Without Lifting A Finger

A little sentence he had once read came into his head: Happy is the man who believes he is happy. Yes, he thought, and more accursed than the murderer is the man who works to destroy that belief. It was the unhappy little busybodies who were the scourge of mankind, the pestilence on the face of the earth. “You dare sit there and tell me they’re happy,” Lee had said to him, the self-righteous glow in her eyes. Surely the intellectuals who had made the French Revolution had had the same expression, like the hideous young men of the Istiqlal, like the inhuman functionaries of the Communist Party the world over.

  “I’ll be around,” she said calmly, “because it’s not going to take long.”  It was too bad she had to have opinions; she had been so agreeable to be with before she had started to express them. And then, the terrible truth was that neither she nor he was right. It would not help the Moslems or the Hindus or anyone else to go ahead, nor, even if it were possible, would it do them any good to stay as they were. It did not really matter whether they worshipped Allah or carburetors—they were lost in any case. In the end, it was his own preferences which concerned him. He would have liked to prolong the status quo because the décor that went with it suited his personal taste.

The road had dipped down to the river and climbed up again, it had gone near to the ramparts, past the arches of Bab Fteuh, veered off into the country, still descending through deserted terrain, as though it would never stop. When it flattened out, the pace slowed a little, and later, when it began to wind upward once more, the driver occasionally cracked his whip, calling a lengthy, falsetto: “Eeeee!” to the tired horses. “Don’t let him whip them, please,” she implored, as the long leather thong descended with the sound of a firecracker for the fifth or sixth time. Stenham knew the uselessness of arguing with an Arab about anything at all, and particularly if it had to do with the performance of his daily work, but he leaned forward, saying in a tone of authority: “Allèche bghitsi darbou? Khallih.” The fat man turned halfway around and said laughing: “They’re lazy. They always have to be beaten.” “What does he say?” she inquired. Taking a chance, he replied: “He says if you don’t wan...

“You don’t drink! Not even wine? Why not?” “Don’t get me started on it,” he said, raising his voice slightly. “Let’s say that for me it’s what we Americans call a low-grade kick. You understand that?” He was looking only at Moss. “Oh, quite! And may I ask what you consider a high-grade kick?” “There are plenty of those,” he replied imperturbably. His tone may have nettled Moss, for he pressed on. “Such as—?” “You’re on the carpet, Mr. Stenham,” said Mme Veyron. Stenham pushed away his plate; he had finished anyway, but he liked the dramatic gesture as an accompaniment to the words he was going to say. A sudden gust of wind from the south swept through the garden, bringing with it the smell of the damp river valley below. A corner of the tablecloth flapped up and covered the serving dishes. Kenzie lifted it and dropped it back where it belonged. “Such as keeping these very things private. After all, one’s thoughts belong to oneself. They haven’t yet invented a machine to make the human ...

He knew just which table he wanted. It was behind the door, beside the window, all by itself. Often when he was not working he had come here and sat an entire afternoon, lulled by the din and music from the other rooms into a stage of vague ecstasy, while he contemplated the small sheet of water outside the window. It was that happy frame of mind into which his people could project themselves so easily—the mere absence of immediate unpleasant preoccupation could start it off, and a landscape which included the sea, a river, a fountain, or anything that occupied the eye without engaging the mind, was of use in sustaining it. It was the world behind the world, where reflection precludes the necessity for action, and the calm which all things seek in death appears briefly in the guise of contentment, the spirit at last persuaded that the still waters of perfection are reachable. The details of market life and the personal financial considerations that shoot like rockets across the dark he...

He understood why they were willing to risk dying in order to derail a train or burn a cinema or blow up a post office. It was not independence they wanted, it was a satisfaction much more immediate than that: the pleasure of seeing others undergo the humiliation of suffering and dying, and the knowledge that they had at least the small amount of power necessary to bring about that humiliation. If you could not have freedom you could still have vengeance, and that was all anyone really wanted now. Perhaps, he thought, rationalizing, trying to connect the scattered fragments of reality with his image of truth, vengeance was what Allah wished His people to have, and by inflicting punishment on unbelievers the Moslems would merely be imposing divine justice. “Ed dounia ouahira,” he sighed. “The world is a difficult place.”

“In the school they teach you what the world means, and once you have learned, you will always know,” Amar’s father had told him. “But suppose the world changes?” Amar had thought. “Then what would you know?” However, he was careful not to let his father guess what he was thinking.