"A subversive history in the guise of a traveller's tale", Amitav Ghosh's In An Antique Land beautifully interweaves two types of journey undertaken by the author himself.
One journey leads Ghosh to the country side of Egypt in the 1980s as a student of anthropology. His investigation erstwhile revolved around agriculture, though in In An Antique Land, readers see more of the villagers across a span of a decade than of the author's research subject per se.
Another journey shows Ghosh traveled from manuscript to manuscript, like a historian, hoping to reconstruct the life of a slave from the Malabar coast of India based on only few leaks from the letters penned by the slave's Jewish master Abraham Ben Yijû and his circle of mentors and friends.
As journeys always do, they bring much more surprises than originally intended.
In the book, the anthropologist Ghosh was often 'interrogated' by curious villagers as he tried to understand the farming practices in the field. They asked him if Indians burn their dead; if they worship cows; or if they circumcise their young. While most would cover their mouths in disbelief upon hearing his answers, some fervently suggested he should change his religion and marry a girl from the local so as to return to his country, share the good gospel with his fellow Indians, and change their ways.
(Source: A Picture from 'Lataifa')
Labor export generates incomes. In the village, houses have become bigger and better equipped with modern facilities such as TV, refrigerator and radio. This upward mobility was strong enough to change some of his young friends' choices of life and drive them thousands of miles away from Egypt.
Instead of getting a job at home, which was not easy either, many actually went abroad, subjecting themselves to hard work, long hours and life-threatening danger (especially for those who worked in Iraq) in order to win themselves and their family a better life. So strong was the allure that his friend Nabeel should decide to stay in Iraq for just a few more days after the breakout of the war, but he never returned afterwards.
The parallel that complements this modern-day economy-driven diaspora comes from the twelfth century when over the entire Indian Ocean, there was this lively network of trade sustained by Jewish and Muslim merchants, long before Europeans brutally interrupted with forces.
Yet, Ghosh's focus was less on the trade and its main actors than on a minor slave figure from India.
How Ghosh reconstructed the name of the slave, 'B-M-H', with the help of philology, field work and folk literature is very inspiring. It was assumed that the slave might be called 'Brahma' (by inserting short vowels between the consonants as in written Arabic and Hebrew, short vowels are usually not indicated). However, considering this word unfamiliar against its Indian background, Ghosh consulted his Arabic and Hebrew knowledge, visited the region this particular slave might have come from, and asked help from experts in local folk cultures. In the end, he was convinced that 'B-M-H' should be 'Bomma' rather than 'Brahma'.
Conditioned by source materials, even Ghosh the novelist kept himself from spelling more about the slave than that he was a toddy-loving fisherman from Malabar India, that he went to Middle East more than once, including the last time to accompany his master as the latter returned Egypt to settle, and that the master in the end owed him a large sum of money. Nevertheless, the entire journey Ghosh took for a reconstruction of a minor figure in history serves as a good example of the study and writing of history. His is a historian with a pair of sturdy boots.
From the field-notes of Ghosh the anthropologist to the reconstruction of history by Ghosh the historian, In An Antique Land is encouraging me to visit the 'Antique Seas' through which Austronesian-speaking peoples have sailed a long time ago and continue to sail through nowadays. Skills needed might differ, but the passion and dedication shall be the same.
For this, I thank Amitav Ghosh.
No comments:
Post a Comment