Lady Breeze

In the early 1980s Amitav Ghosh was living in rural Egypt, engaged in field world for his social anthropology doctorate. In this book Ghosh plaits together three different stories: that of his time living in two Egyptian villages, his return to the villages eight years later and the life of 12th century North African Jewish merchant Ben Yiju and his Indian `slave' (actually more of a business associate) Bomma. Ghosh discovered the Ben Yiju story by examining documents from the massive haul found in the Geniza (synagogue document repository) of the Palestinian synagogue in the Egyptian town of Fustat. The documents were acquired by Cambridge University, where Ghosh tracked them down. Ghosh parallels his own sojourns in Egypt, the Malabar coast and return to Egypt, with those of Ben Yiju, who spent some twenty years in Mangalore, marrying a freed Indian slave, before returning to North Africa. Gradually pictures are built up of Egypt and India, ancient and modern. The fascinating re...

'I know about these things,' said Zaghloul. 'But how could you know? Who was it who told you?' 'I've seen the way you stare at her,' said Zaghloul. '(...) If you're not careful, you'll find yourself saying "I'm in love," like a student or a college-boy. Watch what you're doing and don't forget you're a fellah: "love" is not for people like us.' (...) 'What do you mean?' I asked Zaghloul. 'Why can't a fellah fall in love?' 'For us it only leads to trouble,' said Zaghloul. 'Love is for students and mowazzafeen and city people; they think about it all the time, just like they think of football. For us it's different; it's better not to think of it.' (...) 'How do you know, ya Zaghloul?' said [Eid]. 'Did it ever happen to you?' 'Something happened to me once,' Zaghloul said quietly... Amitav Ghosh's In An Antique Land

"Perhaps the most elusive aspect of medieval slavery is its role as spiritual metaphor, as an instrument of the religious imagination. In south India, among the pietist and fiercely egalitarian Vachanakara saint-poets of Bomma's own lifetime, for example, slavery was often used as an image to represent the devotee's quest for God: through the transforming power of metaphor the poets became their Lord's servants and lovers, androgynous in their longing; slaves, searching for t heir master with a passion that dissolved selfhood, wealth, caste and gender, indeed, difference itself. In their poetry it was slavery that was the paradoxical embodiment of perfect freedom; the image that represented the very notion of relationship, of human bonds, as well the possibility of their transcendence. This imagery would not have been unfamiliar to Ben Yiju. He and his friends were all orthodox, observant Jews, strongly aware of their distinctive religious identity. But they were ...