Amin Maalouf - Leo Africanus

After several months, I think in Sha‘ban of that year, the Zarwali summoned my father. He told him that his project was accepted and that he should begin the preparations, choosing various fields of white mulberries, planting others, recruiting skilled workers and building the first cocooneries. The king himself was full of enthusiasm for the project. He wanted to flood Europe and the Muslim lands with silks, to discourage the merchants from going as far as China to import the precious material.

My father was ecstatic with joy. His dream would come to fruition, on a scale which went far beyond his wildest hopes. He already saw himself rich, lying on immense silken cushions in a palace covered with majolica; he would be the first among the notables of Fez, the pride of the Granadans, a confidant of the sultan, a benefactor of schools and mosques…

‘To seal our agreement,’ pursued the Zarwali, ‘what better than a blood alliance? Don’t you have a daughter to marry?’

Muhammad immediately promised his backer Mariam’s hand in marriage.

It was quite by chance that, several days later, I came to hear about this conversation, which was to change many things in my life. Gaudy Sarah had been to the harem of the Zarwali to sell her perfumes and trinkets, just as she had done in the houses and palaces of Granada. All through her visit, the women had spoken of nothing else than of their master’s new marriage, making jokes about his inexhaustible vigour, and discussing the consequences of this latest acquisition for the favourites of the moment. The man already had four wives, the most that the Law would allow him to take at the same time; he must therefore repudiate one of them, but he was used to doing so, and his wives were used to it as well. The divorcee would get a house nearby, sometimes even staying within the walls, and it was whispered that some of them even became pregnant after the separation without the Zarwali showing the least surprise or taking offence.

Naturally, Sarah hastened to my mother’s house the same afternoon to tell her the gossip. I had just come back from school, and was munching some dates, listening to the women’s chatter with only half an ear. Suddenly I heard a name. I came closer:

‘They’ve even had time to give Mariam a nickname: the silkworm.’

I made Gaudy Sarah repeat her story word for word, and then asked her anxiously:

‘Do you think my sister will be happy with this man?’

‘Happy? Women only seek to avoid the worst.’

The reply seemed too vague and evasive.

‘Tell me about this Zarwali!’

It was the command of a man. She gave a rather sardonic grin, but replied:

‘He hasn’t a good reputation. Crafty, unscrupulous. Immensely rich…’

‘It’s said that he plundered the Rif.’

‘Princes have always plundered provinces, but that has never been a reason for anyone to refuse them the hand of his daughter or his sister.’

‘And how does he treat women?’

She looked me up and down from head to toe, looking intently at the light down on my face.

‘What do you know about women?’

‘I know what I ought to know.’

She began to laugh, but my determined look interrupted her. She turned towards my mother, as if to ask her whether it was all right to continue a conversation about such matters with me. When my mother nodded, Sarah took a deep breath and laid her hand heavily on my shoulder.

‘The Zarwali’s women live shut up in their harem; young or old, free or slaves, white or black; there are no less than a hundred of them, each intriguing ceaselessly to spend a night with the master, or gain some privilege for their sons, a carpet for their bedroom, a jewel, perfume, an elixir. Those who expect the affection of a husband will never have it, those who look for affairs end up strangled, but those who simply want to live in peace, protected from all want, without having to make any effort, without cooking or chores, without a husband asking them for a water-cooler or a hot water bottle, such women might be happy. What category does your sister belong to?’

I was fuming with rage:

‘Don’t you think it’s scandalous that a little girl of thirteen should be given away to an old merchant as a goodwill gesture to seal a business arrangement?’

‘At my age, only naïveté still manages to scandalize me sometimes.’

I turned towards my mother aggressively:

‘Do you also think that this man has the right to filch the money of the Muslims, to take a hundred women instead of four, to hold the Law of God in such contempt?’

She took refuge behind one of the verses of the Qur’an:

‘Man is rebellious as soon as he sees himself well off.’

Without even saying goodbye to either of them, I got up and went out. Straight to Harun’s house. I needed someone around me to show indignation, someone who would tell me that the world had not been created so that women and the joys of life should be handed over to the Zarwali and people like him. The frown which came over my friend’s face at the mere mention of the name reconciled me with life again. What he had heard about Mariam’s fiancé differed little from that which I had heard myself. The Ferret gave a solemn undertaking to make enquiries among the porters of the guild to find out more about him.

To be friends at thirteen, with just the suggestion of a beard, and to declare war against injustice; from the distance of twenty years it looks like the picture of bliss. But at the time, what frustration, what suffering! It was true that I had two sound reasons for throwing myself into the fray. The first was the subtle appeal for help which Mariam had made to me on the way to Meknes, whose suppressed anguish I could now fully measure. The second was the Great Recitation, an occasion to inspire my adolescence with the pride of knowing the precepts of the Faith and the determination that they should not be ridiculed.

To understand the significance of the Great Recitation in the life of a believer, one must have lived at Fez, a city of learning which seems to have been constructed around the schools, the madrasas , just as some villages are built around a fountain or a saint’s tomb. When, after several years of patient memorization, one reaches the point of knowing by heart each sura and each verse of the Qur’an, when one is pronounced ready for the Great Recitation by the schoolmaster, one immediately passes from childhood to man’s estate, from anonymity to fame. It is the time when some start work, and others are admitted to the college, the fount of knowledge and authority.

The ceremony organized on this occasion gave the young Fassi the sense of having entered the world of the might. That was in any case what I felt on that day. Dressed in silk like the son of an amir, mounted on the back of a thoroughbred, followed by a slave carrying a large umbrella, I passed through the streets surrounded by the pupils in my class singing in unison. At the side of the road, several passers-by waved at me, and I waved at them in turn. From time to time a familiar face: Khali, my mother, two girl cousins, some neighbours, Hamza the barber and the boys from the hammam, and, a little to one side under a porch, Warda and Mariam.

My father was waiting for me in the reception room, where a banquet was to be held in my honour. He was carrying under his arm the new robe which I was to present to the schoolmaster as a token of gratitude. He gazed at me with disarming emotion.

I looked back at him. All at once, so many images of him clustered in my head: moving, when he told me the story of Granada; affectionate, when he caressed my neck; terrifying, when he repudiated my mother; hateful, when he sacrificed my sister; pitiable, slumped at the table in a tavern. How many truths did I want to shout down at him from the back of my horse! But I knew that my tongue would be tied once more when my feet touched the ground, when I would have to return the horse and silks to the person who lent them, when I would cease to be the short-lived hero of the Great Recitation.