Amin Maalouf - Leo Africanus

‘The days which follow defeat often lay bare the corruption of souls. Here I am thinking less of Yahya than of the vizier al-Mulih. Because, while negotiating, as he had explained to us at such length, the welfare of the widows and orphans of Granada, this man had not forgotten himself; he had obtained from Ferdinand, as the price of the surrender which he had hastened so cleverly, twenty thousand gold castilians, or nearly ten thousand thousands of maravedis, as well as vast estates. Other dignitaries of the regime also accommodated themselves without difficulty to the domination of the Rumis.’

In fact life immediately began again in occupied Granada, as if Ferdinand had wanted to prevent the Muslims departing for exile en masse. The hostages returned to their families the very day after the entry of the king and queen into the city, and my father told us that he had been treated with more consideration than if he had been the guest of a prince. At Santa Fé he and his companions were not confined to prison; they could go to the market and walked around the streets in small groups, although accompanied by guards whose task was both to keep them under surveillance and to protect them against outbursts on the part of any drunken or overexcited soldiers. It was during one of these strolls that someone pointed out to my father at the door of a tavern a Genoese sailor whom all Santa Fé was talking about and making fun of. People called him ‘Cristobal Colon’. He wanted, he said, to fit out caravels to sail westwards to the Indies, since the earth was round, and he made no secret of his hope to obtain part of the treasure of the Alhambra for this expedition. He had been in Santa Fé for weeks, insisting on meeting the king or the queen, who avoided him, although he had been recommended to them by eminent personages. While waiting to be received, he sent them a stream of messages and supplications, which, in these warlike times, did not fail to irritate them. Muhammad never saw this Genoese again, but I myself often had occasion to hear men speak of him.

A few days after my father’s return, Duke Yahya summoned him to resume his functions as weigh-master, because, he told him, foodstuffs would soon be returning to the markets in abundance, and it was essential to take care that any fraud should be repressed. Initially disgusted by the mere sight of the renegade, my father ended up by working with him just as he had done with all other police chiefs, not without murmuring curses from time to time when he remembered the hope that this man had once symbolized for the Muslims. The presence of Yahya also had the effect of reassuring the city’s notables; while some already knew him well, all began to court him more assiduously than they had done when he was the unfortunate rival of Boabdil.

‘In his anxiety to calm the fears of the vanquished for their fate,’ my father recalled, ‘Ferdinand used to make regular visits to Granada to make sure that his men were faithfully carrying out the agreements. Although concerned for his own safety in the first few days, the king soon began to move freely round the city, visiting the market, under close escort of course, and inspecting the old walls. It is true that he avoided staying the night in our city for months, preferring to return to Santa Fé before sunset, but his unease, though perfectly understandable, was not accompanied by any iniquitous or discriminatory measure or any violation of the treaty of surrender. Ferdinand’s solicitude, whether sincere or feigned, was such that the Christians who visited Granada used to say to the Muslims: “You are now more dear to the heart of our sovereign than we ourselves have ever been.” Some were even as malevolent as to say that the Moors had bewitched the king to make him stop the Christians taking their property from them.

‘Our sufferings,’ sighed Muhammad, ‘were soon going to absolve us and make us recall that even when free we would henceforth be chained fast to our humiliation. However, in the months immediately after the fall of Granada — may God deliver her! — we were spared the worst, because before it was let loose upon us, the law of the conquerors rained down upon the Jews. To her great misfortune, Sarah had been correct.’

In Jumada al-Thania of that year, three months after the fall of Granada, the royal heralds came to the centre of the city, proclaiming, to a roll of drums and in both Arabic and Castilian, an edict of Ferdinand and Isabella decreeing the ‘formal termination of all relations between Christians and Jews, which can only be accomplished by the expulsion of all the Jews from our kingdom’. Henceforth they would have to choose between baptism and exile. If they chose the latter, they had four months to sell their properties and belongings, but they could take with them neither gold nor silver.

When Sarah came to see us on the day after this proclamation, her face was swollen after a long night of weeping, but from her eyes, now dry, shone that serenity which often accompanies the coming to pass of a long-anticipated drama. She was even able to make fun of the royal edict, reciting the sentences she remembered in a hoarse man’s voice:

‘We have been told by the inquisitors and others that commerce between Jews and Christians leads to the most shocking evils. The Jews seek to win back the newly-converted Christians and their children by handing them books of Jewish prayers, by obtaining unleavened bread for them at Easter, by instructing them in the forbidden foods and by persuading them to conform to the Law of Moses. Our Holy Catholic Faith is becoming diminished and debased.’

Twice my mother asked her to keep her voice down, because we were seated in the courtyard that spring morning and she did not want this sarcasm to reach the ears of a spiteful neighbour. Very fortunately, Warda had gone to the market with my father and sister, because I do not know how she would have reacted to hearing the words ‘Holy Catholic Faith’ pronounced with such disdain.

As soon as Sarah had finished her imitation my mother asked her the only important question:

‘What have you decided to do? Are you going to choose conversion or exile?’

A feigned smile greeted this question, then a feignedly casual ‘I still have time!’ My mother waited several weeks before broaching the subject again, but the reply was the same.

But at the beginning of the summer, when three-quarters of the time allowed to the Jews had expired, Gaudy Sarah herself came to say:

‘I have heard that the Grand Rabbi of all Spain, Abraham Senior, has just had himself baptized with his sons and all his relatives. At first I was appalled, and then I said to myself, “Sarah, widow of Jacob Perdoniel, perfume seller of Granada, are you a better Jew than Rabbi Abraham?” So I have decided to have myself baptized, together with my five children, leaving it to the God of Moses to judge what is in my heart.’

Sarah’s anguish was voluble that day, and my mother looked at her tenderly:

‘I am glad that you are not leaving. I shall also stay in the city, because my cousin has not mentioned exile again.’

However, less than a week later, Sarah had changed her mind. One evening she arrived at our house with three of her children, the youngest hardly bigger than myself.

‘I have come to bid you farewell. I have finally decided to go. There is a caravan leaving for Portugal tomorrow morning; I am going to join it. Yesterday I married my two oldest girls, aged fourteen and thirteen, so that their husbands can look after them, and I sold my house to one of the king’s soldiers for the price of four mules.’

Then she added, in an attempt at an excuse:

‘Salma, if I stay, I shall be afraid every day until I die, and every day I shall think of leaving and shall not be able to.’