Free Among the Believers by V.S. Naipaul Page B

England. This book was called
The West Is Sick
.
    S HIRAZI’S house was in a blank-walled dirt lane in another part of the town. The lane sloped down from both sides to a shallow central trough, but this trough was only full of dust.
    We knocked at a closed door set in the wall; and children in the lane mocked the Pakistanis, threatening them with the anger of Shirazi when they got inside. It seemed a traditional form of play, a licenced mockery that in no way mocked belief: the “clerk,” the religious student in his student’s costume, a recognized butt, as he perhaps had been in the European Middle Ages. It was a difficult moment for the Pakistanis, though, trying to shoo away the children, keep their dignity, preserve their courtesy to Behzad and myself, and prepare for the grave reception ahead.
    The door opened. We entered a vestibule, took off shoes, went up carpeted steps to a gallery which ran right around a sunken paved courtyard to the left, with fig trees, all covered by a high white awning which cooled light and colour, so that, abruptly, after the dust and warmth of the lane, the midsummer desert climate seemed benign, perfect for men.
    I would have liked to pause, to consider the shaded courtyard with the fig trees. But wonder almost at once turned to shock: there was a barefooted man just a few feet ahead in the carpeted gallery with an Israeli-made submachine gun: Shirazi’s bodyguard. He stayed in the gallery. We turned into the carpeted, empty room on the right and sat down in silence beside an electric fan, to wait. The Pakistani students smiled, at once expectant and encouraging.
    “He is coming,” Behzad said. “Stand.”
    We all stood up. Ceremony assists an entrance, and Shirazi’s entrance was impressive, regal. He was a big man, with a full, fleshy face; his beard, as neatly trimmed as his moustache, made it hard to guess his age. His two-button gown was pale fawn; his black cloak was of the thinnest cotton.
    The students appeared to fall forward before him—a flurry of black cloaks and turbans. He, allowing his hand to be kissed, appeared to give them his benediction. And then we all sat down. He said nothing; he seemed only to smile. The students said nothing.
    I said, “It is very good of you to see me. Your students here have spoken of you as a man of great learning.”
    Behzad translated what I had said, and Shirazi began to speak slowly, melodiously, with an intonation that was new to me. He spoke for a long time, but Behzad’s translation was brief.
    “It was good of them to say what they said. It is good of you to say what you said.”
    Shirazi spoke some more.
    Behzad translated: “Education cannot begin too soon. I would like children to be brought as babies to school. There is a tape recorder in the human brain. Hitler had that idea.” And Behzad added on his own, “He wants to know what your religion is.”
    “What can I say?”
    “You must tell me.”
    I said, “I am still a seeker.”
    Shirazi, his face calm, his large eyes smiling, assessing, spoke at length. His enunciation was clear, deliberate, full of rhythm. His full-lipped mouth opened wide, his clean teeth showed.
    Behzad said, “He wants to know what you were before you became a seeker. You must have been born into some kind of belief.”
    It was of the Pakistani students that I was nervous. They had been told—with some truth, but more for the sake of simplicity—that I came from America but was not an American. For them to hear now that my ancestry was Hindu would, I thought, be unsettling to them; the Hindu-Muslim antagonisms of the Indo-Pakistani subcontinent went deep. They would feel fooled; and they had been so welcoming, so open. They had arranged this meeting with their great teacher, and even now never took their gaze—beatific rather than obedient or even awed—off Shirazi.
    I said to Behzad, “Can you tell him I never had any belief? Tell him I was born far away, in the Americas, and wasn’t