Books: Argument of Mercy

THE BEGGAR by F. M. Esfandiary. 141 pages. Ivan Obolensky, Inc. $3.95.

For a man brought up in a diplomat’s family, Fereidoun Esfandiary is shockingly undiplomatic. His first novel (Day of Sacrifice) made such a telling critique of social and political conditions in modern Iran that in recent years the author has “found it inadvisable to live in Iran.” His second book is a ferocious satire that attacks a fundamental assumption of civilization: the concept of justice. Composed in remarkably stylish English, The Beggar presents in an appalling parable the ancient argument of mercy: that one man’s guilt is shared by all men inextricably, that punishment is itself a crime. The parable:

Not many years ago, in an Arab village, a baby was born with weak legs. Little Ali might well have learned to stand on his own feet, but after he had fallen down a few times his mother’s heart ached for the poor child and she decided that he was a permanent invalid and had to be carried everywhere. Everybody suspected that the boy was not necessarily a cripple, but it was not unpleasant to have somebody dependent around, an easy butt for the sort of generosity that makes one person feel big because it makes another person seem small. So all through Ali’s childhood the good people of the village carried the little cripple everywhere he went and felt invincibly virtuous on this account.

Man’s Estate. When the child became a man, he was fit to be nothing but a beggar. So Ali, with the help of his neighbors, made a little platform on wheels, rolled himself down to the marketplace, and sat there miserably day after day, holding a tin cup. The villagers both pitied and feared this monstrosity of their own making, and continued to maintain his misery as a sort of public convenience.

The beggar nevertheless made one pathetic attempt to live like a man. He undertook, in so far as he could, to support a poor widow and her daughter, and in return for his kindness was occasionally permitted to share the widow’s bed. Unhappily, others were sometimes permitted the same pleasure. One night when two young villagers pushed his platform up the long steep hill to the widow’s isolated hut, the beggar found Ahmad the woodcutter there.

In rage and humiliation, Ali hid in a shed situated some 30 feet downhill from the hut, and there fell asleep. Wakened by the smell of smoke, he realized in horror that the widow’s house was on fire, and made violent attempts to drag himself up the steep slope to save her. But his body, weakened by a lifetime of socially induced inactivity, was so feeble that it took him half an hour to cover less than 30 feet. When the villagers came running up the hill, they found Ahmad and the widow dead in bed and the beggar lying in the mud a few feet from the hut.

Man’s Fate. Outraged, the villagers haled the cripple into court and told the judge that Ahmad and the widow were dead because the beggar, in a jealous fury, had refused to rescue them. The beggar tried to explain. “Do you take me for a fool?” the judge bellowed indignantly. “All your life we’ve been kind enough to carry you everywhere, and now do you mean to tell me that you couldn’t go the short distance between the shed and her hut?” Somebody screamed, “Cut off his hands!” The villagers roared in approval. “What will I do?” the beggar wailed. “I have no legs, and now you want to take away my hands!” But the next morning they cut off the beggar’s hands, and when the stumps had stopped bleeding three policemen carried him out of the prison and set him down in the street. “Ali, you may go home,” one of the policemen announced gravely. “You are a free man now.”