The Seed of Evil

Man in Transit

My name is Untuar Murti, and having spent all my life in airplanes, apart from short intervals of hours and minutes, I am better qualified than most to judge the state of the world. True, my experience of it is slight; but that is all to the good: it means that my understanding has not been attenuated or compromised by too close an involvement in life.

This paper comprises, if you like, my last will and testament—not that I hope that anyone will find time to read it. As to myself: “Murti” was my father’s family name, while “Untuar” has no meaning or derivation but was invented by my father on the principle that it should lack any history or connection with anything else. That, he claimed, was most descriptive of my situation and thus the perfect name for his first, and only child. Let me add that the bitterness which tinged his attitude is not shared by me: the life into which one is born is naturally accepted without rancour, and I have known no other.

My recollection of my parents is unusually sharp—due, no doubt, to the fact that no one has taken their place in my life—if one considers that I was only five years old at the death of my mother, and only eight at the death of my father. They were docile, rather harmless people who were somewhat prone to miscalculation. Their early deaths may be attributed to an inability to adjust to the ordeal which an adverse fate had thrust upon them.

Fortunately enough the circumstances of my own birth are unique. I was born on board an airliner flying from Nairobi to London; I was not, however, permitted to disembark either at the port of arrival or at the port of departure. I have been travelling the same route ever since—a total of thirty-eight years.

My aerial imprisonment disappointed my parents, naturally, but it came as no great surprise to them because they had already been suffering the same indignity for several months. In those days, when the affairs of the world were less settled or rigidified than they are now, large numbers of people were occasionally trapped in pernicious political antinomies. Let me explain: my own parents were of Indian stock, holders of British passports, and residents of East Africa where their families had lived for two generations. Into this heterogeneity of allegiances, arising from the dismantling of a once far-flung empire, the government of their resident country dropped a calamity: seized by a convulsion of nationalism, it pronounced measures against all its “non-citizens”, making it impossible for them to earn a livelihood there. Understandably, the victims of this decision made moves to repair to their putative homeland, the British Isles, there being nowhere else for them to go. Alas, the moral qualities of that previously great nation must already have declined considerably by then; with open impudicity the British government revoked the official passports it had earlier issued, disowning all its guarantees, and turning away all who presented themselves for entry.

That was not the end of the matter: there were still some who were prepared to take plane for England in the knowledge that once airborne they would not be let back into East Africa again. These stateless suppliants, capitalising perhaps on the reputed humanitarianism of their prospective hosts, or else desperate enough to try anything, were shuttled back and forth between airports for weeks. Finally, with much grumbling and misgiving, the officials would relent.

Such a course of action was chosen by my parents. They embarked upon it cheerfully enough; others had been successful, and so, they thought, could they. Besides, my mother was pregnant at the time they set out and so…?

On presenting their passports they were immediately returned to Nairobi, and thence back again to London. This occasioned them no dismay: they had expected it. Weeks, months even, might be required to pass before the portals to safety and freedom would at last open.

Yet one factor failed to enter their cogitations: how long can any government allow its decisions to be persistently overruled? Already the draughty wind of change was causing doors to slam shut all round the world. Already the word “patrial” had entered official usage as an adumbration that in future nations would look after their own and no other. Today, a third of a century later, the maxim is well established: “Procedures take precedence over persons.” My parents haplessly became the test case that was to prove this rule; the weeks did indeed lengthen into months. I was born over water, in midflight, and was not even entered on the worthless passport which by now, I believe, was stained with my mother’s tears. Gradually it became evident that they were not, ever, going to be allowed into any country again.

Sitting here gazing through the fuselage window, I often wonder how long they continued to hope. I have reason to think it was for a long time, and that when they finally lost hope was when they died. Even then my mother clung to the belief (my father knew better) that once I was alone some country would notice me, as an airborne waif, and take me in. But here I remain, the most long-suffering air passenger in history.

