Free In an Antique Land by Amitav Ghosh

man’s family. They would have to go and hide with their maternal relatives until their uncles and the shaikhs of the land could talk to the dead man’s family and persuade them to come to a council of reconciliation. Then, when the grief of the dead man’s family had eased a little, an amnesty would be declared. The two lineages would meet in some safe central place, and in the presence of their elders they would negotiate a blood-money payment. That was thâr, the law of feud; damm, the law of blood; the ancient, immutable law of the Arabs.
    â€˜All that for pushing a man off a swing?’ I asked, bleary-eyed.
    Jabir paused to think. ‘Well, maybe a little one,’ he said wistfully. ‘Just a small feud.’
    â€˜Who was the man who was killed?’
    â€˜His name was Fathy,’ said Jabir, ‘but people called him “the Sparrow”. He was from the village down the road: Nashawy. Now there’ll be a feud there.’
    I was somehow very doubtful, but for all the attention Jabir paid me, I could have been a six-year-old child.
8
    I T WAS M ABROUK , Shaikh Musa’s nephew, who was responsible for improving my standing in Jabir’s eyes.
    That year Mabrouk’s father had done exceptionally well from his vegetable plot. He’d taken a risk the autumn before by planting a lot of carrots after the cotton harvest. Everyone had tried to dissuade him—his wife, his brothers (including Shaikh Musa) and most of his cousins and relatives. The carrots would have to be harvested all at the same time, they had said, and what if the prices in the market were low that week? He would end up selling a whole truckload of carrots at a loss; it was better to plant many different kinds of vegetables, less of a risk.
    Mabrouk’s father had not paid any attention. He was an obstinate sort of man, and their arguments had only served to settle his resolve. As it turned out, he had been lucky. The price of carrots happened to be exceptionally high at the time of his harvest, and he made an unexpectedly large profit.
    A few weeks later, he put all his savings together, and he andtwo of his brothers hired a truck and went off to Damanhour. When the truck returned, several hours later, the three brothers—all men of ample girth—were sitting in front, squeezed in beside the driver. In the back was a mysterious object, about as big as a calf but of a different shape, wrapped in several sheets of tarpaulin. The truck went quietly around to Mabrouk’s house, and the object was unloaded and carried in through a back entrance, still wrapped in its tarpaulin sheets.
    I knew nothing of this until Mabrouk burst into my room that afternoon: I heard the sound of feet flying up the stairs, and then Mabrouk threw the door open and caught hold of my arm.
    â€˜Come with me, ya doktór,’ he cried. ‘You have to come with me right now, to our house. My father and my family want you.’ He was in a state of such feverish excitement that he could not bring himself to wait until I closed my notebook; he virtually dragged me out of the room right then, never letting go of my elbow.
    Abu-‘Ali and his family were astonished to see Mabrouk racing through their house, for he had always had a reputation for being unusually shy. Jabir told me once that despite being the tallest and fastest amongst the boys of their age, Mabrouk wasn’t allowed to play in the forward line of their soccer team: the sight of an open goal was sometimes enough to bring on one of his attacks of shyness.
    But now, Mabrouk was transformed; as we hurried through the lanes he talked volubly about how his father and his uncles had hired a truck and gone to Damanhour. But when I asked what exactly they had bought, he shook his head and smiled enigmatically. ‘Wait, wait,’ he said, ‘you will see.’
    By the time we got there, a crowd had collected in Mabrouk’s lane, and his house was