Page 92 of Babel

Interlude

Ramy

Ramiz Rafi Mirza had always been a clever boy. He had a prodigious memory, the gift of the gab. He soaked up languages like a sponge, and he had an uncanny ear for rhythm and sound. He did not merely repeat the phrases he absorbed; he uttered them in such precise imitation of the original speaker, investing his words with all their intended emotion, it was like he momentarily became them. In another life, he would have been destined for the stage. He had that ineffable skill, of making simple words sing.

Ramy was brilliant, and he had ample opportunity to show off. The Mirza family had navigated the vicissitudes of that era with great fortune. Although they were among the Muslim families who had lost land and holdings after the Permanent Settlement, the Mirzas had found steady, if not very lucrative, employment in the household of one Mr Horace Hayman Wilson, secretary of the Asiatic Society of Bengal in Calcutta. Sir Horace had a keen interest in Indian languages and literatures, and he took great delight in conversing with Ramy’s father, who had been well educated in Arabic, Persian, and Urdu.

So Ramy grew up among the elite English families of Calcutta’s white town, among porticoed and colonnaded houses built in European styles and shops catering exclusively to a European clientele. Wilson took an early interest in his education, and while other boys his age were still playing in the streets, Ramy was auditing classes at the Mohammedan College of Calcutta, where he learned arithmetic, theology, and philosophy. Arabic, Persian, and Urdu he studied with his father. Latin and Greek he learned from tutors hired by Wilson. English he absorbed from the world around him.

In the Wilson household, they called him the little professor. Blessed Ramy, dazzling Ramy. He had no idea what the purpose was of anything he studied, only that it delighted the adults so when he mastered it all. Often, he performed tricks for the guests Sir Horace had over to his sitting room. They would show him a series of playing cards, and he’d repeat with perfect accuracy the suit and number of the cards in the order in which they’d appeared. They would read out whole passages or poems in Spanish or Italian and he, not understanding a word of what was said, would recite it back, intonations and all.

He once took pride in this. He liked hearing the guests’ shouts of wonder, liked the way they ruffled his hair and pressed sweets into his palm before they bade him scamper off to the kitchens. He had no understanding of class then, or of race. He thought it was all a game. He did not see his father watching from around the corner, eyebrows knitted with worry. He did not know that impressing a white man could be as dangerous as provoking one.

One afternoon when he was twelve years old, Wilson’s guests summoned him during a heated debate.

‘Ramy.’ The man who waved him over was Mr Trevelyan, a frequent visitor, a man with prodigious sideburns and a dry, wolflike smile. ‘Come here.’

‘Oh, leave him be,’ said Sir Horace.

‘I’m proving a point.’ Mr Trevelyan beckoned with one hand. ‘Ramy, if you please.’

Sir Horace did not tell Ramy not to, so Ramy hurried to Mr Trevelyan’s side and stood straight, hands clasped behind his back like a little soldier. He’d learned that English guests adored this stance; they found it precious. ‘Yes, sir?’

‘Count to ten in English,’ said Mr Trevelyan.

Ramy obliged. Mr Trevelyan knew perfectly well he could do this; the performance was for the other gentlemen present.

‘Now in Latin,’ said Mr Trevelyan, and when Ramy had accomplished that, ‘Now in Greek.’

Ramy complied. Gratified chuckles around the room. Ramy decided to test his luck. ‘Little numbers are for little children,’ he said in perfect English. ‘If you’d like to converse about algebra, pick a language and we’ll do that too.’

Charmed chuckles. Ramy grinned, rocking back and forth on his feet, waiting for the inevitable press of candy or coin.

Mr Trevelyan turned back to the other guests. ‘Consider this boy and his father. Both of similar ability, both of a similar background and education. The father begins with even more of an advantage, I would say, as his father, I’m told, belonged to a wealthier merchant class. But so fortunes rise and fall. Despite his natural talents, Mr Mirza here can attain no better than a posting as a domestic servant. Don’t you agree, Mr Mirza?’

Ramy saw the most peculiar expression then on his father’s face. He looked as if he were holding something in, as if he’d swallowed a very bitter seed but was unable to spit it out.

Suddenly this game did not seem such fun. He felt nervous now for showing off, but couldn’t quite put his finger on why.

‘Come now, Mr Mirza,’ said Mr Trevelyan. ‘You can’t claim that you wanted to be a footman.’

Mr Mirza gave a nervous chuckle. ‘It’s a great honour to serve Sir Horace Wilson.’

‘Oh, come off it – no need to be polite, we all know how he farts.’

Ramy stared at his father; the man he still thought was as tall as a mountain, the man who had taught him all his scripts: Roman, Arabic, and Nastaliq. The man who taught him salah. The man who taught him the meaning of respect. His hafiz.

Mr Mirza nodded and smiled. ‘Yes. That’s right, Mr Trevelyan, sir. Of course, I’d rather be in your position.’

‘Well, there you go,’ said Mr Trevelyan. ‘You see, Horace, these people have ambitions. They have the intellect, and the desire to self-govern, as so they should.* And it’s your educational policies that are keeping them down. India simply has no languages for statecraft. Your poems and epics are all very interesting, to be sure, but on the matters of administration—’

The room exploded again into clamorous debate. Ramy was forgotten. He glanced at Wilson, still hoping for his reward, but his father cast him a sharp look and shook his head.

Ramy was a clever boy. He knew to make himself scarce.

Two years later, in 1833, Sir Horace Wilson left Calcutta to take on the position of the first Chair of Sanskrit at Oxford University.* Mr and Mrs Mirza knew better than to protest when Wilson proposed to bring their son with him to England, and Ramy did not begrudge his parents for not fighting to keep him at their side. (He knew, by then, how dangerous it was to defy a white man.)

‘My staff will raise him up in Yorkshire,’ Wilson explained. ‘I will visit him when I can take leave from the university. Then, when he’s grown, I’ll have him enrolled at University College. Charles Trevelyan might be right, and English might be the path forward for the natives, but there’s value yet in Indian languages where scholars are concerned. English is good enough for those chaps in civil administration, but we need our real geniuses studying Persian and Arabic, don’t we? Someone’s got to keep the ancient traditions alive.’