For a spell during my early life my situation evoked some interest and an amount of pity, a form of intercourse I find thoroughly distasteful. In my twelfth year there was an abortive attempt to resurrect Human Rights Year and I appeared (to no purpose) on TV (and was able to see the programme on the flight screens). All such public interest has long since washed away and I am left in peace. It is possible that these efforts were doubly futile, for my own image of myself differs fundamentally from the one presented by the well-meaning media; the burden of their consciousness lies on the ground—mine is up here, traversing in this airliner. Mine is the image that once formed in the mind of a pagan English king on seeing a bird, at night, enter his hall by a window; for a few moments to flit over the warmth, the companionship, the light and the feasting that took place below, before passing by a second window, never to return, into the same darkness again. This glyph of human life converted the king to Christianity.

I, let me make it clear, am no convert, for I am not the king but the bird. But does not the legend describe me precisely? Soon I shall pass into that same darkness again.

I have seen a marvellous development in passenger plane services during the time I have spent with the airline. The transports are large and spacious, with plenty of room to walk about. There are showers, bars, TV and restaurants. Businessmen speak to colleagues and transactors over the in-transit viewphone service. And of course the planes are fast, efficient and need little servicing. From my point of view this is a disadvantage, for there is only the briefest turnaround time, which allows me almost no time to spend on the ground. Previously the hours I spent between journeys on the older aircraft were like a holiday for me—fresh air has an extraordinary effect on my system. I confess I miss my youthful jaunts to the cafeteria, to the passenger lounge, or along the frontage of the airport buildings, I had, in fact, virtual freedom of access on this side of the customs barrier. But then, perhaps, I am getting too old for such exercises.

The airline has been good to me. Once when I was ill they brought me a doctor and several times I have been attended by a dentist. As I grew up pilots and stewardesses gave me new clothes to wear. For all items I am still dependent on these hand-outs, which have been my only way of accumulating property throughout life. Thus I am the possessor of adequate clothing, a toothbrush, an electric shaver, and a very small private collection of books culled over the years. These, together with my legacy (which I shall describe later) constitute my material wealth.

There is also the question of emotional wealth accruing from personal relationships. In these my life could be described as deficient. Yet I did once have a girl friend; to be truthful she was a woman rather than a girl, and was several years older than myself. We met and were drawn to one another when, in the course of her work, she had cause to travel between London and Karachi several times in quick succession (this was during the period when African routes became impassable and I was shuttled instead to Karachi or Delhi). When her intercontinental commuting ceased she took to visiting the airport and we waved to one another through the fence. Infrequently we contrived brief meetings in the passenger lounge. Then one day she failed to appear and I never saw her again. In retrospect I discard my naivety and suppose that her good will was prompted partly by pity, a thought which spoils in no small measure my memories of the occasion.

Our friendship, while it lasted, was sexually innocent; indeed there has been no occasion for sexual intercourse in my life—not that such things are impossible aboard an airliner; congress can be accomplished with a modicum of ingenuity and commonly is, in the toilets, in the changing room, even in the stewardesses’ galley. But my upbringing has given me little initiative in these matters, and I have been obliged to stifle such urges as I do feel.

Enough of these divagations—poor I may be in material and emotional wealth, but they are not everything; there is also intellectual wealth. I have an education!

For this I am indebted to my father, who before he died assiduously taught me to read and instructed me to study carefully the books in the list he drew up. I have not, it is true, finished the list. Contrary to what might be imagined, I am not a voracious reader. Debilitated by an unnatural life, I am very easily fatigued; altogether I am a weak individual, both physically and mentally. I sleep a good deal—fifteen to twenty hours a day and during the rest of the time reading is a painful effort for me. My progress is further impeded by the difficulty of obtaining the requisite books: I have to rely on chance to place most of the volumes in my hands, and have waited years, for instance, to acquire a copy of the Timaeus. This, as with several other volumes, I shall probably never see.

