim?’ They were all screaming at one another as if they were miles apart, jumping from foot to foot, their bodies willing them to enter the water, to do something. They looked as if they were dancing on a fire. The incharge of the police squad that had been sent down for crowd control purposes came up as Saeed came running out of the water.
‘What is befalling?’ the officer asked. ‘What is the agitation?’
‘Stop them,’ Mirza Saeed panted, pointing out to sea.
‘Are they miscreants?’ the policeman asked.
‘They are going to die,’ Saeed replied.
It was too late. The villagers, whose heads could be seen bobbing about in the distance, had reached the edge of the underwater shelf. Almost all together, making no visible attempt to save themselves, they dropped beneath the water’s surface. In moments, every one of the Ayesha Pilgrims had sunk out of sight.
None of them reappeared. Not a single gasping head or thrashing arm.
Saeed, Osman, Srinivas, the Sarpanch, and even fat Mrs Qureishi ran into the water, shrieking: ‘God have mercy; come on, everybody, help.’
Human beings in danger of drowning struggle against the water. It is against human nature simply to walk forwards meekly until the sea swallows you up. But Ayesha, Mishal Akhtar and the villagers of Titlipur subsided below sea-level; and were never seen again.
Mrs Qureishi was pulled to shore by policemen, her face blue, her lungs full of water, and needed the kiss of life. Osman, Srinivas and the Sarpanch were dragged out soon afterwards. Only Mirza Saeed Akhtar continued to dive, further and further out to sea, staying under for longer and longer periods; until he, too, was rescued from the Arabian Sea, spent, sick and fainting. The pilgrimage was over.
Mirza Saeed awoke in a hospital ward to find a CID man by his bedside. The authorities were considering the feasibility of charging the survivors of the Ayesha expedition with attempted illegal emigration, and detectives had been instructed to get down their stories before they had had a chance to confer.
This was the testimony of the Sarpanch of Titlipur, Muhammad Din: ‘Just when my strength had failed and I thought I would surely die there in the water, I saw it with my own eyes; I saw the sea divide, like hair being combed; and they were all there, far away, walking away from me. She was there also, my wife, Khadija, whom I loved.’
This is what Osman the bullock-boy told the detectives, who had been badly shaken by the Sarpanch’s deposition: ‘At first I was in great fear of drowning myself. Still, I was searching searching, mainly for her, Ayesha, whom I knew from before her alteration. And just at the last, I saw it happen, the marvellous thing. The water opened, and I saw them go along the ocean-floor, among the dying fish.’
Sri Srinivas, too, swore by the goddess Lakshmi that he had seen the parting of the Arabian Sea; and by the time the detectives got to Mrs Qureishi, they were utterly unnerved, because they knew that it was impossible for the men to have cooked up the story together. Mishal’s mother, the wife of the great banker, told the same story in her own words. ‘Believe don’t believe,’ she finished emphatically, ‘but what my eyes have seen my tongue repeats.’
Goosepimply CID men attempted the third degree: ‘Listen, Sarpanch, don’t shit from your mouth. So many were there, nobody saw these things. Already the drowned bodies are floating to shore, swollen like balloons and stinking like hell. If you go on lying we will take you and stick your nose in the truth.’
‘You can show me whatever you want,’ Sarpanch Muhammad Din told interrogators. ‘But I still saw what I saw.’
‘And you?’ the CID men assembled, once he awoke, to ask Mirza Saeed Akhtar. ‘What did you see at the be
ach?’
‘How can you ask?’ he protested. ‘My wife has drowned. Don’t come hammering with your questions.’
When he found out that he was the only survivor of the Ayesha Haj not to have witnessed the parting of the waves – Sri Srinivas was the one who told him what the others saw, adding mournfully: ‘It is our shame that we were not thought worthy to accompany. On us, Sethji, the waters closed, they slammed in our faces like the gates of Paradise’ – Mirza Saeed broke down and wept for a week and a day, the dry sobs continuing to shake his body long after his tear ducts had run out of salt.
Then he went home.
Moths had eaten the punkahs of Peristan and the library had been consumed by a billion hungry worms. When he turned on the taps, snakes oozed out instead of water, and creepers had twined themselves around the four-poster bed in which Viceroys had once slept. It was as if time had accelerated in his absence, and centuries had somehow elapsed instead of months, so that when he touched the giant Persian carpet rolled up in the ballroom it crumbled under his hand, and the baths were full of frogs with scarlet eyes. At night there were jackals howling on the wind. The great tree was dead, or close to death, and the fields were barren as the desert; the gardens of Peristan, in which, long ago, he first saw a beautiful young girl, had long ago yellowed into ugliness. Vultures were the only birds in the sky.
He pulled a rocking-chair out on to his veranda, sat down, and rocked himself gently to sleep.
Once, only once, he visited the tree. The village had crumbled into dust; landless peasants and looters had tried to seize the abandoned land, but the drought had driven them away. There had been no rain here. Mirza Saeed returned to Peristan and padlocked the rusty gates. He was not interested in the fate of his fellow-survivors; he went to the telephone and ripped it out of the wall.
After an uncounted passage of days it occurred to him that he was starving to death, because he could smell his body reeking of nail-varnish remover; but as he felt neither hungry nor thirsty, he decided there was no point bothering to find food. For what? Much better to rock in this chair, and not think, not think, not think.