Among the Believers

338 Pages·2014·1.65 MB·English

V. S. NAIPAUL
AMONG THE BELIEVERS
V. S. Naipaul was born in Trinidad in 1932. He went to England on a scholarship in
1950. After four years at Oxford he began to write, and since then he has followed no
other profession. He is the author of more than twenty-(cid:633)ve books of (cid:633)ction and
non(cid:633)ction and the recipient of numerous honors, including the Nobel Prize in 2001, the
Booker Prize in 1971, and a knighthood for services to literature in 1990. He lives in
Wiltshire, England.
ALSO BY V. S. NAIPAUL
Nonfiction
Literary Occasions
The Writer and the World
Between Father and Son: Family Letters
Beyond Belief: Islamic Excursions Among the Converted Peoples
India: A Million Mutinies Now
A Turn in the South
Finding the Center
The Return of Eva Perón (with The Killings in Trinidad)
India: A Wounded Civilization
The Overcrowded Barracoon
The Loss of El Dorado
An Area of Darkness
The Middle Passage
Fiction
Half A Life
A Way in the World
The Enigma of Arrival
A Bend in the River
Guerrillas
In a Free State
A Flag on the Island*
The Mimic Men
Mr. Stone and the Knights Companion*
A House for Mr. Biswas
The Suffrage of Elvira*
Miguel Street
The Mystic Masseur
*Published in an omnibus edition entitled The Nightwatchman’s Occurrence Book

First Vintage Books Edition, September 1982
Copyright © 1981 by V. S. Naipaul
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American
Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada
by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. in 1981.
Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint from previously published material:
Ashraf Press: Excerpt from The Maxims of Ali, translated by J. Chapman. Reprinted courtesy of Sheikh Muhammad Ashraf,
Ashraf Press.
Penguin Books, Ltd.: Excerpt from The Rise of the Roman Empire by Polybius; translated by Ian Scott-Kilvert (Penguin
Classics, 1979). Copyright © 1979 by Ian Scott-Kilvert. Reprinted by permission of Penguin Books, Ltd.
Simon & Schuster and George Allen & Unwin (Publishers), Ltd.:
Excerpt from Portrait from Memory by Bertrand Russell.
Copyright 1951, 1952, 1953, © 1956 by Bertrand Russell.
Reprinted by permission of Simon & Schuster, a Division of Gulf & Western Corporation, and George Allen & Unwin
(Publishers), Ltd.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Naipaul, V. S. (Vidiadhar Surajprasad), 1932-
Among the believers.
Reprint. Originally published: New York: Knopf, 1981.
1. Islam—Asia.
2. Islamic countries—Description and travel.
3. Naipaul, V. S. (Vidiadhar Surajprasad), 1932-
I. Title.
[BP63.A1N35 1982] 297′.095 82-40048
eISBN: 978-0-307-78930-3
v3.1
Now in earlier times the world’s history had consisted, so to speak, of a series of unrelated
episodes, the origins and results of each being as widely separated as their localities, but from
this point onwards history becomes an organic whole: the a(cid:643)airs of Italy and Africa are
connected with those of Asia and of Greece, and all events bear a relationship and contribute
to a single end.
(died 118 ), on the rise of Rome (translated by Ian Scott-Kilvert)
POLYBIUS B.C.
But it was not alone in poetry that I excelled. I had a great turn for mechanics, and several of
my inventions were much admired at court. I contrived a wheel for perpetual motion, which
only wants one little addition to make it go round for ever. I made di(cid:643)erent sorts of coloured
paper; I invented a new sort of ink-stand; and was on the high road to making cloth, when I
was stopped by his majesty, who said to me, “Asker, stick to your poetry: whenever I want
cloth, my merchants bring it from Europe.”
: The Adventures of Hajji Baba
JAMES MORIER
of Ispahan (1824)
Contents
Cover
About the Author
Other Books by This Author
Title Page
Copyright
Epigraph
I IRAN: THE TWIN REVOLUTIONS
1 Death Pact
2 The Rule of Ali
3 The Holy City
4 The Night Train from Mashhad
II PAKISTAN: THE SALT HILLS OF A DREAM
1 Displacements
2 Karachi Phantasmagoria
3 The Little Arab
4 Killing History
5 Hyderabad Boogie-Woogie
6 The Disorder of the Law
7 Basics
8 In the Kaghan Valley
9 Agha Babur
10 The Salt Hills of a Dream
III CONVERSATIONS IN MALAYSIA: THE PRIMITIVE FAITH
1 First Conversations with Shafi: The Journey Out of Paradise
2 Brave Girls
3 Between Malacca and the Genting Highlands
4 Araby
5 The Spoilt Playground
IV INDONESIA: USURPATIONS
1 Assaults
2 Sitor: Reconstructing the Past
3 Deschooling
4 The Rice Goddess
5 The Loss of Personality
6 Mental Training in Bandung
7 The Interchangeable Revolutions
REPRISE: THE SOCIETY OF BELIEVERS
1 Submission
2 Islamic Winter
I
IRAN
THE TWIN
REVOLUTIONS
“This Kom is a place that, excepting on the subject of religion, and settling who are worthy of
salvation and who to be damned, no one opens his lips. Every man you meet is either a
descendant of the Prophet or a man of the law.… Perhaps, friend Hajji, you do not know that
this is the residence of the celebrated Mirza Abdul Cossim, the (cid:633)rst mushtehed [divine] of
Persia; a man who, if he were to give himself su(cid:637)cient stir, would make the people believe any
doctrine that be might choose to promulgate. Such is his in(cid:635)uence, that many believe he could
even subvert the authority of the Shah himself and make his subjects look upon his (cid:633)rmans as
worthless, as so much waste paper.”
JAMES MORIER:
The Adventures of Hajji Baba
of Ispahan (1824)