Many would imagine that my father, a Vedantist, would have directed me to a study of the Vedas, particularly of the Upanishads, on the grounds that in the doctrine that the world is maya, merely illusion, might be found an anodyne to mitigate my plight. Nothing could have been further from his intention. Admittedly, it has fleetingly occurred to me that that other world, the world that rolls beneath me scudded with cloud, is only an insubstantial extrapolation, an epiphenomenon, and that the only substantive things in the universe are airliners, airports, and transient passengers who flick in and out of existence on embarkation and debarkation. But that thought cannot be taken seriously. All my father’s efforts strove not to obfuscate with recondite metaphysics but to exacerbate realities and make the apprehension of my condition all the sharper. He believed in science, a product of the West; all the books he specified are by Western writers, and I take their point of view: that the world exists in reality (in so far as it is perceived between conception and death), that everything happening in it has really happened, that I really am trapped in this airliner, the only man in history never to be allowed to descend to earth.

No, my father’s feeling for me did not lead him to compromise the facts. His educational programme was a work of genius—genius born, I tender, of intense emotional pain. I am convinced that his aim was to lead me by my own efforts towards a truth which he had wrested from the world but which otherwise is known to few, if any: the secret nature of that explosive, perdurable, many-headed hydra: the Christian religion.

How much is implied—how much is masked—by the phrase “Christian civilisation”! To penetrate to the arcane core of what its existence on Earth means was the achievement of my father’s booklist.

The list is extensive, but its greater part is introductory only, being designed to facilitate the process of intussusception by means of adroit acquaintanceship with vocabulary and ideas. At the centre of the system, like a centre of gravity, lie two major works around which all else revolves:

1. The Socratic Dialogues.

2. The Gospel according to St Matthew, St Mark, St Luke and St John.

From the comparison of these two, the objective historical perspective of the world is obtained.

A brief word concerning their acquisition. My tiny pocket copy of the New Testament, Authorised Version, was given to me by a kindly English lady on her way to perform missionary work in India, and has been with me for many years. The more bulky Socratic Dialogues present a greater problem and therefore I lack a complete collection. They are, however, a lesser counterpoint to the Christian theme, so the gaps do not matter so much.

One volume that I do have is worth comment: a collection of some of the dialogues, including the Apology of Socrates, it was given to me rather offhandedly by a brash, untidily dressed young man of about eighteen who I remember for his piercing blue eyes. The book is entitled Plato’s Divine Dialogues and is a very old one, being published in 1841 by Cornish & Co, 126 Newgate Street, London. Its pages are yellow and brittle, held together by sticky tape.

The edition is remarkable for its spiritual chauvinism. By means of a wordy introduction and copious footnotes the editor strives to impress on the reader the superiority of the Christian world and of how unlikely it is that anything worthwhile could ever have taken place outside its confines. He puts forward a tenuous and wandering argument to show that Plato owed such wisdom as he did possess to Moses, “from whom he has borrowed that which is most rational and substantial in his works”. Noting that during his trial Socrates could have saved himself by withholding the truth but declined to do so, he exclaims passionately: “What a noble example is this in a pagan!”

Noble in a pagan, indeed! And is it commonplace in a Christian? I cannot help but find these and other commentaries bizarre. For it is from Socrates that I have learned the qualities of rationality, coolness of mind, balanced feeling, justice—in short, the qualities of a sane and good-humoured civilisation. By contrast the extraordinary story of Jesus gives witness to the creation of the sinister uncivilisation that has conquered humanity, encompassed the globe, raised to unfeeling heights science and the technique of bureaucratic organisation—that has built airplanes.

The tide of history must have tussled uncertainly with these two men as it decided which of them to cast up on the shore. For observe: both were sentenced to death as a result of unjust accusations (though Socrates with a lighter heart). History is rarely arbitrary about these matters. Further, observe the curious affinity between the valedictions of their biographers—not in content, it is true, but in mood, in tone, in feeling—as if they comprised two strands of a single cord.

