Bensalem Himmich - The Polymath

In the midst of them sat Umm al-Banin, smiling happily, showing off her new clothes and revealing the henna on her hands and feet.

I am aware, of course, that on such joyful occasions, women will frequently take some small amount of opium along with their tisane and sweetmeats. It gives them energy and inspires them to laugh and dance even more. Faced with such a custom, all a Maliki jurist like me can do is to entrust the entire matter to God Almighty and ask Him for mercy and forgiveness.

Just as I was closing the window in order to block out the sound of voices, I noticed Sa‘d amid all the women; he was letting out trills of joy and dancing a solo in the middle of their circle with extraordinary skill. Rubbing my hands in despair, I told myself that this was one mistake I could not overlook. I instructed Sha‘ban to ask the young man to come up at once and talk to me.

“So, are you a man or a woman?” I yelled.

Sa‘d was taken aback by my question and paused a moment to recover his breath.

“Oh, Master,” he said with very effeminate gestures, “what a question! If only you knew. You should leave it to Him who created and leveled.”

“Now listen, you,” I said, “beg God’s forgiveness for saying such a thing!”

“Did God consult me about how I should be? He is the one who created me and put me together. Neither male, nor female; that’s what He called me and left me somewhere in between. Can there be any worse hell than this?”

As the young man spoke, he kept crying and sobbing, as though trying to put his natural self and utter weakness into words. Feeling sympathy for his plight, I hugged him to me and told him to stop crying on such a joyful day. I asked him to go back and keep doing what he’d been doing, if he so desired. He went off happily, promising to go back to the mosque the following morning.

So here’s something else I am consigning to You, O God!

For me, civilization involves either Bedouin in the desert or else the urban environment of cities. The ruler is either just or unjust. Flaws are either passing or endemic. In general terms, things are either possible or not. However, when it comes to the bits in between or even coexistence of opposites, as in the make-up of my brother-in-law, Sa‘d, I have neither experience nor competence in such domains.

God granted me and my blessed little al-Batul yet another beneficence at the end of her third month: I was made controller of the Baybars Convent. I received the sultan’s appointment just before the end of Rabi al-Akhir following the death of the late Imam Sharaf al-Din al-Ashqar.

This college was situated inside Bab al-Nasr not too far from Mahmudiya where I lived. What made this appointment that much more advantageous was that my enhanced monetary position enabled me to expand my collection of rare books and to buy essentials and even luxuries for the house. The salary I got as controller now afforded us a life of wealth, ease, and space. However, I was well aware that it was, almost inevitably, a short-term situation, one that could be terminated without warning at any moment, day or night, and in the twinkling of an eye.

And that is exactly how it turned out. Just a few short months after I had taken the position, warning signs of my imminent dismissal began to hover over my head. Faced with Umm al-Banin’s delight with our daughter, I had to force myself to show a happy face rather than look miserable — all smiles instead of frowns. It would have been the worst of all crimes to erase the smiles from the faces I adored or to sully our family home with all my worries and gloomy predictions. However, my clever wife managed to guess what was going on in my mind. One day I was feeling particularly pessimistic because of the bad news I had heard concerning the mounting disagreement between Sultan Barquq and his viceroys in Aleppo and Malatya, the two amirs, Yalbugha al-Nasiri and Mintash.

“You look very worried, ‘Abd al-Rahman,” she asked me out of the blue. “What’s it all about?”

I could think of no way to avoid telling her a bit about the current situation. But, in any case, discussing the situation with the most beloved person in the world might serve to lessen the tension I was feeling.

“It’s the sultan, my dear,” I said. “This time he’s really in danger.”

“What’s that got to do with us? If one goes, there’ll be another.”

“It’s more complicated than that. If Barquq goes, my positions in the school and college go with him.”

“That’s not certain. But even if it did — God forbid that it should — I could sell my trousseau and gold, along with all the extra pots and pans we have. With God’s good help, dear husband, we would not die.”

Trays and plates all inlaid with gold and silver, silk fabrics, superb furnishings, all of them luxuries that had come my way after assuming the controllership of the Baybars Convent. To be sure, selling it all might bring us enough income for at least a few months, in addition to which there would be my cash savings. Umm al-Batul’s simple, yet eloquent words convinced me about food necessities.

“God preserve you,” I said, “times of rebellion often bring with them all kinds of disturbances and mayhem. I can’t guarantee that I myself will remain safe and sound.”

“If things get very bad,” she said, “we’ll go back to Fez and live among our beloved relatives there. In any case, I long to see Fez again, with its gates, baths, fountains, and gardens.”

We would be running away from a ditch all the way to a well. That’s what I told myself but did not say as much to my companion, a woman who was forever thinking of my interests, showing me love and affection, and intervening whenever I felt desperately sad.

“The city has a wise ruler,” I said. “The baby’s crying, Umm al-Batul. Go to her.”

There are in life certain situations when one has no choice but to turn to God. So, my good man, use your brain and turn things over to Him. Or, as Shaykh al-Rikraki once advised me: “Think carefully which horse you’re betting on.”

The clashes between the enemy brothers of Yalbugha got progressively worse as day followed day. Indeed, according to confirmed reports, what started as a series of skirmishes in the Damascus region turned into bloody fighting in the heart of Egypt itself, first on the outskirts of Cairo and then around the Citadel, itself a symbol of Burji Mamluk power.

From the end of Jumada al-Thaniya news from the sultan’s side began to dwindle steadily as day followed day till eventually all signs of life in the homes of his retinue and officials disappeared. For that reason I found myself compelled to rely on the stories people told me. I would sift through them and adjust their contents in accordance with the conversations I was having in the Sarghitmishiya College, the Baybars Convent, and Shaykh al-Rikraki’s convent — they being the circles to which I was confining my movements. That was how I managed to confirm that Barquq had disappeared and al-Nasiri and Mintash had taken over. The two of them had been reinforced by Turkmen and had captured the Citadel, where they had installed Hajji ibn al-Ashraf on the throne and named him al-Mansur. Thereafter I was also able to confirm that Barquq had surrendered himself in return for a pledge of security from Amir Altunbugha al-Jubani whom he had previously imprisoned in Alexandria but who was now an ally of the people who had overthrown him. According to what I could deduce from the reports, this pledge played a large part in saving the deposed sultan from what would otherwise have been a certain death. The amirs of the Yalbugha, under the command of Mintash, insisted on finding him, and it was then agreed that Barquq would be transferred to the castle of Kerak in southern Syria. There he would remain until things became clearer and the storm calmed down.