Goat’s Arse rode serenely on, the plumes in his helmet nodding in the wind, his squadron trotting behind him, on and on; and at the right moment, just when the charger’s head entered the shadow of the gate, the Malik fired his flare and Jabal the Eunuch, in one shivering rush, heaved at the vat of boiling oil.
The trouble was, something went wrong with the flaregun. The flare looped into the courtyard and burst into light about a foot from the horse’s nose. The horse reared, whinnying, throwing Goat’s Arse wide of the gate, and charged straight into the Fort. There was a waterfall of oil, but all that was fried was the end of the horse’s tail, only a few hairs, which were of no use to anyone.
In a flash Goat’s Arse’s soldiers had him off the ground — bruised but very alive — and galloping through the city. What they were going to do was no mystery: they were going to radio their warships to bombard al-Ghazira. The streets emptied behind them until in moments the city was midnight-still, every door locked and every last grain of gold hidden away under secret bricks. At the Fort the Bedouin were trying to hurry the Malik into the desert. Even there they could hear the wails of the women rising above the town, already lamenting the sack of al-Ghazira.
But there was one thing no one knew; only one townsman had been in the Fort at the time of the Bloody Fry-day as it came to be called — only one who had seen precisely what had happened — and naturally that was Nury the sharp-eyed Damanhouri, who had heard of the feast and raced to the Fort with a donkey-load of eggs. He was coming out of the kitchen when the flare exploded, and no sooner had the first drop of oil sizzled on to the horse’s tail than Nury was on his donkey, heading straight for the Souq, for he knew that here at last was something Jeevanbhai would value.
Till then Jeevanbhai had had a few dealings with the Malik. The Malik spoke to him in Urdu, which he had learnt in India, and they dealt well together, but not as well as Jeevanbhai would have wished. On the Fry-day, Jeevanbhai saw his chance. He raced to the Fort on Nury’s donkey and set about persuading the Malik that to escape would be to admit guilt. No, he argued, the only wise thing to do was to counter Goat’s Arse’s moves before he made them.
At once Jeevanbhai drew up a message for the British Viceroy in India, Goat’s Arse’s boss, a man famous for his enthusiasm for local customs and suchlike (so Jeevanbhai said). Goat’s Arse, the message said, had broken into and disrupted the most ancient of Ghaziri ceremonies, one that took place only once every seven years, on the reigning Malik’s birthday. This was the ceremony of the Ant-Frying, when the Ants under the Fort’s south gate, a most ancient line of ants, were cooked in a shower of boiling oil. The desecration of the Ant-Frying had placed the timeless traditions of the Ghaziri monarchy, and thus the prestige of the whole British Empire, in, yes, in jeopardy. If Goat’s Arse were taxed with this, the message warned, he would probably deny everything. In all likelihood he didn’t even know of the ceremony; such was his contempt for the customs of al-Ghazira, he had not made even the smallest effort to acquaint himself with them … And so on and so on.
It worked. They sent the message on the Malik’s new radio set; two warships stopped on the horizon and turned back; and within a week Goat’s Arse was recalled.
Two warships, or a good eye and a quick mind?
But still the Malik had to pay a price. Back in his own country Goat’s Arse made a tremendous noise and wrote a book about how close he had come to being a deep-fried fritter in his king’s service. Eventually they sent out a new resident known for his toughness; a thin-lipped fish of a man who arrived with a whole regiment of Indian soldiers. He left the Malik in the Fort, but posted a guard outside and exiled his Bedouin tribesmen. After a few months the Malik was forced to sign the oil treaty. Even at that stage, he tried to keep a hold on things by insisting that only Ghaziris would work in the Oiltown. But Thin Lips wouldn’t hear of it; he wanted only his own men, men he could control. Finally, the Malik signed when warships appeared again, but on one condition: that the Oilmen never leave the Oiltown and never enter al-Ghazira.
For many years things went on, uneasily but peacefully: the Oilmen stayed inside the Oiltown with their hirelings; the Malik was more or less a prisoner in the Old Fort, allowed out only on state occasions; Thin Lips virtually ran the town; and every seven years the Ant-Frying was ritually performed. One man did well out of it all, and that was Jeevanbhai Patel. He posed as the Malik’s accountant, and Thin Lips could think of no reason to keep a harmless old man like him out of the Fort, so he became one of the Malik’s few contacts with the outside world. Jeevanbhai went in and out of the Fort running the Malik’s errands, and the Malik used the influence he still had to get Jeevanbhai the contract for the customs. So Jeevanbhai turned his links with the Fort to good use and made money. The Malik had use for him, too: he was making his own plans for the future, and Jeevanbhai’s dhows, which at that time were sailing all over the Indian Ocean, often came back lying deep in the water. They were weighed down, people said, with guns and ammunition which somehow found their way into the Old Fort.
So things went on.
The Oiltown prospered and grew, and the time came when they wanted more space. They took permission and went around al-Ghazira looking for some more land, and eventually they decided on a few acres at the far end of al-Ghazira, almost on the border with the next kingdom. It was a marshy, sandy bit of land by the sea. To them it looked unused, and they assumed that they would have no trouble buying it — for more than it was worth, if need be.
But actually that was a very special piece of land. It was special for the Mawali because old Sheikh Musa was said to be buried there; it was special for the shopkeepers of the Souq because they held fairs there on all the great feast-days, and in those times, before borders had guards, thousands of people flocked to them from all the neighbouring kingdoms and the shopkeepers grew richer every year; the Malik loved that bit of land, too, for twice every year thousands of birds flew over it, and on those days the Malik was allowed out of the Fort, for there was no better place in the world for falconry.
So, when the Oilmen went blithely up to the Fort to buy that piece of land, the blood almost burst from the Malik’s face. Something terrible might have happened again if Nury the Damanhouri hadn’t seen them going in and told Patel. Patel ran to the Fort and calmed the Malik down. Of course, he had a plan. He went around the Souq, got the shopkeepers together, and they met Thin Lips and told him that if that bit of land were sold they would all shut down the Souq and emigrate to Zanzibar.
The Oilmen had one last try. They went to the Malik with a new treaty, and offered to double his share of the oil money if he sold them that land.
Later, people said that the Malik spat on the treaty and drove them out of the Fort with a whip.
No more was heard of buying land for a while: the Oilmen went back to the Oiltown; the Malik stayed in his fort; and Jeevanbhai continued to prosper. But that was when the world first heard rumours about the Mad Malik of al-Ghazira, and soon after Thin Lips took the Malik’s half-brother, the Amir, whom the Malik hated more than anyone else in the world, even more than his father, out of the Fort and sent him to England or America or somewhere, to study. By then Thin Lips had his own friends in the town, none of them very fond of the Malik, and he sent their sons with the Amir as well. The families who were loyal to the Malik — and there were many — complained, but there was nothing anyone could do, and soon things were quiet again.
Years passed: the Malik stayed in his fort, the Amir and his friends stayed abroad, and all was quiet in al-Ghazira. We heard of wars, then the British left, and Thin Lips with them. The Malik was free again, but by that time he had lost his old fire, and already a new embassy with a new Thin Lips was on the ascendant, so all was still quiet in al-Ghazira.