Thus Plato has Phedon say: “This, Echecrates, was the exit of our friend, a man who, as it appears to me, was the best man of our time with whom we were acquainted, and besides this the wisest and most just.”

St John concludes: “There were many other things which Jesus did, which if they were to be written down every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written.”

But to my thesis: my contention is that not merely some, but every particle of the common conception of Christ and his role in the world is false. We are told that he entered the world as a moral force to save the world, that all who heed him will be redeemed. That if the world opens its heart to him, mankind will be transformed. If now we find that doors are closed, that some are excluded from the feast, it is because Christ has not yet touched the hearts of all men. To this I counter that, by holding to this creed, the Christians are looking into a reversed mirror image of their religion, the obverse of which is the world as it exists today. Compare: other teachings exhibit an open-ended liberation; in contrast to the smile of Buddha, the systemless jokes of the Zen masters, the story of Christ is one of persecution; of a series of progressively closing traps: the last supper; the betrayal in the garden of Gethsemane; the nailing to the cross; the descent into Hell. Is that not descriptive of the modern world, which progressively encloses the individual?

Again, where other teachers inspire detachment, wisdom, justice and friendship, Christ invoked not abstract qualities but deeds—and so inaugurated the tumultuous industriousness of the modern world. There are other close parallels too numerous to be ignored: the refusal of a petition to authority when in dire distress (“Father, all things are possible unto thee; take away this cup from me.”—St Mark, Ch. 14, verse 36); the washing of hands; the freeing of the guilty in order that the innocent may be punished (“Away with this man and give us Barabbas”—St Luke, Ch. 23, verse 18).

Has it not come to pass that “to him that hath, more shall be given, while to him that hath little even that which he hath shall be taken away”?

And am I not the seed that, not even falling on stony ground, fails to reach earth at all?

Mankind has absorbed the message of Jesus, absorbed it fully and without omission; the story of the passion has been blended into the world and transformed into vaster fact, like a mustard seed that grows into a monstrous bush. Alone among the cheerful smiling reason of other world teachers Christ never laughed but groaned and wept. Perhaps he wept because he saw the consequences of his mission, much as my mother wept to realise that her actions had condemned me to the life of an air passenger.

Once these correspondences are marshalled the genesis of the present-day world culture becomes all to clear. Only one point remains obscure: what was Christ’s origin? Possibly he was indeed an incarnation of the Creator, sent to scourge mankind. Pursuing the Christian cosmology, I would be more inclined to name him as an agent of Satan, dispatched to corrupt the soul of humanity and destroy for all time the Socratic civilisation which might otherwise have flourished in Western Europe.

These scanty comments must suffice to outline my thesis, for I become too weary to expatiate further. How the world would judge my intellectual offering I cannot know; perhaps it is unscholarly, naive, jejune even, when placed against better-considered world systems. But for me it carries the inner conviction of a truth revealed. Besides—my role in the world drama, minuscule though it may be, gives me one thing in common with Jesus: I also am pinned to a cross, this flying cross which whines ceaselessly to and fro across the face of the globe.

The hebetude into which my parents sank claims me also. I shall not live much longer now. Most of my time, when not sleeping, I spend gazing through the fuselage window. At night the unbreakable glass becomes a mirror which returns my tired face. To be honest it is a handsome face. The nose is strong, the lips are full, the eyes are sensitive—but withdrawn. And the hair, brushed neatly back, is prematurely white. In fact the whole face looks about thirty years older than it really is and its calmness, one sees after a while, is a forced, resigned calmness. Anyway, now that, with a frank feeling of relief, I contemplate my approaching death, I will go through the formality of setting forth final arrangements. To anyone who can use it I bequeath the legacy left to me by my father: two second-class one-way air tickets from Nairobi to London, still valid. For my epitaph I choose yet another quotation from that prophetic New Testament, and one which demonstrates even more clearly the applicability of the gospels to our time: “The birds have their nests, the foxes have their holes, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.”