What Does a Person Deserve?
BY
EDWARD GREEN
Part
3
Grandfathers: African and American
I go now to the second short story, "A Handful of Dates" by Tayeb
Salih of the Sudan, included also in the Larson anthology, and translated
from the Arabic by Denys Johnson-Davies. It is a story that compels us,
usefully, to ask: how do we use the people nearest us, our families--to
see all of humanity with more justice, or less?
Throughout the story, the narrator is remembering his childhood. And
the very first thing we learn is this:
While I don't remember exactly how old I was, I do remember that when
people saw me with my grandfather they would pat me on the head and give
my cheeks a pinch.
Soon the reason is clear: his grandfather is the wealthiest man of the
village, and people are afraid of him.
He has gotten his wealth by craftily observing another man, Masood,
who inherited a good deal of land. He waits for the moments when Masood
is under the greatest financial pressure--and that way, bit by bit over
forty years, he takes advantage of Masood, and gains possession of two
thirds of that land. With a cold pride, he tells his grandchild, "I think
that before Allah calls me to Him I shall have bought the remaining third
as well."
This Sudanese grandfather triumphantly has used difficult circumstances
in another's life to aggrandize himself. But--and the author, Tayeb Similih,
presents this very keenly--the grandchild also exploits his grandfather's
weakness: the older man is looking for comfort and flattery:
I used to know when my grandfather wanted me to laugh, when to be
silent; also I would fill the ewer for his ablutions without his having
to ask me.
Though he is a child, and certainly is not consciously plotting it the
way his grandfather plotted the ruin of Masood, there is a kinship
of purpose here, which the author clearly wants his readers to feel. Neither
grandfather nor child is asking: "What do other people deserve?" Instead,
they are thinking: "How can I use other people to feel superior?"
And the child gets his wish. He comes to feel superior to the other
children in his family. The narrator tells us:
I believe I was his favorite grandchild: no wonder, for my cousins
were a stupid bunch and I--so they say--was an intelligent child.
Reading this story affected me very much. Like this child of the Sudan,
I too used my grandfather to become cold to other people: I got his approval;
I saw that he didn't like other people too much; and I came to the conclusion
that I was, therefore, superior. It didn't occur to me that my grandfather
was unjust to people, and inaccurate in making so much of me.
The choices we make as a child, I learned from Aesthetic Realism, affect
centrally our later attitude to the whole world--and often these choices
are very unwise. I came to see that without knowing it, I had spent my
life judging every person I met by the standards I established with Joseph
Spieler, my grandfather. If a person made me feel special and superior,
then this person loved me; if someone had criticisms of me, that person
was cruel.
This wrong way of mind would have persisted my entire life had I not
had the great good fortune to study Aesthetic Realism. In a class discussion,
Eli Siegel, with deep good will, asked me questions which enabled me to
reconsider the decisions I had made, so unconsciously, early in my life.
And he showed me that the way of seeing people I had was not only unjust
to them, it was against my own life and what mattered to me most--my work
as a composer of music. With such kindness he asked:
So you feel, Ed Green, your capacity for sentiment was somewhat exhausted
by the feeling you had for your grandfather? Did you feel you had any room
for your father?
"I don't think so," I answered. And Mr. Siegel said:
Look--as a composer, have all the emotion you can get! If you are using
your grandfather to see the whole world better with, it is a fine sentiment.
If you are using him to see other things as less,
it is not good.
The Poison of Ill Will
At the conclusion of Tayeb Salih's story the grandchild begins to see
how his grandfather has other people--not just him--in his mind. And what
he sees he doesn't like.
It is the day of the harvest of Masood's crop of dates, and the grandfather
is planning to pressure Masood into relinquishing more of his land. But
on this day Masood says something which makes the grandchild see that this
man--whom his grandfather had trained him to despise--sees the world and
people in a way that has beauty and largeness.
A boy perched high on a palm tree is hacking carelessly at a clump of
dates with a sharp sickle, and when Masood sees this, he shouts: "Be careful
you don't cut the heart of the palm." Those words stir something deep.
The narrator says:
I pictured the palm tree as something with feeling, something possessed
of a heart that had throbbed. I remembered Masood's remark to me when he
had once seen me playing with the branch of a young palm tree: "Palm trees,
my boy, like humans, experience joy and suffering." And I had felt an inward
and unreasoned embarrassment.
His grandfather gives him a handful of dates to eat. But as he eats them,
he sees the vicious selfishness of his grandfather.
The harvest has not yielded enough dates to pay off Masood's debts:
I looked at Masood and saw that his eyes were darting to left and
right like two mice that have lost their way home. "You're still fifty
pounds in debt to me," said my grandfather to Masood. "We'll talk about
it later."
What happens next is symbolic--and it is powerful. It stands, I believe,
for what is felt now all over the world: the disgust, the organic objection
to the contempt and ill will on which profit economics is based. The story
ends:
I ran off into the distance. Hearing my grandfather call after me,
I hesitated a little, then continued on my way. I felt at that moment that
I hated him. Quickening my pace, it was as though I carried within me a
secret I wanted to rid myself of. I reached the riverbank near the bend
it made behind the wood of acacia trees. Then, without knowing why, I put
my finger into my throat and spewed up the dates I'd eaten.
As his grandfather's favorite, he knows all this land will eventually come
to him, make him comfortable and important and powerful. But he
can not stand the basis of it--that it would come at the pain of another
person; and we respect this child!
On May 22, l970, in an historic lecture entitled "We Have with Us the
Triumph of Good Will," also reported on in the book Goodbye Profit System:
Update, Eli Siegel said this--words which explain the power of Tayeb
Sahlih's story; and explain the feelings of people now all over this globe.
With these kind, great sentences, I end my column:
The world is saying: We don't want ill will to hurt and poison our
lives any more...I say that the whole purpose of history is to show that
the greatest kindness in the greatest power.
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