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a matter of
record that this mothers agreed to the schoolteacher's suggestion;
also that Eduardo's only other private pupil was Farah Zoroaster,
    Escapes from the Mother Country ? 45
    whose father was excused from paying any fee, because Eduardo
was a genuinely dedicated teacher; and thirdly, that as the years
passed the threesome of Omar, Eduardo and Farah became a
common sight in the town.
    It was Rodrigues, who had the ability of speaking in capital let-
ters, who steered Omar towards a medical career, 'To Succeed in
Life,' he told the boy amid beach-postcards and empty birdcage,
'one must be Of the Essence. Yes, make yourself Essential, that's
the Ticket . . . and who is most Indispensable? Why, the fellow
who does the Dispensing! I mean of Advice, Diagnosis, Restricted
Drugs. Be a Doctor; it is what I have Seen in You.'
    What Eduardo saw in Omar (in my opinion): the possibilities
of his true, peripheral nature. What's a doctor, after all? � A legiti-
mized voyeur, a stranger whom we permit to poke fingers and
even hands into places where we would not permit most people
to insert so much as a finger-tip, who gazes on what we take most
trouble to hide; a sitter-at-bedsides, an outsider admitted to our
most intimate moments (birthdeathetc), anonymous, a minor
character, yet also, paradoxically, central, especially at the crisis. . .
yes, yes. Eduardo was a far-sighted teacher, and no mistake. And
Omar Khayyam, who had picked Rodrigues for a father, never
once considered going against his tutor's wishes. This is how lives
are made.
    But not only in this way; also by dog-eared books discovered
accidentally at home, and by long-suppressed first loves . . . when
Omar Khayyam Shakil was sixteen years old, he was flung into a
great vortex of fearful joy, because Farah the Parsee, Disaster
Zoroaster, invited him one day to come out and see her father's
customs post.
    '. . . and fainted, though both his feet had been on solid ground.'
We have already been told something of what transpired at the
frontier: how a cloud descended, and Omar Khayyam, mistaking
it for his childhood nightmare of the void at the end of the earth,
passed out. It is possible that this fainting fit gave him the idea for
what he did later that day.
    Shame ? 46
    Details first: what was the tone of Farah's invitation? - Grace-
less, curt, I-don't-care-if-you-don't. Its motivation, whence? �
From Eduardo, who had urged her privately: 'That is one lonely
boy, be nice. You bright ones should stick together.' (Omar
Khayyam was the brighter of the pair; although two years still
stood between them, he had caught up Farah in other ways, and
was now in the self-same standard.) How rapidly did Omar
Khayyam accept? - Ek dum. Fut-a-fut. At once, or even quicker.
    On weekdays, during term, Farah lodged in Q. at the home of a
Parsee mechanic and his wife, with whom her father had culti-
vated a friendship for this very purpose. This mechanic, an unim-
portant Jamshed who does not even merit a description, drove
them out to the frontier on the selected holiday in a jeep he was
repairing. And as they neared the border, Farah's spirits rose while
Omar's fell . . .
His fear of the Edge mounted, irrationally, as they drove, as
     he sat behind her in the roofless vehicle while her open, wind-
     whipped hair flickered in front of him like black fire. Whereas her
     mood was lightened by the drive, around a spur of the mountains,
     through a pass in which they were watched by the invisible eyes
     of suspicious tribals. The emptiness of the frontier pleased Farah,
     no matter how openly she sneered at her father for having taken
     this dead-end job. She even began to sing; revealing that she had a
     melodious voice.
    At the frontier: clouds, fainting fit, water sprinkled on face,
reawakening, whereaml. Omar Khayyam comes round to find
that the cloud has lifted, so that it is possible to see that the frontier
is an unimpressive place: