Amin Maalouf - Leo Africanus

The condolence ceremonies continued for another six days. What better remedy is there than exhaustion for the pain caused by the death of a loved one? The first visitors would come at dawn, the last would leave after nightfall. After the third evening, the relatives had no more tears, and sometimes forgot themselves sufficiently to smile or to laugh, which those present did not fail to criticize. The only ones to behave properly were the hired mourners, who sought to increase their pay by intensifying their wailing. Forty days after the decease, the condolences resumed once more in the same fashion, for three further days.

These weeks of mourning gave opportunities for my father and my uncle to exchange various conciliatory words. It was not yet a reunion, far from it, and my mother took care not to cross the path of the man who had repudiated her. But, from the vantage point of my eight years, I believed I could discern a glimmer of hope on the horizon.

Among other matters, my father and my uncle had discussed my future. They had agreed that it was time for me to start school. Other children went to school later, but it seemed that I was already showing signs of precocious intelligence, and it was pointless to leave me at home all day in the company of women. I might grow soft, and my virility might suffer. They each came to me in turn to explain this, and one morning they both solemnly accompanied me to the local mosque.

The teacher, a young turbaned shaikh with a beard which was almost blond, asked me to recite the Fatiha , the first sura of the Book. I did this without a mistake, without the slightest hesitation. He appeared satisfied with this:

‘His elocution is good and his memory is precise. He will not need more than four or five years to memorize the Qur’an.’

I was not a little proud, since I knew that many pupils took six years, even seven. After having learned the Qur’an by heart, I would be able to enter the college, where the various sciences were taught.

‘I will also instruct him in the principles of orthography, grammar and calligraphy,’ the teacher explained.

When asked what payment he required, he took a step backwards:

‘My only payment comes from the Most High.’

However, he added that each parent gave what he could to the school on the various feast days, with a more substantial gift at the end of the final year, after the Great Recitation.

Promising myself to memorize the hundred and fourteen suras as soon as possible I began to attend the shaikh’s classes assiduously five days a week. There were no fewer than eighty boys in my class, aged between seven and fourteen. Each pupil came to school in whatever clothes he pleased, but no one would have thought of coming to school dressed in sumptuous garments, silk, or embroidery, except on special occasions. In any case, the sons of princes and of the grandees of the kingdom did not go to the mosque schools. They received the instruction of a shaikh in their own homes. But with that exception, the boys who attended the school came from a variety of backgrounds: sons of qadis, notaries, officers, royal and municipal functionaries, shopkeepers and artisans, even some sons of slaves sent by their masters.

The room was large, and arranged in tiers. The bigger boys sat at the back, the smaller ones in front, each with a little board on which he would write the day’s verses, taken down at the master’s dictation. The latter often had a rod in his hand, which he would not hesitate to use if one of us swore or made some serious mistake. But none of the pupils held it against him, and he himself never harboured a grudge from one day to the next.

On the day of my arrival at the school, I found a seat in the third row, I believe. Close enough to see and hear the teacher, but far enough away to protect myself from his questions and his inevitable outbursts of anger. Next to me sat the most mischievous of all the children of the quarter, Harun, known as the Ferret. He was my age, with a very brown complexion, with clothes that were worn and patched but always clean. After the first scuffle we became inseparable friends, bound together in life and death. No one who saw him would fail to ask him for news of me, and no one would see me without being astonished that he was not with me. At his side, I was to explore both Fez and my own adolescence. I felt an outsider; he knew the city was his, created for him, only for his eyes, for his limbs, for his heart. And he offered to share it with me.

It is true that he belonged, by birth, to the most generous of companies.

903 A.H.

30 August 1497 — 18 August 1498

It was in that year that Melilla fell into the hands of the Castilians. A fleet had been sent to attack it, but found it deserted, abandoned by its inhabitants, who had fled into the neighbouring hills, taking their possessions with them. The Christians seized the city and began to fortify it. God knows if they will leave it one day!

At Fez, the refugees from Granada became afraid. They had the sensation that the enemy was at their heels, that he would pursue them to the very heart of the lands of Islam, even to the ends of the earth.

My family’s worries increased, but I was still only slightly affected, absorbed in my studies and in my budding friendships.

When Harun came to my house for the first time, still very shy, and when I introduced him to my uncle, mentioning the guild to which his family belonged, Khali took my friend’s hands, more slender than his, but already more roughened, in his own, and pronounced these words, which made me smile at the time:

‘If the fair Scheherazade had known them, she would have devoted a long night to telling their story; she would have added jinns, flying carpets and magic lanterns, and before dawn, by some miraculous means, she would have changed their chief into a caliph, their hovels into palaces, and their penitential garb into ceremonial robes.’

These were the porters of Fez. Three hundred men, simple, poor, almost all of them illiterate, but who had nevertheless managed to become the most respected, most fraternal and best organized of all the guilds of the city.

Each year, until today, they appoint a leader, a consul, who regulates their activities down to the minutest detail. Each week he decides which of them will work and which will rest, according to the arrival of the caravans, the situation in the suqs, and the availability of his fellows. That which a porter earns for his day’s work he does not take home, but deposits the whole of it in a communal chest. At the end of the week the money is divided out equally among those who have worked, except for a part which is kept aside for the good works of the guild, which are both manifold and munificent; when any of their number dies, they take over the responsibility for his family, help his widow to find a new husband and take care of his children until they are of an age to have a profession. The son of one is the son of all. The money from the fund is also used for those who marry; all the members contribute to assure them of a sum which will enable them to set up house.

The consul of the porters negotiates on their behalf with the sultan and his advisers. In this way he has managed to secure their immunity both from tribute and the salt tax, and to ensure that their bread is baked for them free of charge in the municipal ovens. Furthermore, if any of them should by some misfortune commit a murder punishable by death, he is not executed in public like other criminals, in order not to bring the guild into disrepute. In exchange, the consul must make a rigorous and unbiased examination of the probity of each new candidate, to exclude anyone who might be suspect. In this way the reputation of the porters has become so high that the merchants are obliged to have recourse to them to clear their stock. Thus the vendors of oil, who arrive in the suqs from the countryside with containers of all sizes, resort to special porters who will themselves confirm the capacity of the containers as well as the quality of the contents, and even give guarantees for the purchasers. In the same way, when a merchant imports a new kind of cloth, he asks the criers among the porters to proclaim the high quality of the merchandise. The porters charge a fixed sum for each of these functions, according to a scale fixed by the consul.