Amin Maalouf - Leo Africanus

Most of them would remain naked until the end of the meal, except for important persons who would not deign to show themselves thus, keeping a towel round their waist and only removing it in private reserved rooms, which were always impeccably maintained. In these rooms they received their friends, or were massaged, and the barber would also come there to offer them his services.

And then there were the women. A certain number of hammams were kept entirely for women, but most of them catered for both sexes. The same places, but at different times. In the place where I used to work, the men would come from three in the morning until two in the afternoon. For the rest of the day, the steam-room boys were replaced by negresses, who put a rope across the entrance to show the men that they could not come in, and if a man needed to say something to his wife he would call one of the women attendants to deliver the message.

Each time we had to leave, each time that we used to see the rope across the entrance and the women arriving, Harun and I would ask each other what could possibly happen in the hammam when it became the women’s domain. The first few times we tried to convince ourselves that exactly the same things happened as we knew from the men’s sessions, the same massages, the same rubbings, the same chatter, the same feasting, the same towels to cover the notables. However, watching the entrance in the afternoons it was clear that not only did a great number of market women arrive with their shopping bags, but all sorts of mysterious women, fortune-tellers, healers, perhaps even magicians. Was it true that they were distilling magic elixirs, putting spells on men, piercing wax figurines with magic pins? It would be an understatement to say that we were intrigued; it became an almost unbearable obsession.

And a challenge.

‘I’m going tomorrow, whatever happens. D’you want to come?’ said Harun one day.

I looked at his eyes. He wasn’t joking.

‘D’you want to come?’

It took all my courage to say no.

‘Better still,’ said Harun. ‘I’ll go on my own. But be here at midday, at this very place.’

The next day it was dark and rainy. I took up my post at the place we had agreed, from which I could see the entrance to the hammam without being seen. I had not seen Harun all day, and I wondered whether he was already there, or whether he would be able to get inside. I was waiting for him to be thrown out, I was also afraid that he would leave pursued by twenty women at his heels, and that I should be forced to flee through the streets in my turn. The one thing that I was sure of was that the Ferret had not given up his mad plan. From time to time I looked up at the sun, or rather at its outline visible through the clouds. I was becoming impatient.

There was no unusual movement at the entrance to the hammam. Some women were going in, others coming out, some enveloped in black or white, others with only their hair and the lower part of their faces covered. Little girls accompanied them, sometimes even very small boys. At one point a fat woman came towards me. When she drew level with me she stopped for a moment, inspected me from head to foot, and then set off again murmuring incomprehensibly to herself. My furtive air must have made me seem suspicious. Several minutes later, another woman, entirely covered from head to foot but much more slender, came towards the place where I was waiting. I was most uneasy. In turn, she stopped and turned towards me. I was going to take to my heels.

‘You’re here, in perfect safety, and you’re trembling?’

It was Harun’s voice. He barely left me the time to express my surprise.

‘Don’t make any sign, don’t make any noise! Count to a hundred and then meet me at the house.’

He was waiting for me at the door.

‘Tell me!’ I exploded.

He took his time before replying, in the most careless tone:

‘I arrived, I went in, I pretended to look for someone, I went round all the rooms and then I came out again.’

‘Did you undress?’

‘No.’

‘Did you see anything?’

‘Yes, lots.’

‘Tell me, may God shatter you into pieces!’

He said nothing. His mouth did not express the slightest smile, the slightest grin. But his eyes sparkled with satisfaction and malice. I was crestfallen. I wanted to beat him black and blue.

‘Do you want me to beg you, to press my forehead against your slippers?’

The Ferret was not in the slightest impressed by my sarcasm.

‘Even if you beg me, even if you prostrate yourself at my feet I shall tell you nothing. I have taken risks which you refused to take. If you want to know what goes on when the women are there you must come with me next time.’

I was aghast.

‘So you’re thinking of going again?’

This seemed so obvious to him that he did not even deign to reply.

The next day I was in position, and I saw him go in. He had improved his get-up considerably. He was not satisfied with wrapping himself in a thick black robe, but he had a white scarf around his neck which covered his hair, a part of his forehead and his cheeks, with its ends tied together under his chin. Above this was a transparent white veil. The disguise was so perfect that I would have been taken in a second time.

When I met up with him again he seemed bothered. I asked him to tell me about his escapade, but he refused to do so, in spite of my insistence and my pleas. He remained obdurately silent, and I soon forgot the whole thing. However, it was Harun himself who would remind me of it, many years later and in a way which would remain for ever in my memory.

Towards the end of that year my uncle came back from his travels. When they learned of his return the Andalusians of Fez came in groups, one after the other, to hear what he had to say and to inform themselves of the results of his mission. He told them in detail of his sea voyage, his fear of shipwreck and pirates, the sight of Constantinople, the palace of the Grand Turk, the janissaries, his travels in the lands of the Orient, in Syria, Iraq, Persia, Armenia and Tartary.

However, he soon came to the most important part.

‘Everywhere my hosts declared themselves convinced that one day soon the Castilians will be beaten, by the leave of the Most High, that Andalus will become Muslim once more, and that each one of us will be able to return to his home.’

He did not know when, or under what circumstances, he admitted, but he could testify to the invincible power of the Turks, of the terror which the sight of their vast armies would strike in the heart of every man. He was convinced of their profound concern for the fate of Granada, and their desire to deliver it from the unbelievers.

Of all those present, I was not the least enthusiastic. When we were alone together that evening, I insisted on asking my uncle:

‘When do you think we shall return?’

He seemed not to understand what I wanted to say.

I told myself that he must be weary after his journey.

‘To Granada, isn’t that what you were talking about?’

He looked at me for a long time, as if sizing me up, before saying, in a slow and emphatic voice:

‘Hasan, my son, you are now in your twelfth year and I must speak to you as if I were speaking to a man (he hesitated a moment further). Hear me well. What I have seen in the Orient is that the Grand Sophy of Persia is preparing to wage war against the Turks, who are themselves primarily preoccupied with their own conflict with Venice. As for Egypt, she has just received a consignment of corn from the Castilians as a token of friendship and alliance. That is the reality. Perhaps, in several years’ time, things will have changed, but, today, none of the Muslim sovereigns whom I have met seemed to me to be concerned with the fate of the Granadans, whether of ourselves, the exiles, or the poor Strangers.’