Amin Maalouf - Leo Africanus

‘As I was getting up to go, disappointed and angry,’ continued my father, ‘Hamid offered me a final piece of advice in a confidential tone: “In this city there are many war widows, many impoverished orphan girls, many disabled women. There are almost certainly some in your own family. Has not the Book stipulated that those men who can do so should shield them with their protection? It is at the time of the greatest tragedies, such as those which are raining down upon us, that a generous Muslim should take to himself two, three or four wives, because, while increasing his own pleasures, he carries out a praiseworthy act which serves the whole community. Tomorrow is the ‘ id ; think of all those women who will celebrate in tears.” I left the old fakkak not knowing whether it was Heaven or Hell that had guided me to his door.’

Even today, I am quite incapable of saying. Because in the end Hamid went about his task with such skill, such devotion, such zeal, that the life of all my family was to be turned upside down by it for many long years to come.

899 A.H.

12 October 1493 — 1 October 1494

‘A lost homeland is like the corpse of a near relative; bury it with respect and believe in eternal life.’

The words of Astaghfirullah sounded in time to the rhythm of the amber rosary which his thin pious fingers told incessantly. Around the preacher were four serious bearded faces, including that of my father Muhammad, four long faces each showing the same distress which the shaikh was stirring up without mercy.

‘Go, emigrate, let God guide your steps, for if you accept to live under submission and humiliation, if you accept to live in a country where the precepts of the Faith are held up to ridicule, where the Book and the Prophet — on whom be prayers and peace! — are insulted daily you will give a shameful image of Islam for which the Most High will call you to account on the Day of Judgement. It is said in the Book that on that Day the angel of death will ask you: “Is not the land of God vast enough? Could you not have left your homeland to seek asylum elsewhere?” Henceforth the fires of hell will be your dwelling place.’

It was in that year of ordeals and heartbreaks that the period of three years allowed to the citizens of Granada to choose between submission and exile came to an end. According to the surrender agreement, we had until the beginning of the Christian year 1495 to decide, but as the crossing to the Maghrib beyond the sea might prove hazardous after the month of October, it was considered better to leave in spring, or, at the latest, in summer. Those who wished to remain behind were known by the epithet already in use to indicate Muslims living in Christian territory, ‘tamed’, ‘mudajjan’, corrupted in Castilian to ‘mudejar’. In spite of this derogatory adjective, many of the citizens of Granada still hesitated.

The confabulation taking place in the courtyard of our house in al-Baisin — may God restore it to us — was like a thousand others held that year to discuss the fate of the community, sometimes even of a single one of its members. Astaghfirullah took part whenever he could, his tone lofty but his voice low to indicate that he was now in enemy territory. If he himself had still not taken the road to exile, he hastened to explain, it was solely to turn aside the waverers from the way to perdition.

Waverers were plenty among those present, beginning with my father Muhammad, who had not despaired of retrieving Warda and his daughter, who had sworn that he would not leave without taking them with him, under the very noses of all the soldiers of Aragon and Castile. By dint of insisting, on visit after visit, he had managed to extract a promise from Hamid the deliverer to get a message through to his concubine. In return for a large sum of money he had also succeeded in charging a Genoese merchant called Bartolomeo with a similar mission; he had been living in Granada for a long time, and had made his fortune by ransoming captives. Hence he did not want to leave before he had reaped the fruit of his costly undertakings. His misfortune had turned him into a different person. Oblivious both to the general disapproval and to Salma’s tears, he took refuge in his own misery from the miseries encompassing him.

Our neighbour Hamza the barber had other reasons for wavering. He had estates, which he had bought plot by plot, the fruit of twenty years of delicate and lucrative circumcisions, and had vowed not to depart until he had resold everything at a good price, down to the last vine; for that he had to wait, because so many of those who wished to leave, anxious to be on their way, were selling their lands for a song, and would-be buyers were like kings.

‘I want to make those accursed Rumis pay through the nose,’ he said in justification.

Astaghfirullah, whom Hamza had always admired, did not want him to remain in a state of impurity, since his blade had purified half the boys of al-Baisin.

Another of our neighbours, Sa‘d, an old gardener who had recently been struck blind, did not feel able to leave.

‘You can’t plant an old tree in alien soil,’ he would say.

Pious, humble, and fearing God in all things, he had come to hear from the mouth of the shaikh himself that which the ulama versed in the Word and in the righteous Tradition recommended for cases like his own.

‘Hamza and Sa‘d arrived at our house just after the midday prayer,’ my mother remembered. ‘Muhammad let them in, while I withdrew with you upstairs to my part of the house. They had pallid cheeks and false smiles, just like your father, who sat them on some old cushions in a shady corner of the courtyard, only communicating with them in inaudible mumbles. The shaikh arrived an hour later, and it was only then that Muhammad called me to make some fresh syrup.’

Astaghfirullah was accompanied by Hamid, of whose links with the master of the house he was well aware. The old deliverer had been touched by my father’s folly, and if he had seen him often over the past year, it was less from a desire to reason with him than to experience his boldness, his youth and his turbulent passions. That day however, the visit of the fakkak had a solemn air about it. He had once more become the religious dignitary which he was known to be, his withered eyelids screwed up in an attempt at severity, his words the fruit of his long commerce with adversity.

‘All my life I have had to do with captives who dream only to be free, and I cannot understand how a free man of sound mind can voluntarily choose captivity.’

Old Sa‘d was the first to reply:

‘If we all depart, Islam will be rooted out from this land for ever, and when, by the grace of God, the Turks arrive to cross swords with the Rumis, we shall not be there to assist them.’

The solemn voice of Astaghfirullah silenced the gardener:

‘To live in a land conquered by the infidels is forbidden by our religion, just as it is forbidden to eat the flesh of dead animals, blood, and pork, just as murder is forbidden.’

He added, resting his hand heavily on Sa‘d’s shoulder:

‘Every Muslim who stays in Granada increases the number of inhabitants in the land of the infidels and helps to strengthen the enemies of God and His Prophet.’

A tear trickled down the old man’s cheek until it edged its way timidly into the hairs of his beard.

‘I am too old, too ill and too poor to limp along the roads and across the seas. Has not the Prophet said: “Do what is easy for you and do not seek out what is difficult in vain?” ’

Hamid took pity on the gardener, and at the risk of contradicting the shaikh, recited a comforting verse from the Sura of Women in a singsong voice: