Read Online Beyond Belief: Islamic Excursions Among the Converted Peoples (Vintage International) by V.S. Naipaul - Free Book Online
Authors: V.S. Naipaul
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photographs. On the pillars of the sitting room there were two or three decorative little flower pieces and, surprisingly, a picture of a sailing ship. About the sitting room were small mementos of foreign travel, tourist souvenirs, showing asofter side of Imaduddin (or his wife), a side not connected with mental training, if indeed the house was theirs, and if these mementos had truly tugged at their hearts (and did not, rather, preserve the memory of some pious giver): a number of Japanese things; an Eiffel Tower; above the watercooler in a corner a Delft china plate with a simple, blurred, romantic view of a winding Dutch road and a farmhouse and a church; against a pillar a dwarf red maple growing out of a white dish, the dish on a silver-fringed doily, the whole thing resting—as if casually—on a slatted magazine stand. The back window of the dark room gave a view of a sunny little rock-walled garden, bounded by the red-tile roof of the neighboring house: spaces were really small here.
I considered these details one by one, as if committing them to memory, and almost with a separate part of my mind wondered how long I should stay where I was, violating the house, and how when the time came I might get away from the curious trap I appeared to have fallen into.
Suddenly, after ten minutes, or perhaps fifteen minutes, a door to the left opened, and Imaduddin appeared, informal and unexpected in an ankle-length sarong and a dark-green shirt.
He said in a preoccupied way, “I’m sorry. I have problems.”
I thought they might have been bathroom problems, but then a tall brown-complexioned man came out behind him. The tall man had twinkling eyes and a shiny skin, and was in a sarong as well, but was less informal than Imaduddin. The bottom of his sarong moved elegantly with his slow, stately steps. He had a flat black Muslim cap and a glaucous blue waistcoat-shirt with a pen clipped to the pocket.
Imaduddin said, “I am having some massage.”
That explained the shiny skin of the man in the black cap.
The room from which they came out would have been next to the garage and would have overlooked the little lawn and the lane. They would have heard me arrive, and would have heard me call.
Imaduddin said, “Getting old, you know.”
As though that, and the trouble with his back, for which the masseur came every few days, was explanation enough. And, indeed, there appeared to be some formality about the masseur’s visit. Imaduddin’s farewell to him, some minutes later, and Imaduddin’s wife’s farewell, was full of ceremony.
When he had dressed, and was belted and tight and firm in trousers and shirt, familiar again, we settled down to talk at the dining table, betweenthe microwave and the group photographs on one side and the watercooler and the Dutch china plate on the other side. The serving girls, one in a red frock, one in a brown, had recovered from their fright, and were busy once more about the house and kitchen.
It was astonishing to me, considering their opposed positions now, how much his background was like Mr. Wahid’s. But Imaduddin was from Sumatra. He was from the Sultanate of Landkat, an area which he said was larger than Holland, on the border of Aceh, which the Dutch had conquered only in 1908, a full century after their conquest of Java. That would have made a difference, would have given Imaduddin the forthright temperament which he recognized in himself as Sumatran.
This was the story I reconstructed. In Landkat—perhaps in the latter part of the last century: Imaduddin gave no dates—there was a muezzin, a man who called the faithful to prayer. The muezzin died before his son was born. The muezzin’s widow married again, and when her son by the muezzin was six years old, he was sent by his stepfather to the house of the mufti of the sultan of Landkat. The mufti was a Muslim scholar and the six-year-old boy, following the traditional way, worked in the mufti’s house as a servant
I considered these details one by one, as if committing them to memory, and almost with a separate part of my mind wondered how long I should stay where I was, violating the house, and how when the time came I might get away from the curious trap I appeared to have fallen into.
Suddenly, after ten minutes, or perhaps fifteen minutes, a door to the left opened, and Imaduddin appeared, informal and unexpected in an ankle-length sarong and a dark-green shirt.
He said in a preoccupied way, “I’m sorry. I have problems.”
I thought they might have been bathroom problems, but then a tall brown-complexioned man came out behind him. The tall man had twinkling eyes and a shiny skin, and was in a sarong as well, but was less informal than Imaduddin. The bottom of his sarong moved elegantly with his slow, stately steps. He had a flat black Muslim cap and a glaucous blue waistcoat-shirt with a pen clipped to the pocket.
Imaduddin said, “I am having some massage.”
That explained the shiny skin of the man in the black cap.
The room from which they came out would have been next to the garage and would have overlooked the little lawn and the lane. They would have heard me arrive, and would have heard me call.
Imaduddin said, “Getting old, you know.”
As though that, and the trouble with his back, for which the masseur came every few days, was explanation enough. And, indeed, there appeared to be some formality about the masseur’s visit. Imaduddin’s farewell to him, some minutes later, and Imaduddin’s wife’s farewell, was full of ceremony.
When he had dressed, and was belted and tight and firm in trousers and shirt, familiar again, we settled down to talk at the dining table, betweenthe microwave and the group photographs on one side and the watercooler and the Dutch china plate on the other side. The serving girls, one in a red frock, one in a brown, had recovered from their fright, and were busy once more about the house and kitchen.
It was astonishing to me, considering their opposed positions now, how much his background was like Mr. Wahid’s. But Imaduddin was from Sumatra. He was from the Sultanate of Landkat, an area which he said was larger than Holland, on the border of Aceh, which the Dutch had conquered only in 1908, a full century after their conquest of Java. That would have made a difference, would have given Imaduddin the forthright temperament which he recognized in himself as Sumatran.
This was the story I reconstructed. In Landkat—perhaps in the latter part of the last century: Imaduddin gave no dates—there was a muezzin, a man who called the faithful to prayer. The muezzin died before his son was born. The muezzin’s widow married again, and when her son by the muezzin was six years old, he was sent by his stepfather to the house of the mufti of the sultan of Landkat. The mufti was a Muslim scholar and the six-year-old boy, following the traditional way, worked in the mufti’s house as a servant
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